His Imminent Eminence . . . .

. . . . Soon-to-be New York Governor, David Paterson
[Photo: Getty Images]

From NYmag.com:

David Paterson just gave his first public address since Eliot Spitzer's resignation yesterday. He made noises about "getting back to work" and the budget, talked about being black and blind, indicated he wasn't planning any major changes to his predecessors more controversial policies, and became the first human being in government to express sympathy for Spitzer himself. "My heart goes out to Eliot Spitzer, his wife Silda, his daughters," he said. "I know what he's gone through this week. In my heart, I think he's suffered enough."

Paterson also displayed a rather awesome sense of humor. "Just so we don't have to go through this whole resignation thing again," one ballsy reporter asked, "have you ever patronized a prostitute?" Patterson thought for a minute. "Only the lobbyists," he said.

Dancin' Cheek-to-Cheek

First Time Ever: Gorillas Photographed Mating Face-To-Face

Western gorillas 'Leah' and unidentified male in Mbeli Bai in the Republic of Congo.
(Credit: Copyright Thomas Breuer – WCS/MPI-EVA)

From Science Daily:
Scientists from the Wildlife Conservation Society and Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology have released the first known photographs of gorillas performing face-to-face copulation in the wild. This is the first time that western gorillas have been observed and photographed mating in such a manner.

The photographs were part of a study conducted in a forest clearing in Nouabalé-Ndoki National Park in the Republic of Congo that appeared in a recent issue of The Gorilla Gazette.

"Understanding the behavior of our cousins the great apes sheds light on the evolution of behavioral traits in our own species and our ancestors," said Thomas Breuer, a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and WCS and lead author of the study. "It is also interesting that this same adult female has been noted for innovative behaviors before."

The western lowland gorilla is listed as Critically Endangered as a result of hunting by humans, habitat destruction, and health threats such as the Ebola virus.

The female gorilla in the photograph, nicknamed "Leah" by researchers, made history in 2005 when she was observed using tools -- another never-before-seen behavior for her kind in the wild. Breuer and others witnessed Leah using a stick to test the depth of a pool of water before wading into it in Mbeli Bai, where researchers have been monitoring the gorilla population since 1995.

Researchers say that few primates mate in a face-to-face position, known technically as ventro-ventral copulation; most primate species copulate in what's known as the dorso-ventral position, with both animals facing in the same direction. Besides humans, only bonobos have been known to frequently employ ventro-ventral mating positions. On a few occasions, mountain gorillas have been observed in ventro-ventral positions, but never photographed. Western gorillas in captivity have been known to mate face-to-face, but not in the wild, which makes this observation a noteworthy first.

"Our current knowledge of wild western gorillas is very limited, and this report provides information on various aspects of their sexual behavior," added Breuer, whose study is funded by the Brevard Zoo, Columbus Zoo and Aquarium, Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Garden, Max Planck Society, Sea World & Busch Gardens Conservation Fund, Toronto Zoo, Wildlife Conservation Society and Woodland Park Zoo. "We can't say how common this manner of mating is, but it has never been observed with western gorillas in the forest. It is fascinating to see similarities between gorilla and human sexual behavior demonstrated by our observation."

Scientists estimate that western gorillas have declined 60 percent in recent years due to habitat loss, illegal hunting, and Ebola hemorrhagic fever. The Wildlife Conservation Society, which is the only organization working to protect all four gorilla sub-species (also including the Cross River Gorilla, the mountain gorilla, and the Grauer's gorilla), has been studying gorillas and other wildlife in the Republic of Congo since the 1980s. In 1993, the Congolese Government, working in tandem with technical assistance from WCS, established Nouabalé-Ndoki National Park.

John McCain Cheated On His Sixth Grade Math Test??!??

Who knows, but you'll get it in a minute . . . .

John King and Glenn Greenwald

At Salon.com, Glenn Greenwald writes:

Over the weekend, I wrote about an adulating interview which CNN's John King conducted with John McCain while riding on the storied Straight Talk Express bus. The interview was broadcast on "Situation Room" with Wolf Blitzer. In that post, I printed all of the "questions" King asked of McCain in their full, unedited entirety as broadcast on CNN, linked to the full transcript of the program, and then added some commentary.

Yesterday, I received a response from King via e-mail, the authenticity of which was confirmed in a subsequent exchange:

From: King, John C
To: GGreenwald@salon.com
Sent: Tuesday, January 15, 2008 5:40 PM
Subject: excuse me?

I don't read biased uninformed drivel so I'm a little late to the game.
But a friend who understands how my business works and knows a little something about my 20 plus years in it sent me the link to your ramblings.

Since the site suggests you have law training, maybe you forgot that good lawyers to a little research before they spit out words.

Did you think to ask me or anyone who works with me whether that was the entire interview? No. (It was not; just a portion used by one of the many CNN programs.)
Did you reach out to ask the purpose of that specific interview? No.

Or how it might have fit in with other questions being asked of other candidates that day? No.

Or anything that might have put facts or context or fairness into your critique. No.
McCain, for better or worse, is a very accessible candidate. If you did a little research (there he goes with that word again) you would find I have had my share of contentious moments with him over the years.

But because of that accessibility, you don't have to go into every interview asking him about the time he cheated on his sixth grade math test.

The interview was mainly to get a couple of questions to him on his thoughts on the role of government when the economy is teetering on the edge of recession, in conjunction with similar questions being put to several of the other candidates.

The portion you cited was aired by one of our programs -- so by all means it is fair game for whatever "analysis" you care to apply to it using your right of free speech and your lack of any journalistic standards or fact checking or just plain basic curiosity.

You clearly know very little about journalism. But credibility matters. It is what allows you to cover six presidential campaigns and be viewed as fair and respectful, while perhaps a little cranky, but Democrats and Republicans alike. When I am writing something that calls someone's credibility into question, I pick up the phone and give them a chance to give their side, or perspective.

That way, even on days that I don't consider my best, or anywhere close, I can look myself in the mirror and know I tried to be fair and didn't call into question someone's credibility just for sport, or because I like seeing my name on a website or my face on TV.

During our subsequent exchange, when I pointed out that this was not the first time he appeared to be reverent of John McCain, as documented by Media Matters, he said: "Go to its conservative counterpart and you will find me there, too. Comes with the territory."

Most of this speaks for itself, but it's worth noting how often journalists' responses to criticisms contain so many of the same elements which King's email contains. They always want you to know that they never read what you write and that you're an Unserious, biased, partisan amateur (without any recognition of the glaring contradiction between those two claims).

They boast of what they believe to be their reputation, assuring you that they are widely respected and admired by the People Who Count. Even though they never read you, they're repulsed by the idea that you would dare to critique their work because you know absolutely nothing about the High Art of Journalism and never get any messages on your Blackberry from Ed Gillespie or Karl Rove or Anyone.

They invariably point to criticisms from both Left and Right as proof that they're unbiased straight-shooters. They chide you for being unaware of the secret, concealed information (interview questions that weren't broadcast, paragraphs that were edited out) which somehow disproves your critique of what they did broadcast or publish.

They proudly inform you that there have, indeed, been some instances over the many decades that they've been working when they've stood up to someone and asked something other than mindlessly reverent questions, and if you had looked hard enough, you might have found a couple. They tell you it's appalling to comment on what they publish to their readers or viewers without first talking to them about it, even though you linked to or even printed in full everything they said and wrote. And they close by telling you that you have no standards, no ethics, no understanding of their Complex Profession, and no decency -- that you're just a shrill, ignorant partisan pushing a lowly agenda while they are in the business of Real Unvarnished, Objective Reporting.

Ponder how much better things would be if establishment journalists -- in response to being endlessly lied to and manipulated by political officials and upon witnessing extreme lawbreaking and corruption at the highest levels of our government -- were able to muster just a tiny fraction of the high dudgeon, petulant offense, and melodramatic outrage that comes pouring forth whenever their "reporting" is criticized. All this energized invective from King because CNN aired an "interview" with the GOP front-running presidential candidate consisting of one adoring question after the next, which I printed in full.

It's not exactly a secret that the traveling press harbors bountiful, blinding love for John McCain. That love was glaringly evident in King's "interview." Judging by his response, King quite clearly knows this, too. It's not actually that complicated. The next time you or your colleagues interview McCain, keep your affection to yourself; skip the part where you lavish him with praise; exercise journalistic skepticism; and just ask real questions.

-- Glenn Greenwald

Here we have yet another journalist with a mainstream media outlet who believes that if both the left and the right complain, he must be doing a good job.

I can't think of any other profession where the measure for how well you're doing your job is by the number of dissatisfied customers you are creating.

Whom Fitzgerald Was Talking About

"Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me. They possess and enjoy early, and it does something to them, makes them soft, where we are hard, cynical where we are trustful, in a way that, unless you were born rich, it is very difficult to understand."

~ The Rich Boy, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1926

Vast rightwing conspiracy financier, Richard Mellon Scaife, and his soon-to-be ex-wife Ritchie.

Editor & Publisher reports:

In a dirt-dishing account of their divorce, Richard Mellon Scaife and his second wife Margaret Ritchie Rhea Battle Scaife exchange accusations of adultery, gold-digging, and even dognapping in their first extensive interviews.

An article by Michael Joseph Gross in the February issue of Vanity Fair portrays a drama that combines the "Citizen Kane" aspects of Pittsburgh Tribune-Review owner and conservative cause bankroller Richard Scaife with a "War of the Roses" almost comic dramedy of their split.

Richard Scaife, in what Vanity Fair says are the first interviews he has given in eight years, describes "his estranged wife as conniving, greedy, and abusive," Gross wrote.

At first, Ritchie Scaife declined to interview, leaving her lawyer William Pietragallo II, Ritchie Scaife to describe her as a "very supportive and caring wife" who was thrown over for a women with reported prostitution arrests on her record.



"Later, Ritchie changed her mind and agreed to what turned out to be a long and highly animated interview. Seated between Pietragallo and another of her attorneys, Eddie Hayes (the model for the scrappy defense lawyer in Tom Wolfe's The Bonfire of the Vanities), Ritchie described a marriage that swung between emotional extremes, from the days when 'I always called him "my snuggle bunny" ... and he called me his "precious,"' to the public embarrassments brought on by their breakup, which she compares to 'the tortures of the damned,'" Gross wrote.

Ritchie Scaife

While much of the broad outlines of the marital discord have been published by Pittsburg papers including Richard Scaife's Tribune-Review, some of the Vanity Fair stories are doozies.

Ritchie Scaife sics a private investigator on her husband, and discovers he is going to a cheap hotel with 43-year-old Tammy Vasco. Enraged Ritchie Scaife tries twice to confront the two at his mansion, only to be arrested for deliberate trespass -- and tossed in jail where fellow prisoners pass the time petting her fur collar.

Richard Scaife ruefully admits bringing marijuana to his son in prep school. Ritchie is portrayed, and vehemently denies, as being a woman interested only in the Mellon name and fortune, once threatening to plunge into the ocean because she did not like the winter slip covers at a summer place.

An in-law is quoted as saying she would stick pins in pictures of Richard Scaife.

"Ritchie denies every detail of this story," Gross wrote. "There was an altercation, she admits, but she says it was Sara who 'went berserk.'
"And did she stick those pins in the pictures?
"'No, Dick did.'
"Her lawyer interrupts: ' -- Ehh -- '
"'It's true!,' Ritchie says.
"Pietragallo: 'Stop. Stop.'"

Richard Scaife became famous politically for what Vanity Fair calls his "moral crusade" against President Bill Clinton, including investigations into the so-called "Troopergate" allegations of sexual assignations and efforts to link former White House chief of staff Vince Foster's suicide to the Clinton administration.

Richard Scaife responds by telling Vanity Fair that he believes in "open marriage," and says with a laugh that philandering " "is something that Bill Clinton and I have in common."

He also recounts have a "very pleasant" lunch last summer with Bill Clinton, whom he calls the most charismatic man he's met in his life.

"It would be a mistake to read the saga of Richard Mellon Scaife's divorce as simply a story of moral hypocrisy," Gross wrote. "His treatment of women, especially his first wife, suggests a high regard for his own gratification. His commitment to conservative politics has never been primarily about upholding traditional morality; it has been about promoting policies that help to preserve his own wealth and that of people like himself. On the subject of Clinton his weather vane is now spinning wildly."

The Vanity Fair article portrays a tempestuous couple -- one of whom, Richard admits a drinking problem he says he's licked -- who set tongues wagging in Pittsburgh virtually since they got together.

At their wedding reception a fireworks display included a "a blazing sign on the lawn that proclaimed, in sparkling letters, 'Ritchie loves Dick'," Gross wrote. "Even today, a certain set of Pittsburgh women, including wives of some of the country's most brass-knuckled industrialists, speak of Ritchie's flaming double entendre as among the most shocking moments of their lives."

It was not intended as a double entendre, and only low minds could think that, Ritchie Scaife tells the magazine.

Soon after her arrest on trespassing, which was later dismissed, three dogs belonging to the couple moved in with her lawyer. Richard Scaife displayed a sign on his front lawn that said something to the effect of "wife and dog missing -- reward for dog."

One of the dogs later turned up at Richard Scaife's house, where a sign soon said, welcome home, beauregard. Vanity Fair quotes court documents that allege Ritchie Scaife, having spotted a housekeeper walking the dog, beat the woman trying to wrest the dog from her. Richard Scaife's security officer tried to break up the fight, and was allegedly scratched. Ritchie was arrested in the incident, though charges were later dropped.

The court pleadings in the Scaife's divorce (which Scaife tried to get sealed by the court) are linked here.

And if you haven't had your fill of the tawdry details of these people's lives, David Segal at the Washington Post will take you on a road trip:

Not Walking The Talk

Striking writers outside the Burbank, Calif. studios of NBC. (Photo: Ric Francis/Associated Press)

Last week, it was Huckabee's mistakes about Pakistan. Just three weeks earlier, it was his ignorant blunders about the NIE on Iran which he blamed his failure "to keep up on every little thing, from Britney to 'Dancing with the Stars'" to being on the campaign trail.

Now he's showing us his plain ignorance about the status of the writer's strike (it's not over, 'dimples'), as well as proper recognition of striking employees whom you claim to "support" - You don't cross their picket line!

The New York Times'-blog reports:

Former Governor Mike Huckabee of Arkansas today professed his support for the striking television writers union just a few hours before he was expected to board a plane for a taping of the Jay Leno show where he will face a vocal picket line of striking writers.

Mr. Leno’s program is returning to the air for the first time since a long hiatus for the strike. Speaking to reporters, Mr. Huckabee said he was unaware that he would be crossing picket lines and believed that the program had reached a special agreement with the union.

Although crossing picket lines might not be unusual for most Republican candidates, Mr. Huckabee has waged an unusual populist campaign on economic issues, stressing his empathy with the anxieties of working people. On Wednesday, he said he identified with the striking television workers as an author himself and believed they deserved a share of the proceeds from the sale of their work.

Mr. Huckabee’s inconsistency about the picket lines outside the Leno show are the latest in a string of missteps that have underscored the ad-hoc, on-the-fly nature of his insurgent campaign. Last week, he made a series of small misstatements about Pakistan that raised questions about his fluency in matters of foreign affairs and raised eyebrows when he suggested applying special scrutiny to Pakistanis at the borders in the interest of national security. Then, he reversed a pledge to avoid attacking his opponent, Mitt Romney, and two days ago reversed himself again to renounce those attacks.

On Wednesday, Mr. Huckabee appeared to edge back once again toward explicit swipes at his opponent. Asked by a reporter about Mr. Romney’s roughly $17 million in personal loans to his campaign, Mr. Huckabee asked how voters could expect understanding of their problems from a candidate who “writes checks for tens of millions of dollars and doesn’t miss the money?”

In a stump speech in Fort Dodge, Iowa, Mr. Huckabee did not name Mr. Romney but made veiled references to his opponent. Alluding to Mr. Romney’s professed change of heart on abortion rights, Mr. Huckabee said he was a candidate whose views in the issue did not change depending on polls or where he was running.

“You want someone who is authentic, you want someone who is consistent, you want someone who can lead,” Mr. Huckabee said.

“Some of us come to you with the views that we had because they are convictions not political conveniences,” he said later in Mason City, Iowa.

“Wouldn’t it be something if the people of Iowa proved that they cannot be bought?” he said, alluding to Mr. Romney’s heavy spending on the campaign.

Speaking to reporters, he said he expected his appearance on the Jay Leno show to reach more Iowa voters than a day of appearances to crowds of a few hundred each. He said he planned to fly back to Iowa by the end of the day, spending as little time as possible out of the state. He is continuing to wage his Iowa campaign largely from the airwaves of national television, beginning Wednesday with three morning television interviews before boarding a bus for two appearances on the stump.

Episodes like these offer candidates unique opportunities to own the moment by sucking all of the oxygen out of the air (waves) with a grand gesture (or stunt).

If I was on Huckabee's staff and advising him, I wouldn't let him go into NBC's studios. I'd have him stand on the street with the picketers (after clearing it with the WGA) and get Leno to wire him up for a remote interview. I'd focus the interview on the striking writers, working Americans, quality television, and have some prearranged gag that the writers had prepared. Something like this:

Will Evangelicals Do It To America Again?

Will evangelical Christians saddle us with another president too ignorant to be trusted with the awesome responsibility that is the Commander-in-Chief of the greatest military power in the world?



The New York Times reports:

In discussing the volatile situation in Pakistan, Mike Huckabee has made several erroneous or misleading statements at a time when he has been under increasing scrutiny from fellow presidential candidates for a lack of fluency in foreign policy issues.

Explaining statements he made suggesting that the instability in Pakistan should remind Americans to tighten security on the southern border of the United States, Mr. Huckabee said Friday that “we have more Pakistani illegals coming across our border than all other nationalities, except those immediately south of the border.”

Asked to justify the statement, he later cited a March 2006 article in The Denver Post reporting that from 2002 to 2005, Pakistanis were the most numerous non-Latin Americans caught entering the United States illegally. According to The Post, 660 Pakistanis were detained in that period.

A recent report from the Department of Homeland Security, however, concluded that, over all, illegal immigrants from the Philippines, India, Korea, China and Vietnam were all far more numerous than those from Pakistan.

In a separate interview on Friday on MSNBC, Mr. Huckabee, a Republican, said that the Pakistani government “does not have enough control of those eastern borders near Afghanistan to be able go after the terrorists.” Those borders are on the western side of Pakistan, not the eastern side.

Further, he offered an Orlando crowd his “apologies for what has happened in Pakistan.” His aides said later that he meant to say “sympathies.”

He also said he was worried about martial law “continuing” in Pakistan, although Mr. Musharraf lifted the state of emergency on Dec. 15. Mr. Huckabee later said that he was referring to a renewal of full martial law and said that some elements, including restrictions on judges and the news media, had continued.

Mr. Huckabee’s comments on the situation in Pakistan were not the first time he has been caught unprepared on foreign policy matters. Early this month, after the release of a National Intelligence Estimate concluding that Iran had stopped its nuclear weapons program in 2003, Mr. Huckabee said that he was not familiar with the report, even though it had been widely reported in the news for more than 30 hours.

When do those who gave us Bush and Cheney realize that the most important decision they should be ever be trusted with again is what to wear when they get out of bed every day? And when are we going to say this out loud to them?

Dynastic Democracy = Oxymoron

There is no such thing as democracy when power is concentrated and passed from one generation to the next within one family....

Benazir Bhutto, flanked by her father, Pakistan's former Prime Minister Zulifikar Ali Bhutto (photograph above her right shoulder), and her son, Bilawal, October 1993.

....Or two families. Or two political parties. Not in Pakistan (population 165 million), nor in the United States (population 300 million).

US First Lady Hillary Clinton (L) smiles with Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto at a luncheon in her honor at Prime Minister House in Islamabad 26 March. Bhutto described Mrs. Clinton as a "symbol for women throughout the world."

Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto of Pakistan makes remarks beside US President George Bush during White House welcoming ceremonies 06 June 1989, Washington, DC.

McClatchy reports:

Benazir Bhutto left a last will and testament that maps out the future for her political party and who should lead it in her absence, her husband Asif Zardari disclosed on Saturday.

The document will be presented to her Pakistan People's Party on Sunday. It's expected to include her preference for who should lead the party in her absence. Zardari himself would be a highly controversial contender. Their son Bilawal would win a huge amount of goodwill, but is still a teenager, and Zardari appeared to rule him out on Saturday.

"He's too young. He's 19 years old," Zardari said.

Zardari said he opened the letter himself only on Saturday. Its contents will be read to an emergency meeting of the party on Sunday by Bilawal, a student at Britain's prestigious Oxford University, where his mother also studied.

"She left a message for the party and she left a will," Zardari said, in between meeting mourners who came by the hundreds to Benazir Bhutto's family home here in the village of Naudero. "This [document] is about politics. What we should do and how we should go about things."

Asked whether he wanted to lead the party, he didn't dismiss it.

"Lets see.... It depends on the party and it depends on the will."

Bilawal, circled, along with his sisters and other family members at Benazir Bhutto's funeral

Longer term, it's widely predicted that Bilawal Bhutto will take over leadership of the party, Pakistan's most popular political machine, which has always been led by a Bhutto. Benazir's sister, her only surviving sibling, has never taken part in politics.

The People's Party is faced with a vacuum of leadership. There are no towering figures within the party. Many say that Ms. Bhutto did not allow others to gain much recognition, and she concentrated power and decision-making in her hands. The party must also decide whether to boycott the parliamentary elections, now set for January 8.

These political decisions must be made amid continued grief and mourning. On Sunday, special prayers will mark the third day after her death, an important marker in the Muslim faith.

On Saturday Zardari met with mourners. He stood in the courtyard of the family home, where mats had been spread. He embraced each man in turn, as dozens lined up every few minutes. Then there would be a short break for prayers, and the mourners would start coming forward again. Women passed through but went to a different area.

Many men were in tears, some crying uncontrollably. Most looked like poor peasant farmers from the surrounding countryside, dressed in tatty and stained clothing. Also attending were some political figures.

Periodically, large groups of veiled women would enter the compound wailing and beating their heads.

Zardari kept his composure throughout.

A neighbor in the village, Dur Mohammed, who came to Benazir's house, said: "We feel this was not the body of Benazir Bhutto. This was the corpse of our future, our dreams."

The crowd's emotion reached a breaking point with the arrival of Nawaz Sharif, leader of another political party who had been a bitter rival of Benazir. The throng surrounded him and his entourage, chanting "Benazir is innocent" and "long live Bhutto".

Deep anger was evident.

"She repeatedly told the government that the security had to be beefed up. She was very much concerned for her life," said a cousin, Shahid Hussain Bhutto. "It was not a suicide attack. It was a planned, targeted, killing."

Iqbal Haider, a former attorney general of Pakistan, said the government was "trying to create confusion and hide the real killers".

"Where was the security? Why didn't they cover the vehicle? There was no security, no precautions. That is why we hold [President] Pervez Musharraf responsible."

If it's not one of Benazir Bhutto's children being groomed to retain power, it's another:

Benazir Bhutto wanted her children to keep off politics and fiercely guarded them from the media.

After her assassination, true to sub-continental traditions, speculation has already begun on which of her two older children will become her political heir.

The eldest, 19-year-old Bilawal, has emerged as a possible contender to continue his family’s dynasty. And Bakhtawar Zardari, 16 — two years older than the youngest Asifa — is on record saying three years ago that her life’s mission was to serve Pakistan as a politician.

Benazir Bhutto, seated with her three children (l-r); Bakhtawar, Asifa and Bilawal

Bilawal Bhutto, who uses his mother’s surname and looked disconsolate at the funeral today, is believed to have a keen interest in history and politics. He was first tapped as a possible successor when he enrolled at Oxford, the same university from which his mother and grandfather graduated.

Pakistan People’s Party leaders had earlier said Bilawal would not enter politics till he had finished his degree but those comments were themselves taken as a hint of his future intentions.

Some party sources, however, were doubtful how inclined the young man would be to take up the responsibility at the moment.

Bakhtawar may not have had any hesitation, from what she had said in an interview to The Telegraph in August 2004.

“I will surely enter the political arena and carry forward the mission of my mother Benazir Bhutto and grandfather Zulfikar Ali Bhutto — to serve Pakistan,” the 13-year-old had said in Karachi, choosing her words as carefully as a seasoned politician.

She had come over from Dubai, where the children lived with Bhutto during her eight years of self-imposed exile, to see her ailing father, Asif Ali Zardari.

The trip and the interview were an exception, considering the protective cover under which Bhutto kept her children.

Asked by an American reporter in 1994 if her children would follow her into politics, she had replied with conviction: “No. Never. Politics in Pakistan is much too dangerous.”

She had added: “I would like to see my son as a lawyer and I would like my (elder) daughter to be a social worker.”

Sometime this year, however, she seemed to have changed her mind. Newspapers said she was grooming Bilawal, registering him as a Pakistani citizen through the embassy in Dubai, making him eligible to vote in her hometown of Larkana.

In that Bhutto might have been following in the footsteps of her mother Nusrat, who had favoured son Murtaza over her daughter as the successor to husband Zulfikar Ali Bhutto.

Bhutto — who was older than her brother which Bakhtawar is not — had then dismissed Nusrat’s position as reflecting “pure male prejudice”.

Her reported decision to back Bilawal would have partially mirrored Sonia Gandhi’s choice of Rahul over Priyanka at a time many in the Congress saw the more articulate daughter as the natural political heir to Rajiv Gandhi.

Some PPP lobbies are touting a woman successor, but it’s not Bakhtawar. The candidate is Murtaza’s 25-year-old daughter, an educated, photogenic and headstrong woman who has criticised Bhutto in her columns for the English-language daily The News.

Around the time Bakhtawar gave the interview to The Telegraph, Zardari had said he wanted to see all the three children in politics. He said he expected Bakhtawar and Asifa to join the PPP women’s wing and Bilawal the students’ body.

Family friends described the children as “humble and respectful of elders”.

“All three, like their mother, are fond of books and literature,” said Iqbal Haider, secretary-general of the Pakistan Human Rights Commission and former law minister.

Haider said Bilawal took after Bhutto also in his love of computers. The tall and dapper young man, often described as Z.A. Bhutto Junior, “is deeply attached to his mother and speaks very affectionately of her all the time,” Haider said.

Bhutto, when she was Prime Minister, used to carry a baby Bilawal in her arms even to official functions to her aides’ consternation.

The young man today helped carry Bhutto’s coffin to the plane at Islamabad.

Bhutto doted on her children and closely followed their education and guided their upbringing. She resisted previous calls for return to Pakistan, saying her children needed a mother.

It was only when they entered their teens that she agreed to take the plunge again in the rough-and-tumble of Pakistan’s politics, only to fall a victim to it.

She had taken time off her election campaign yesterday morning to speak to her children. It turned out to be the last time.

Neither Zardari nor Bilawal wanted to discuss their family’s political plans after their arrival in Pakistan late last night.

“I have only now begun to mourn her death,” said Zardari, 51, who had 10 days ago celebrated 20 years of marriage to Bhutto, 54.

Worms Infect More Poor Americans Than Thought

Reuters reports:

"Because of its possible links to asthma, it would be important to determine whether covert toxocariasis is a basis for the rise of asthma among inner-city children in the northeastern United States," he added.

"Cysticercosis is another very serious parasitic worm infection ... caused by the tapeworm Taenia solium, that results in seizures and other neurological manifestations," Hotez wrote.

He said up to 2,000 new cases of neurological disease caused by tapeworms are diagnosed every year in the United States. More than 2 percent of adult Latinos may be infected, and with 35 million Hispanics in the United States, this could add up to tens of thousands of cases, Hotez said.



"In the hospitals of Los Angeles, California, neurocysticercosis currently accounts for 10 percent of all seizures presenting to some emergency departments," he wrote.

"We need to begin erasing these horrific health disparities," Hotez wrote in the paper, available online.

Anarchy Capitalism

Stocked with messages - Artists, would-be advertisers use unsuspecting stores as medium



The New York Times reports:

This is the season of frenetic shopping, but for a devious few people it’s also the season of spirited shopdropping.

Otherwise known as reverse shoplifting, shopdropping involves surreptitiously putting things in stores, rather than illegally taking them out, and the motivations vary.

Anti-consumerist artists slip replica products packaged with political messages onto shelves while religious proselytizers insert pamphlets between the pages of gay-and-lesbian readings at book stores.

Self-published authors sneak their works into the “new releases” section, while personal trainers put their business cards into weight-loss books, and aspiring professional photographers make homemade cards — their Web site address included, of course — and covertly plant them into stationery-store racks.

“Everyone else is pushing their product, so why shouldn’t we?” said Jeff Eyrich, a producer for several independent bands, who puts stacks of his bands’ CDs — marked “free” — on music racks at Starbucks whenever the cashiers look away.

Ryan Watkins-Hughes, a photographer from Brooklyn, invited four other artists to help him shopdrop at the Whole Foods store in Union Square. Watkins-Hughes bought canned food at the store and replaced the labels with his photographs, leaving the original bar codes intact.

Though not new, shopdropping has grown in popularity in recent years, especially as artists have gathered to swap tactics at Web sites like Shopdropping.net, and groups like the Anti-Advertising Agency, a political art collective, do training workshops open to the public.

Retailers fear the practice may annoy shoppers and raise legal or safety concerns, particularly when it involves children’s toys or trademarked products.

“Our goal at all times is to provide comfortable and distraction-free shopping,” said Bethany Zucco, a spokeswoman for Target. “We think this type of activity would certainly not contribute to that goal.” She said she did not know of any shopdropping at Target stores.

But Packard Jennings does. An artist who lives in Oakland, Calif., he said that for the last seven months he had been working on a new batch of his Anarchist action figure that he began shopdropping this week at Target and Wal-Mart stores in the San Francisco Bay Area.

“When better than Christmas to make a point about hyper-consumerism?” asked Mr. Jennings, 37, whose action figure comes with tiny accessories including a gas mask, bolt cutter, and two Molotov cocktails, and looks convincingly like any other doll on most toy-store shelves. Putting it in stores and filming people as they try to buy it as they interact with store clerks, Mr. Jennings said he hoped to show that even radical ideology gets commercialized. He said for safety reasons he retrieves the figures before customers take them home.

Jason Brody, lead singer for an independent pop-rock band in the East Village, said his group recently altered its shopdropping tactics to cater to the holiday rush.

Normally the band, the Death of Jason Brody, slips promotional CD singles between the pages of The Village Voice newspaper and into the racks at large music stores. But lately, band members have been slipping into department stores and putting stickers with logos for trendy designers like Diesel, John Varvatos and 7 for All Mankind on their CDs, which they then slip into the pockets of designer jeans or place on counters.

“Bloomingdale’s and 7 for All Mankind present the Death of Jason Brody, our pick for New York band to watch in 2008,” read a sticker on one of the CDs placed near a register at Bloomingdales. “As thanks for trying us on, we’re giving you this special holiday gift.” Bloomingdales and 7 for All Mankind declined to comment.

For pet store owners, the holidays usher in a form of shopdropping with a touch of buyer’s remorse. What seemed like a cute gift idea at the time can end up being dumped back at a store, left discretely to roam the aisles.

“After Easter, there’s a wave of bunnies; after Halloween, it’s black cats; after Christmas, it’s puppies,” said Don Cowan, a spokesman for the store chain Petco, which in the month after each of those holidays sees 100 to 150 pets abandoned in its aisles or left after hours in cages in front of stores. Snakes have been left in crates, mice and hamsters surreptitiously dropped in dry aquariums, even a donkey left behind after a store’s annual pet talent show, Mr. Cowan said.

Bookstores are especially popular for self-promotion and religious types of shopdropping.

At BookPeople in Austin, Tex., local authors have been putting bookmarks advertising their own works in books on similar topics. At Mac’s Backs Paperbacks, a used bookstore in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, employees are dealing with the influx of shopdropped works by local poets and playwrights by putting a price tag on them and leaving them on the shelves.

At Powell’s Books in Portland, Ore., religious groups have been hitting the magazines in the science section with fliers featuring Christian cartoons, while their adversaries have been moving Bibles from the religion section to the fantasy/science-fiction section.

This week an arts group in Oakland, the Center for Tactical Magic, began shopdropping neatly folded stacks of homemade T-shirts into Wal-Mart and Target stores in the San Francisco Bay Area. The shirts feature radical images and slogans like one with the faces of Karl Marx, Che Guevara and Mikhail Bakunin, a Russian anarchist. It says, “Peace on Earth. After we overthrow capitalism.”

“Our point is to put a message, not a price tag, on them,” said Aaron Gach, 33, a spokesman for the group.

Mr. Jennings’s anarchist action figure met with a befuddled reaction from a Target store manager on Wednesday in El Cerrito, Calif.

“I don’t think this is a product that we sell,” the manager said as Mr. Jennings pretended to be a customer trying to buy it. “It’s definitely antifamily, which is not what Target is about.”

One of the first reports of shopdropping was in 1989, when a group called the Barbie Liberation Organization sought to make a point about sexism in children’s toys by swapping the voice hardware of Barbie dolls with those in GI Joe figures before putting the dolls back on store shelves.

Scott Wolfson, a spokesman for the federal Consumer Product Safety Commission, said he was not sure if shopdropping was illegal but that some forms of it could raise safety concerns because the items left on store shelves might not abide by labeling requirements and federal safety standards.

Ryan Watkins-Hughes, 28, a photographer from Brooklyn, teamed up with four other artists to shopdrop canned goods with altered labels at Whole Foods stores in New York City this week. “In the holidays, people get into this head-down, plow-through-the-shopping autopilot mode,” Mr. Watkins-Hughes said “‘I got to get a dress for Cindy, get a stereo for Uncle John, go buy canned goods for the charity drive and get back home.’”

“Warhol took the can into the gallery. We bring the art to the can,” he said, adding that the labels consisted of photographs of places he had traveled combined with the can’s original bar code so that people could still buy them.

“What we do is try to inject a brief moment of wonder that helps wake them up from that rushed stupor,” he said, pausing to add, “That’s the true holiday spirit, isn’t it?”

Like This Wasn't Foreseeable When The Senate Confirmed Him

Mukasey Rejects Call for CIA Tape Details and Special Prosecutor

The Washington Post reports:

Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey today sharply rebuffed congressional demands for details about the Justice Department's inquiry into the destruction of CIA interrogation tapes, saying that providing such information would make it appear that the department was "subject to political influence."

In letters to the leaders of the Senate Judiciary Committee and others, Mukasey also reiterated his opposition to appointing a special prosecutor to the tapes investigation, saying he was "aware of no facts at present" that would require such a step.

"At my confirmation hearing, I testified that I would act independently, resist political pressure and ensure that politics plays no role in cases brought by the Department of Justice," Mukasey wrote. "Consistent with that testimony, the facts will be followed wherever they lead in this inquiry, and the relevant law applied."

Wouldn't you have loved to be a fly on Chuck Schumer's wall when he heard about Mukasey's response to the bipartisan inquiry by U.S. senators? And just when you think you've heard every conceivable weasel word and spinned excuse by the Bush administration's appointees for stalling, stonewalling, and not cooperating with Congress's Constitutionally-required role of oversight and investigation.

Senators Dianne Feinstein, Russ Feingold and Chuck Schumer (the senator who suggested that Bush nominate Mukasey for the job) confer during the Senate Judiciary Committee meeting to vote on sending Michael Mukasey's nomination as Attorney General to the floor of the Senate.

One letter was sent to Sens. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) and Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), the leaders of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Similar correspondence was sent to Senate Majority Whip Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) and to House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers (D-Mich.) and other House Democrats.

The three letters represent an attempt by Mukasey to push back against growing pressure from lawmakers, primarily Democrats, who have showered the Justice Department with demands for investigations or information on topics ranging from the baseball steroids scandal to allegations of rape by a former military contractor employee.

The letters also are an assertive move by the new attorney general, who was confirmed last month with the lowest level of Senate support in the past half century because of his refusal to say whether a form of simulated drowning known as waterboarding amounts to torture under U.S. law.

Mukasey replaced former attorney general Alberto R. Gonzales, who left office in September after the furor over his handling of the firings of nine U.S. attorneys and allegations that he misled Congress in sworn testimony.

The CIA disclosed last week that it destroyed videotapes in 2005 depicting interrogation sessions for alleged al-Qaeda operatives Zayn al-Abidin Muhammed Hussein, commonly known as Abu Zubaida, and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri. Administration officials have said that lawyers at the Justice Department and the White House, including former counsel Harriet E. Miers, advised the CIA against destroying the tapes but that CIA lawyers ruled their preservation was not required.

The Justice Department announced Saturday it had joined the CIA's inspector general in launching a preliminary inquiry into the tape destruction, and prosecutors asked the CIA to preserve any related evidence.

Leahy and Specter asked Mukasey on Dec. 10 for "a complete account of the Justice Department's own knowledge of and involvement with" the tape destruction. The two senators included a list of 16 separate questions, including whether the Justice Department had offered legal advice to the CIA about the tapes or had communicated with the White House about the issue.

Durbin had sent a letter to Mukasey Dec. 7 asking whether an investigation into the tape destruction would be pursued. Conyers and three other House Democrats authored a similar letter on the same day.

Mukasey wrote to the lawmakers that Justice "has a long-standing policy of declining to provide non-public information about pending matters.

"This policy is based in part on our interest in avoiding any perception that our law enforcement decisions are subject to political influence," Mukasey wrote to Conyers and the others. "Accordingly, I will not at this time provide further information in response to your letter, but appreciate the Committee's interests in this matter."

The tape investigation is being led by Kenneth Wainstein, head of the Justice Department's National Security Division. Wainstein held his first substantive meeting on the case Wednesday with staffers at the CIA inspector general's office, according to a law enforcement official.

Several Democrats have raised questions about the propriety of having the inquiry run by the Justice Department, whose lawyers were involved in offering legal advice about the tapes, and the CIA inspector general, whose office reviewed the tapes before they were destroyed.

CIA Director Michael V. Hayden said last week that the inspector general's office examined the tapes in 2003 "as part of its look at the Agency's detention and interrogation practices."

Also yesterday, the beleaguered head of the Justice Department's Voting Rights Section disclosed in a letter to employees that he was being transferred to another job in the agency.

John K. Tanner said he was moving to the Office of Special Counsel for Immigration-Related Unfair Employment Practices after nearly 32 years in the Civil Rights Division.

Tanner had come under fire for making a series of racially charged statements earlier this year, including a suggestion that black voters are not hurt as much as whites by voter identification laws because "they die first."

Tanner apologized for the "tone" of his remarks in House testimony, but stuck with his overall argument that demographic differences temper the impact of identification laws on minorities. Tanner also was criticized by Democrats for approving a Georgia voter identification law in 2005 that was struck down by a federal court as discriminatory.

Tanner is the subject of an investigation by the Office of Professional Responsibility into his travel records and trips he approved for a subordinate, officials have said.

The move to shift Tanner out of civil rights could be seen as a move by Mukasey to tamp down criticism of the department's recent record. But Justice also filed a friend-of-the-court brief earlier this week siding with an Indiana identification law, which has been criticized by liberal groups and many voting experts.

Meanwhile, John Cook at Radar Online reports:

Behold, the Bush Administration in chart form: Federal spending on paper shredding has increased more than 600 percent since George W. Bush took office. This chart, generated by usaspending.gov, the U.S. government's brand spanking new database of federal expenditures, shows spending on "contracts for paper shredding services" going back to 2000. Click here for the full, heartbreaking breakdown. In 2000, the feds spent $452,807 to make unpleasant truths go away; by 2006, the "Cheney Effect" had bumped that number up to $2.9 million. And by halfway through 2007, the feds almost matched that number, with $2.7 million and counting. Pretty much says it all.

HELL BENT ON DESTRUCTION Shredding contracts during Bush/Cheney

More Than Half of Amazon Will Be Lost By 2030, Report Warns

The Guardian reports:

Climate change could speed up the large-scale destruction of the Amazon rainforest and bring the "point of no return" much closer than previously thought, conservationists warned today.

Almost 60% of the region's forests could be wiped out or severely damaged by 2030, as a result of climate change and deforestation, according to a report published today by WWF.

The damage could release somewhere between 55.5bn-96.9bn tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere from the Amazon's forests and speed up global warming, according to the report, Amazon's Vicious Cycles: Drought and Fire.

June 1989, Brazil: The forest burns. The Amazon is the largest rainforest in the world and is home to 15% of the world’s known land-based plant species, and nearly 10% of the world’s mammals. It has as many as 300 species of tree in a single hectare. Photograph: Sipa Press/Rex Features

Trends in agriculture and livestock expansion, fire, drought and logging could severely damage 55% of the Amazon rainforest by 2030, the report says. And, in turn, climate change could speed up the process of destruction by reducing rainfall by as much as 10% by 2030, damaging an extra 4% of the forests during that time.

By the end of the century, global warming is likely to reduce rainfall by 20% in eastern Amazonia, pushing up temperatures by more than 2C and causing forest fires, the report said.

September 1988, Rondonia State, Brazil: Newly cleared land. Soya farming is one of the primary drivers of deforestation in the Amazon.
Photograph: Stephen Ferry/Liaison/Getty Images

Destroying almost 60% of tropical rainforest by 2030 would do away with one of the key stabilisers of the global climate system, it warned.

Such damage could have a knock-on effect on rainfall in places such as central America and India, and would also destroy livelihoods for indigenous people and some 80% of habitats for animal species in the region.

The "point of no return", in which extensive degradation of the rainforest occurs and conservation prospects are greatly reduced, is just 15-25 years away - much sooner than some models suggest, the report warns.

Releasing the report at the UN conference in Bali, which aims to begin negotiations on a new international climate change deal, the WWF called for a strategy to reduce emissions from forests and stop deforestation.

Beatrix Richards, the head of forests at WWF-UK, said: "The Amazon is on a knife-edge due to the dual threats of deforestation and climate change.

"Developed countries have a key role to play in throwing a lifeline to forest around the world. At the international negotiations currently underway in Bali governments must agree a process which results in ambitious global emission reduction targets beyond the current phase of Kyoto which ends in 2012.

"Crucially this must include a strategy to reduce emissions from forests and help break the cycle of deforestation."

The report's author, Dan Nepstead, senior scientist at the Woods Hole research centre in Massachusetts, said: "The importance of the Amazon forest for the globe's climate cannot be underplayed.

"It's not only essential for cooling the world's temperature but such a large source of freshwater that it may be enough to influence some of the great ocean currents, and on top of that it's a massive store of carbon."

October 2002, Lower Amazon, Brazil: A raft of logs

September 1988, Rondonia State, Brazil: The rainforest burns as a result of fires started by farmers and ranchers Photograph: Stephen Ferry/Liaison/Getty Images

June 1989, Brazil: Housing owned by a mining company which has been built on rainforest land Photograph: Sipa Press/Rex Features

November 2003, Para State, Brazil: After the loggers have harvested the trees, huge areas are burnt by cattle ranchers and soya producers who move onto the deforested land. Picture shows deforestation near Porto de Moz, where 80% of all timber produced is illegal Photograph: Tom Stoddart/Getty Images

November 2003, Para State, Brazil: Deforestation near Porto de Moz, where 80% of all timber produced is illegal Photograph: Tom Stoddart/Getty Images

April 2004, Rondonia State, Brazil: Smouldering pastureland cleared for cattle Photograph: Michael Nichols/National Geographic/Getty Images

September 2004, Novo Progreso, Brazil: An aerial view of deforestation caused by soybean farmers Photograph: Alberto Cesar/Greenpeace/AP

December 2004, Coari, Brazil: The Urucu oilfield, of state-owned Petrobras compan. Petrobras announced in 2004, that it will begin the construction of a 383 km long oil pipeline between the cities of Coari and Manaus. It took nearly two years, mainly for the opposition of environmental grups, to obtain the planning permission for the construcion of the stretch that will allow the oil to be taken from Urucu to Manaus, and that will require the deforestation of a 50m-wide strip along the way Photograph: Evaristo Sa/AFP/Getty Images

February 2005, Amapu, Brazil: An aerial picture of piles of wood at a sawmill Photograph: Antonio Scorza/AFP

August 2005, Mato Grosso State, Brazil: A fallen tree inside the word 'Crime' as a Greenpeace protest against deforestation Photograph: Daniel Beltra/Greenpeace/AP

The Manchurian Senator

Bob Corker

Local news in Chattanooga reports:

Tennessee Senator Bob Corker raised some eyebrows at a luncheon at the Chattanoogan hotel Tuesday with remarks about President Bush.

Speaking to a crowd of about 500 supporters, led by Hamilton County Mayor Claude Ramsey, Corker spoke about a range of issues, including energy, healthcare, and his experiences during his first year as a Senator.

But his remarks about his experiences with the White House during meetings on the war in Iraq left some in the crowd befuddled.

"I was in the White House a number of times to talk about the issue, and I may rankle some in the room saying this, but I was very underwhelmed with what discussions took place at the White House," Corker said.

A few minutes later during a question and answer session a man in the audience asked him to clarify his statement.

"I was concerned about your statement that you were underwhelmed with what was going on in the White House. Did you mean with him or with his staff?"

In response, Corker said, "Let me say this. George Bush is a very compassionate person. He's a very good person. And a lot of people don't see that in him, and there's many people in this room who might disagree with that.... I just felt a little bit underwhelmed by our discussions, the complexity of them, the depth of them. And yet in spite of that, I do believe that the most recent course of action we've pursued is a good one. I feel like what we've lack in our country is a coherent effort that really links together the Treasury Department, all the various departments of our government in a way that really focuses not just on the hard military side of things, but also the soft effort that it takes to build good will among people. I really think much of that has righted itself, I'm just telling you that at that moment in time I felt very underwhelmed, and I'm just being honest. I've said that to them, and to him, and to others. I kind of in a way wish I hadn't said it today." The last comment was greeted with laughter in the crowd.

Corker is a member of the Foreign Relations Committee. He told the audience that before the end of the year he plans to travel to Pakistan, Afghanistan and India to meet with leaders of those countries.

"George Bush is a very compassionate person. He's a very good person."

"Raymond Shaw is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I've ever known in my life."

For more than six years, people who have met Bush a total of one or two times (and in controlled settings orchestrated by the White House), exit their meetings with him and repeat these same words. One after another. I think it's quite remarkable.

I don't think Corker has been in the same room with Bush (and never alone with him) any more times than I can count on one hand.

What is it that Bush said or did in his meeting with Corker that convinced Corker that Bush is a "very compassionate" and "good person"? For that matter, what has Bush ever done to be singled out as a "very compassionate" and "good person"?

Bush and Bob Corker at Porker's BBQ, Chattanooga, TN, February 22, 2007

Terror crackdown: Passengers forced to answer 53 questions BEFORE they travel

Don't we define freedom by our ability to come and go as we please?

The Daily Mail reports:

Travellers face price hikes and confusion after the Government unveiled plans to take up to 53 pieces of information from anyone entering or leaving Britain.

For every journey, security officials will want credit card details, holiday contact numbers, travel plans, email addresses, car numbers and even any previous missed flights.

The information, taken when a ticket is bought, will be shared among police, customs, immigration and the security services for at least 24 hours before a journey is due to take place.

Anybody about whom the authorities are dubious can be turned away when they arrive at the airport or station with their baggage.

Those with outstanding court fines, such as a speeding penalty, could also be barred from leaving the country, even if they pose no security risk.

The information required under the "e-borders" system was revealed as Gordon Brown announced plans to tighten security at shopping centres, airports and ports.

This could mean additional screening of baggage and passenger searches, with resulting delays for travellers.

The e-borders scheme is expected to cost at least £1.2billion over the next decade.

Travel companies, which will run up a bill of £20million a year compiling the information, will pass on the cost to customers via ticket prices, and the Government is considering introducing its own charge on travellers to recoup costs.

Critics warned of mayhem at ports and airports when the system is introduced, beginning in earnest from mid-2009.

By 2014 every one of the predicted 305million passenger journeys in and out of the UK will be logged, with details stored about the passenger on every trip.

The scheme will apply to every way of leaving the country, whether by ferry, plane, or small aircraft. It would apply to a family having a day out in France by Eurotunnel, and even to a yachtsman leaving British waters during the day and returning to shore.

The measure applies equally to UK residents going abroad and foreigners travelling here.

The information will be stored for as long as the authorities believe it is useful, allowing them to build a complete picture of where a person has been over their lifetime, how they paid and the contact numbers of who they stayed with.

The Home Office, which yesterday signed a contract with U.S. company Raytheon Systems to run the computer system, said e-borders would help to keep terrorists and illegal immigrants out of the country.

For the first time since embarkation controls were scrapped in 1998, they will also have a more accurate picture of who is in the UK at any one time.

The personal information stored about every journey could prove vital in detecting a planned atrocity, officials insist.

But the majority - around 60 per cent - of the journeys logged will be made by Britons, mostly going on family holidays or business trips.

Ministers are also considering the creation of a list of "disruptive" passengers, so that authorities know in advance of any potential troublemaker, such as an abusive drunk.

David Marshall of the Association of British Travel Agents said: "We are staggered at the projected costs.

"It could also act as a disincentive to people wanting to travel, and we are sure that is not what the Government intends."

Phil Booth, of the NO2ID group, warned travellers would pay a "stealth tax" on travel to pay for the scheme.

He added: "This is a huge and utterly ridiculous quantity of personal information. This type of profiling will throw up many distressing errors and problems for innocent people.

"We have already seen planes turned around mid-flight because a passenger's surname matches that of somebody on a watch list.

"When the Government talks about e-borders, it gives the impression it is about keeping bad people out. In fact, it is a huge grab of personal information, and another move towards the database state."

A pilot of the "e-borders" technology, known as Project Semaphore, has already screened 29million passengers.

Immigration Minister Liam Byrne said: "Successful trials of the new system have already led to more than 1,000 criminals being caught and more than 15,000 people of concern being checked out by immigration, customs or the police."

But Nick Clegg, Liberal Democrat Home Affairs spokesman, said: "The Government must not use legitimate fears or dangers to crop vast amounts of private information without proper safeguards."

John Tincey, of the Immigration Service Union, said: "The question is are there going to be the staff to respond to the information that is produced?

"In reality people could be missed. Potential terrorists could be coming through if there are not enough staff to check them."

Shadow Home Secretary David Davis said: "While e-borders could be a useful tool to secure our borders it will not be up and running for at least another seven years.

"And given the Government's woeful record on delivering IT based projects, it may well be over budget and over time.

"In the meantime our borders remain porous. The Government should take practical measures to secure our borders, such as answering our call to establish a dedicated UK border police force."

• Restrictions on hand luggage carried on to passenger planes will be lifted from January.

"Starting with several airports in the New Year, we will work with airport operators to ensure all UK airports are in a position to allow passengers to fly with more than one item of hand luggage," Gordon Brown said.

The single bag rule was introduced in August last year after police said they foiled a plot to blow up U.S.-bound airliners.

It caused chaos at Heathrow Airport and drew complaints from airlines. Restrictions on carrying liquids are expected to continue.

How did we ever get to this point again?





How long before these restrictions are implemented in the U.S.?

A Cautionary Tale

Baghdad's Oasis of Tolerance

Abu Zeinab's barber shop is in the Bab al-Sheikh district of Baghdad, where Sunnis, Shiites, Kurds and Christians live together with unusual ease. (Johan Spanner for The New York Times)

The International Herald Tribune reports:

BAGHDAD: At its oldest spot, a small dusty strip of dirt road near a mosque, the neighborhood of Bab al-Sheik - a maze of snaking streets too narrow for cars - dates from a time, more than a thousand years ago, when Baghdad ruled the Islamic world.

At that time, orchards and palaces of Abbasid princes unfolded in stately splendor not far away.

Ten centuries later, Bab al-Sheik is less grand, but still extraordinary: It has been spared the sectarian killing that has gutted other neighborhoods, and Sunnis, Shiites, Kurds and Christians live together here with unusual ease. It has been battered by bombings around its edges, but the war has been kept from its heart, largely because of its ancient, shared past, bound by trust and generations of intermarriage.

"All of these people grew up here together," said Monther, a suitcase seller. "From the time of our grandfathers, same place, same food, same everything."

Much of today's Baghdad sprang into existence in the 1970s, when oil nationalization drew Iraqis from all over the country to work. The city's population more than tripled over the course of 20 years and new neighborhoods sprawled east and west.

The war and civil conflict have seemed to take a heavier toll in those areas than in some of the older neighborhoods.

No one knows this better that Waleed, a rail-thin Bab al-Sheik native who 10 years ago moved his family to Dora, a newly built middle-class neighborhood in southern Baghdad.

In Dora, residents were from all over. That never seemed to matter until the basic rules of society fell away after the U.S. occupation began. The only bulwark left against complete chaos was trust between families, and in Dora there was not enough.

"We didn't know each other's backgrounds," said Waleed, sitting with Monther in a barbershop in Bab al-Sheik, rain spitting on the street outside. Neither man wanted to be identified by their last names out of concern for their safety.

"Here, he can't lie to me," he said, jabbing a finger in Monther's direction. "He can't say, 'I'm this, I'm that,' because I know it's not true."

In Dora, he said, he did not have those powers of discernment. And he paid the price: His son was shot and killed on Oct. 9, 2006, while trying to get a copy of his high school diploma. Waleed moved his family out of the area immediately. "My first thought was this neighborhood," he said. "My grandfather is from here. I always felt safe here."

So did two reporters, who made six visits to the area over two months. It was safe enough, in fact, to walk through the warren of narrow streets, nod at elderly women sitting at street-level windows, linger in a barbershop and make long visits to Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish homes.

On a recent Friday, an extended Kurdish family relaxed at home. The living room was dark and cool, tucked in an alley away from the afternoon sun. Abu Nawal, the father, recounted how a group of men from the office of the Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr came to a local café, proposing to set up shop in the area.

The café owner pointed to a sign, which stated in dark script that all discussions of politics and religion were prohibited. The men were then asked to leave.

"The guys in the neighborhood said, 'If you try to make an office here, we will explode it,' " said Abu Nawal, a shoemaker whose family has lived in the neighborhood for four generations.

Some time later, Sunni Arab political party members came and were similarly rebuffed. "They wanted to put their foot in this neighborhood, but they couldn't," said Abu Nawal, who asked to be identified by his nickname for the safety of his family.

He said he despised the poisonous mix of religion and politics that has strangled Iraqi society, and he enjoyed cracking wry jokes at politicians' expense. Playing off the names for extremist militias, which call themselves names like the Islamic Army, he refers to his group of friends as the Arak Army, righteous defenders of an anise-flavored alcoholic drink.

The neighborhood has another rare asset: moderate religious men. Sheik Muhammad Wehiab, a 30-year-old Shiite imam whose family has lived in Bab al-Sheik for seven generations, was jailed for 14 months under Saddam Hussein, a biographical fact that should have opened doors for him in the new Shiite-dominated power hierarchy. But his moderate views were unpopular in elite circles and he has remained in the neighborhood.

He feels connected. So much so that while talking on the phone one night this autumn, he walked out into the tiny alley outside his door, lay down and watched the stars in the night sky.

"I think Maliki right now is envying me," Wehiab said to himself. "No bodyguards. Just free. This is the blessing."

He has some radical views. One of them is that Muslims have behaved terribly toward one another in the war here and have given Islam a bad name in using it to gain power. "I don't blame those guys who drew the cartoons," Wehiab said, referring to the Danish caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad that sparked riots and protests across the Islamic world last year.

"Muslims are the ones to be blamed," he said, sitting in an armchair in his quiet living room. "They have given them this picture." An ice-cream seller walked past his window, hawking in a loud voice.

Wehiab's friend, a Sunni cleric, holds a similar view. "The greatest jihad is the jihad of yourself," said the cleric, whose smooth voice echoes through the neighborhood as he calls worshipers to prayer every day at Qailani Mosque, the neighborhood's anchor.

The cleric, who asked that his name not be published out of concern for his safety, because of the high profile of the mosque, lovingly ticks off qualities of the 12th-century Sufi sheik Abdel Qadr Qailani, who gave the mosque its name: Intellectual. Scholar. Moral teacher.

But moderate religion is not drawing an audience on a national scale, and the mosque, one of Baghdad's most important Sunni institutions, has fallen on hard times.

Donations are down. Its long-running soup kitchen serves one meal a day instead of three. Sufi clerics cannot perform their rituals. A bomb sheared off part of a minaret in February.

"Please, please, write as much as you can that we don't want war," the cleric said.

We like to think that ethnic cleansing and the wholesale slaughter of innocent civilians that has taken place in lands exotic and far away to Americans, such as Iraq, the Balkans, and Rwanda, could never happen here. But it can, and more easily than we'd like to think.

No Patriot, He

Ex-President George H.W. Bush, tries to have it all ways.



Ever since Brent Scowcroft wrote an op-ed in the WSJ recommending that Bush the Lesser not attack Iraq, political pundits and journalists have been putting forth that it was the elder Bush's way to broadcast that he was opposed to it and to try to talk his son out of taking the nation to war in Iraq.

Not so.

Pundits seemed to base their belief about the elder Bush's opposition to his son's plans on the fact that Scowcroft was, after all, the elder Bush's national security adviser and one of his closest friends for decades, as well as on the elder Bush's own defense of his controversial decision not to attack Baghdad and topple Saddam in 1991:

"Trying to eliminate Saddam ... would have incurred incalculable human and political costs ... Had we gone the invasion route, the United States could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land"

To be fair to the pundits and journalists, Bush 41 went to great lengths to create the impression that he was conflicted, at the least, about his son's plans. In a book that was published in the spring of 2004 (The Bushes: Portrait of a Dynasty), the authors cite an interview they had in the summer of 2002 with the elder Bush's sister. She said her brother had expressed his "anguish" about the administration's preparations for war:

"But do they have an exit strategy?" the former President is quoted as worrying.

"Although he never went public with them," the authors assert, "the President's own father shared many of [the] concerns" of Brent Scowcroft, his national security adviser and a leading war opponent.

Yet close friends and associates said the older Bush, while fiercely proud and protective of his son, nevertheless harbors concerns about the war and its aftermath.

The New York Daily News reported:

"'Although he never went public with them,' the authors assert, 'the President's own father shared many of [the] concerns' of Brent Scowcroft, his national security adviser and a leading war opponent. Close friends and associates said the older Bush, while fiercely proud and protective of his son, nevertheless harbors concerns about the war and its aftermath. These sources told The News that aside from his 'exit-strategy' fears of a prolonged, bloody conflict, the ex-President is troubled that the war fractured the international coalition he painstakingly assembled to expel deposed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein from Kuwait in 1991. One close associate said the older Bush feels Vice President Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld may have pushed President Bush too hard for a preemptive strike. One well-placed Bush colleague said the older Bush recently acknowledged, 'I'm having trouble with my boy,' referring to Iraq."

At the time, a top Bush aide denied the allegations in the Schweizer book to the NY Daily News, saying that Bush the elder supported his son on the war in Iraq without reservations "from the very first day." The book is hardly a hit piece. The authors, Peter and Rochelle Schweitzer, were given unprecedented access to and enjoyed the cooperation of the Bush family and their friends; the history of the family is presented in a positive light.

Pundits and journalists embraced the denied version, ignoring what the elder Bush and his closest aides were saying publicly (that he supported his son's decision), even during the campaign for the 2004 election when, (Emotional Elder Bush Attacks Son's Critics):

An emotional former President George H.W. Bush Tuesday defended his son's Iraq war and lashed out at White House critics.

It is "deeply offensive and contemptible" to hear "elites and intellectuals on the campaign trail" dismiss progress in Iraq since last year's overthrow of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, the elder Bush said in a speech to the National Petrochemical and Refiners Association annual convention.

"There is something ignorant in the way they dismiss the overthrow of a brutal dictator and the sowing of the seeds of basic human freedom in that troubled part of the world," he said.

The former president appeared to fight back tears as he complained about media coverage of the younger Bush that he called "something short of fair and balanced."

"It hurts an awful lot more when it's your son that is being criticized than when they used to get all over my case," said Bush, who has often complained about media coverage of both Bush presidencies.

Iraq has been torn by violence and instability since a U.S.-led invasion last year toppled Saddam in the hunt for his alleged weapons of mass destruction. No such weapons have been found but the Bush administration says progress toward a stable democracy is being made.

The former president, who waged the first Gulf War against Saddam in 1991, described progress in Iraq as "a miracle."

"Iraq is moving forward in hope and not sliding back into despair and terrorism," he said.

I never bought the 'kinder, gentler' George H.W. Bush (not when he was in office or after he was ousted in the 1992 election), nor that he was ever not completely on board with his son's aggression on Iraq. Just as I've never bought that Hillary Clinton was deceived by Bush and Cheney before voting to authorize the war in Iraq. She is a careful and deliberate taskmaster, married to a former president who was getting daily briefings by the CIA. I do not believe that she didn't discuss the situation thoroughly with her husband (who is also her chief advisor) before casting the most important vote of her political career.

In the years since this war has gone south and has proven to be the worst mistake probably ever undertaken by an American president, the elder Bush has encouraged the pundits to believe he wasn't for the war by insinuating that he's "a father first, who loves and supports his son," hence, "don't expect (as you would from former presidents) any sense of patriotism, duty and loyalty first to the country and Constitution" from him. The media laid off former President Bush, as well as his BBF ('Best Friend Forever'), former President Clinton.



So again, back declaring his unabashed love for his son and "his president," ABC News reports:

Former president George H.W. Bush forcefully defended his son's handling of the Iraq war Thursday, saying critics of the current president have forgotten the "extraordinary brutality" of deposed Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.

"Do they want to bring back Saddam Hussein, these critics?" the elder Bush told USA TODAY in a rare interview. "Do they want to go back to the status quo ante? I don't know what they are talking about here. Do they think life would be better in the Middle East if Saddam were still there?"

Bush, 83, was interviewed in a replica of the White House Situation Room at his remodeled presidential library. The Bush Presidential Library and Museum, on the grounds of Texas A&M, is reopening Saturday after an $8.3 million renovation. The added features include the Situation Room and an interactive computer program that allows visitors to consider options Bush weighed during the Gulf War.

In one key decision, Bush rejected calls to topple Saddam, instead declaring the war over after Iraqi forces withdrew from Kuwait. The program calls the idea of going to Baghdad "very tempting" but says it "would have been a disastrous decision," splintering the international coalition and leaving U.S. and possibly British troops on their own in Iraq.

"It's not second-guessed quite so much today, but it was second-guessed" at the time, Bush said of his judgment that combat should end. "But the coalition was formed with my word to the various international leaders, 'The objective is to kick Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait,' " not some further-reaching goal.

Bush dismissed a question about whether his son should have used similar reasoning before invading Iraq in 2003. Saddam fled into hiding, was captured and executed after a trial. About 165,000 U.S. troops remain deployed there during the war's fifth year.

Other analysts have made the comparison, however. "Historians, I believe, will say he made a wise judgment on what could be expected if we went into Iraq," presidential historian Robert Dallek says. "By contrast, Bush 43 has found his presidency ruined, one might say, by this Iraq war."

The elder Bush reacted testily when asked about criticism of his son. "I don't reminisce with … my friends like you about what my son does or doesn't do," Bush said. But "I think we forget even today the extraordinary brutality of Saddam Hussein."

Including his plans to assassinate the elder Bush?

"Well, that didn't endear him to me at all," he said.

Reporters are still fixated on this story, debunked years ago and written about by Seymour Hersh in the November 1, 1993 edition of the New Yorker, "A Case Not Closed":

“A senior White House official recently told me that one of the seemingly most persuasive elements of the report had been overstated and was essentially incorrect. And none of the Clinton Administration officials I interviewed over a ten-week period this summer claimed that there was any empirical evidence -- a “smoking gun” -- directly linking Saddam or any of his senior advisers to the alleged assassination attempt. . . ."

This did not stop President Bill Clinton from using the story of an attempt on ex-President Bush's life as an opportunity to whittle down Saddam Hussein's operations:

On Saturday, June 26, 1993, twenty-three Tomahawk guided missiles, each loaded with a thousand pounds of high explosives, were fired from American Navy warships in the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea at the headquarters complex of the Mukhabarat, the Iraqi intelligence service, in downtown Baghdad....

Three of the million-dollar missiles missed their target and landed on nearby homes, killing eight civilians, including Layla al-Attar, one of Iraq’s most gifted artists. The death toll was considered acceptable by the White House; after all, scores of civilians had been killed in the Reagan Administration’s F-111 bombing attack on Muammar Qaddafi’s house-and-office complex in Tripoli Libya, in 1986....

We responded with an over-the-top reaction to a, basically, unfounded claim.

The former president rarely agrees to interviews, although he appeared on Fox News Sunday this week and taped an interview with C-SPAN Thursday to talk about his revamped library. Questions like those raised by USA TODAY are one reason he generally eschews the press, he said.

"You're here to talk about the library," he said, not about the current president. "He has my full, unequivocal support. I feel about him great respect for what he's doing and tries to do, and I think much of the criticism is grossly unfair. … That's a father caring about his son and his president."

Say what you will about Jimmy Carter, he's got the courage of his convictions (Jimmy Carter Slams Iraq War, Sees Gitmo Trials As An 'Impetus' For Terrorism).