Liberal Christians
Saturday, December 02, 2006
Widespread Ignorance
By Sam Harris
President Bush has endorsed the pseudo-scientific notion of "intelligent design" (ID) and declared it to be a legitimate alternative to the theory of evolution. This is not surprising, as he has always maintained that "the jury is still out" on the question of evolution.
But the jury is not out -- indeed it was well in before President Bush was even born -- and anyone familiar with modern biology knows that ID is nothing more than a program of political and religious advocacy masquerading as science.
It is for this reason that the scientific community has been divided on just how (or whether) to dignify the spurious claims of ID "theorists" with a response. While understandable, I believe that such scruples are now misplaced. The Trojan Horse has passed the innermost gates of the city, and scary religious imbeciles are now spilling out.
According to several recent polls, 22 percent of Americans are certain that Jesus will return to earth sometime in the next fifty years. Another 22 percent believe that he will probably do so. This is likely the same 44 percent who go to church once a week or more, who believe that God literally promised the land of Israel to the Jews, and who want to stop teaching our children about the biological fact of evolution.
As the President is well aware, believers of this sort constitute the most cohesive and motivated segment of the American electorate. Consequently, their views and prejudices now influence almost every decision of national importance.
Political liberals seem to have drawn the wrong lesson from these developments and are now thumbing scripture, wondering how best to ingratiate themselves to the legions of men and women in our country who vote mainly on the basis of religious dogma.
More than 50 percent of Americans have a "negative" or "highly negative" view of people who do not believe in God; 70 percent think it important for presidential candidates to be "strongly religious." Because it is taboo to criticize a person's religious beliefs, political debate over questions of public policy (stem-cell research, the ethics of assisted suicide and euthanasia, obscenity and free speech, gay marriage, etc.) generally gets framed in terms appropriate to a theocracy. Unreason is now ascendant in the United States -- in our schools, in our courts, and in each branch of the federal government. Only 28 percent of Americans believe in evolution; 68 percent believe in Satan. Ignorance in this degree, concentrated in both the head and belly of a lumbering superpower, is now a problem for the entire world.
It is time that scientists and other public intellectuals observed that the contest between faith and reason is zero-sum. There is no question but that nominally religious scientists like Francis Collins and Kenneth R. Miller are doing lasting harm to our discourse by the accommodations they have made to religious irrationality. Likewise, Stephen Jay Gould's notion of "non-overlapping magisteria" served only the religious dogmatists who realize, quite rightly, that there is only one magisterium.
Whether a person is religious or secular, there is nothing more sacred than the facts. Either Jesus was born of a virgin, or he wasn't; either there is a God who despises homosexuals, or there isn't. It is time that sane human beings agreed on the standards of evidence necessary to substantiate truth-claims of this sort. The issue is not, as ID advocates allege, whether science can "rule out" the existence of the biblical God.
There are an infinite number of ludicrous ideas that science could not "rule out," but which no sensible person would entertain. The issue is whether there is any good reason to believe the sorts of things that religious dogmatists believe -- that God exists and takes an interest in the affairs of human beings; that the soul enters the zygote at the moment of conception (and, therefore, that blastocysts are the moral equivalents of persons); etc. There simply is no good reason to believe such things, and scientists should stop hiding their light under a bushel and make this emphatically obvious to everyone.
Imagine President Bush addressing the National Prayer Breakfast in these terms: "Behind all of life and all history there is a dedication and a purpose, set by the hand of a just and faithful Zeus." Imagine his speech to Congress containing the sentence "Freedom and fear, justice and cruelty have always been at war, and we know that Apollo is not neutral between them."
Clearly, the commonplaces of language conceal the vacuity and strangeness of many of our beliefs. Our president regularly speaks in phrases appropriate to the fourteenth century, and no one seems inclined to find out what words like "God" and "crusade" and "wonder-working power" mean to him. Not only do we still eat the offal of the ancient world; we are positively smug about it. Garry Wills has noted that the Bush White House "is currently honeycombed with prayer groups and Bible study cells, like a whited monastery." This should trouble us as much as it troubles the fanatics of the Muslim world.
The only thing that permits human beings to collaborate with one another in a truly open-ended way is their willingness to have their beliefs modified by new facts. Only openness to evidence and argument will secure a common world for us. Nothing guarantees that reasonable people will agree about everything, of course, but the unreasonable are certain to be divided by their dogmas. It is time we recognized that this spirit of mutual inquiry, which is the foundation of all real science, is the very antithesis of religious faith.
America's Taliban
Statement of Faith
The College is, and shall always remain, a Christian institution dedicated to bringing honor and glory to the Lord Jesus Christ in all of its activities. Each Trustee, officer, faculty member and student of the College, as well as such other employees and agents of the College as may be specified by resolution of the Board of Trustees, shall fully and enthusiastically subscribe to the following Statement of Faith:
A. There is one God, eternally existent in three Persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
B. God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship Him in Spirit and in truth.
C. Jesus Christ, born of a virgin, is God come in the flesh.
D. The Bible in its entirety (all 66 books of the Old and New Testaments) is the inspired word of God, inerrant in its original autographs, and the only infallible and sufficient authority for faith and Christian living.
E. Man is by nature sinful and is inherently in need of salvation, which is exclusively found by faith alone in Jesus Christ and His shed blood.
F. Christ's death provides substitutionary atonement for our sins.
G. Personal salvation comes to mankind by grace through faith.
H. Jesus Christ literally rose bodily from the dead.
I. Jesus Christ literally will come to earth again in the Second Advent.
J. Satan exists as a personal, malevolent being who acts as tempter and accuser, for whom Hell, the place of eternal punishment, was prepared, where all who die outside of Christ shall be confined in conscious torment for eternity.
Kitty the Christian
Florida's Katherine Harris Continues Her Senate Race, Shedding Staff Along the Way
By Libby Copeland
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, October 31, 2006; C01
BARTOW, Fla.
Katherine Harris, who is trying to become a U.S. senator, says she is writing a tell-all about the many people who have wronged her. This includes, but is not necessarily limited to: the Republican leaders who didn't want her to run, the press that has covered her troubled campaign, and the many staffers who have quit her employ, whom she accuses of colluding with her opponent.
She is vague about what, precisely, makes her a victim, but she says she has it all documented.
"I've been writing it all year," she says in that kittenish voice. She often smiles and cocks her head as if she's letting you in on a secret. "It's going to be a great book."
If it is, it may be one of very few things that go well for the two-term Republican congresswoman. Once beloved by the Republican leadership for her role in overseeing the 2000 recount that delivered the presidency to George Bush, Harris was snubbed by those old friends before the primary. Republican chieftains, considering her too polarizing to win a statewide race, tried to recruit others, and Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R) said publicly that she could not win. Fundraising has been poor. She has come under scrutiny for her role in a bribery scandal. She has caught flak for a series of bizarre statements, including a comment in August: "If you're not electing Christians, then in essence you are going to legislate sin."
The Democrat she is challenging, Sen. Bill Nelson, was once considered highly vulnerable. Nowadays, according to recent polls, Harris is down by 26 or 35 points, approaching political rigor mortis.
"The only way Bill Nelson could lose this," says Darryl Paulson, a political scientist (and Republican) at the University of South Florida, "is if he got himself in a drug-induced stupor and ran naked down the main street of his home town."
"They can make the polls say whatever they want," Harris says. She says pollsters sometimes call her house and then hang up " 'cause we're not answering them the way they like."
The way Harris sees it, a vast left- and right-wing conspiracy, encompassing both the "liberal media" and the Republican "elite," is attempting to keep her out of the Senate. She says anyone could see the way the panel of questioners coddled Nelson at their debate last week. Her voice gets all high and mocking as she imitates them.
" Ooooh, Senator Nelson," she says. "I mean, come on."
Perhaps the worst blow to Harris's campaign has been the stories that have emerged from former staffers. They describe a Jekyll-and-Hyde candidate who can be seductively charming at one moment and pitch a temper tantrum the next, throwing a cellphone at a wall or a sheaf of papers at a campaign manager. Former chief adviser Ed Rollins, who managed Ronald Reagan's reelection to the White House in 1984, said working for Harris was like "being in insanity camp." He likened her staff to dogs that have been kicked.
Before he became the first of three campaign managers to quit, Jim Dornan programmed his cellphone to play the theme song from "The Exorcist" when Harris called.
In a recent campaign visit to Bartow, her home town in central Florida, there is little hint of the Hyde side. The 49-year-old Harris beams, dispensing hugs and telling stories about her late "daddy," the wealthy owner of a local bank chain. She is tiny and wears a fitted suit jacket the color of key lime pie. For old times' sake, she visits a livestock arena where her cousins used to show their cows. She shrieks with joy upon seeing an old friend, Bill Braswell.
"Billy and I grew up together," she says. They reminisce about an old haunt and an old boyfriend of hers. "That was, like, the first place Gary and I ever kissed," she tells him.
Here in Bartow, Harris appears to be adored. She is remembered for her days in 4-H, for her stint as Miss Polk Agriculture at age 16, and for her competitive tennis game.
"Daddy used to say not to come home if I didn't win my tennis matches [against] boys," she tells Braswell.
Nelson may have endorsements from 22 papers, including all the major dailies in the state, but Harris has an endorsement from a small collection of community newspapers (total circulation: 8,307) here in Polk, her home county. The endorsement was written by the papers' publisher, S.L. Frisbie IV, who has known Harris since she was a Girl Scout.
"Clearly she has difficulty maintaining a staff," Frisbie says. "I haven't the slightest idea why. . . . She is a charming person."
During an interview in the livestock arena, amid the ghosts of her cousins' cows, Harris talks about two of her greatest passions: art and Israel. She has made several trips to Israel, and it was on the first, in 1992, that her camera broke and she was forced to sketch her way across the country. These days, during meetings on Capitol Hill, she sometimes sketches when she's taking notes. She says she has drawn Alan Greenspan and Donald Rumsfeld.
After Harris's quote about the importance of electing Christians was published in a Baptist publication, her campaign went into damage control, issuing a press release discussing Harris's love for Israel and explaining that while she was speaking to a Christian audience, she really meant that "people of faith" should be involved in government.
Harris does love talking about Israel. She's proud that Israelis sometimes assume she's one of them and talk to her in Hebrew. She is a Christian but has called herself a "wannabe" Jew. During the bitterly contested recount in 2000, which she oversaw as Florida's secretary of state, she compared herself to the Biblical character Queen Esther, who risked her life to save the Jews.
She says that when her husband of 10 years, wealthy Swedish businessman Anders Ebbeson, asked her to marry him, she first extracted a promise that they could live in the Holy Land one day. She doesn't know why she's always been so fascinated by the country.
"I can remember riding my bike to piano lessons and thinking about Israel," she says. "I thought I was adopted for a while."
* * *
Harris's public spats with Republican leaders and her own former staffers -- shorn of the niceties of political etiquette that typically surround such things -- have played out in the Florida newspapers like the autopsy of a political campaign. The skin is peeled back and everyone can see inside.
Several of her former staffers say they would have kept silent about goings-on in the Harris campaign if Harris herself had not publicly criticized them after they left, accusing them of being bad at their jobs, of putting "knives in my back" and of working with the Nelson campaign. They describe her as a micromanager, unable to trust her staff, prone to tears and rages over tiny things. They say she would rewrite speeches and press releases over and over. She would get upset if an aide hadn't brought her the correct coffee order from Starbucks. Dornan, the former campaign manager, says Harris was so concerned that only the best photographs of her went up on the campaign Web site that she insisted on going through every picture.
"It would be weeks and weeks and weeks before we could put anything up on the Web site," he says.
Dornan says he once infuriated Harris right before an event by setting it up so she could make a grand entrance. Instead, she wanted to greet supporters at the door as they arrived.
"She just goes completely ballistic," Dornan recalls. He says she yelled at him for 10 minutes and accused him of ruining her life. "I literally held the phone away from my ear, and everybody within a six-foot circle of me could hear her screaming."
Harris's former staffers say they worried about her health, especially after the death of her father earlier this year and the news that she was implicated in a bribery scandal with a federal contractor named Mitchell Wade, who had pleaded guilty to bribing former congressman Duke Cunningham (R-Calif.). (Wade admitted funneling $32,000 in illegal donations to Harris, but Harris has said she didn't realize the contributions were illegal and ultimately gave the money to charity.)
They worried about her clothes -- suit jackets and sweaters that were too tight, skirts that were too short. Rollins says an aide was dispatched to take her shopping for more senatorial apparel.
They worried about what one former field coordinator called her sense of "religious mission." Two former staffers -- Rollins and another onetime campaign manager, Jamie Miller -- have said Harris told them that God wanted her to be a senator. Rollins adds, "She told me that she thought she could be the first woman president."
Sitting in the livestock arena, Harris laughs at the notion she'd ever want to be president. In the past she told the Palm Beach Post that she was complimentary of those staffers who performed well, but had problems with those who would "try to undermine" her. Now, she sidesteps the question of why she had problems with staff.
"It's going to be easily explained in my book," she says. "We have a great staff now."
The Harris campaign has suffered a series of embarrassing gaffes. According to one Florida paper, her Web site listed endorsements from people who hadn't endorsed her. According to another paper, her campaign organized a rally in an airport hangar, but none of the nine officials named on her flier showed up.
In the spring, Harris announced on television she was putting $10 million of her inheritance from her father into the race. Later, she said it turned out the inheritance would not be available, so she'd put in her own money. Thus far, she has put in approximately $3.2 million, which is, she says, "everything that I have liquid."
Meanwhile, according to a financial disclosure report, her campaign has less than $1 million left. Nelson's campaign has nearly $7 million. Nelson has run seven ads since the primaries in September. Harris has aired only one and it started yesterday, according to campaign spokeswoman Jennifer Marks.
Harris turns stony when she's asked what will happen if she doesn't win.
"Haven't even considered it," she says in a tone that suggests a follow-up question would be foolhardy.
Later in the evening, while talking about her love for Queen Esther, she runs to the passenger seat of her SUV and seizes a Bible.
"I'll give you one verse," she says. "On the day that the enemies of the Jews had hoped to overpower them, the opposite occurred, in that the Jews themselves overpowered those who hated them."
What does that have to do with this race?
"November 7th," she replies.
Staff researcher Meg Smith and research director Lucy Shackelford contributed to this report.
Friday, December 01, 2006
Robert Fisk: Like Hitler and Brezhnev, Bush is in denial
Published: 01 December 2006
More than half a million deaths, an army trapped in the largest military debacle since Vietnam, a Middle East policy already buried in the sands of Mesopotamia - and still George W Bush is in denial. How does he do it? How does he persuade himself - as he apparently did in Amman yesterday - that the United States will stay in Iraq "until the job is complete"? The "job" - Washington's project to reshape the Middle East in its own and Israel's image - is long dead, its very neoconservative originators disavowing their hopeless political aims and blaming Bush, along with the Iraqis of course, for their disaster.
History's "deniers" are many - and all subject to the same folly: faced with overwhelming evidence of catastrophe, they take refuge in fantasy, dismissing evidence of collapse as a symptom of some short-term setback, clinging to the idea that as long as their generals promise victory - or because they have themselves so often promised victory - that fate will be kind. George W Bush - or Lord Blair of Kut al-Amara for that matter - need not feel alone. The Middle East has produced these fantasists by the bucketful over past decades.
In 1967, Egyptian president Gamel Abdul Nasser insisted his country was winning the Six Day War hours after the Israelis had destroyed the entire Egyptian air force on the ground. President Carter was extolling the Shah's Iran as "an island of stability in the region" only days before Ayatollah Khomeini's Islamic revolution brought down his regime. President Leonid Brezhnev declared a Soviet victory in Afghanistan when Russian troops were being driven from their fire bases in Nangahar and Kandahar provinces by Osama bin Laden and his fighters.
And was it not Saddam Hussein who promised the "mother of all battles" for Kuwait before the great Iraqi retreat in 1991? And was it not Saddam again who predicted a US defeat in the sands of Iraq in 2003? Saddam's loyal acolyte, Mohamed el-Sahaf, would fantasise about the number of American soldiers who would die in the desert; George W Bush let it be known that he sometimes slipped out of White House staff meetings to watch Sahaf's preposterous performance and laugh at the fantasies of Iraq's minister of information.
So who is laughing at Bush now? Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, almost as loyal a retainer to Bush as Sahaf was to Saddam, receives the same false praise from the American president that Nasser and Brezhnev once lavished upon their generals. "I appreciate the courage you show during these difficult times as you lead your country," Bush tells Maliki. "He's the right guy for Iraq," he tells us. And the Iraqi Prime Minister who hides in the US-fortified "Green Zone" - was ever a crusader fortress so aptly named? - announces that "there is no problem". Power must be more quickly transferred to Maliki, we were informed yesterday. Why? Because that will save Iraq? Or because this will allow America to claim, as it did when it decided to allow the South Vietnamese army to fight on its own against Hanoi, that Washington is not to blame for the debacle that follows? "One of his frustrations with me is that he believes that we've been slow about giving him the tools necessary to protect the Iraqi people." Or so Bush says. "He doesn't have the capacity to respond. So we want to accelerate that capacity." But how can Maliki have any "capacity" at all when he rules only a few square miles of central Baghdad and a clutch of rotting ex-Baathist palaces?
About the only truthful statement uttered in Amman yesterday was Bush's remark that "there's a lot of speculation that these reports in Washington mean there's going to be some kind of graceful exit out of Iraq [but] this business about a graceful exit just simply has no realism to it at all." Indeed, it has not. There can be no graceful exit from Iraq, only a terrifying, bloody collapse of military power. The withdrawal of Shia ministers from Maliki's cabinet mirror the withdrawal of Shia ministers from another American-supported administration in Beirut - where the Lebanese fear an equally appalling conflict over which Washington has, in reality, no military or political control.Bush even appeared oblivious of the current sectarian map of Iraq. "The Prime Minister made clear that splitting his country into parts, as some have suggested, is not what the Iraqi people want, and that any partition of Iraq would only lead to an increase in sectarian violence," he said. "I agree." But Iraq is already "split into parts". The fracture of Iraq is virtually complete, its chasms sucking in corpses at the rate of up to a thousand a day.
Even Hitler must chuckle at this bloodbath, he who claimed in April 1945 that Germany would still win the Second World War, boasting that his enemy, Roosevelt, had died - much as Bush boasted of Zarqawi's killing - while demanding to know when General Wenck's mythical army would rescue the people of Berlin. How many "Wencks" are going to be summoned from the 82nd Airborne or the Marine Corps to save Bush from Iraq in the coming weeks? No, Bush is not Hitler. Like Blair, he once thought he was Winston Churchill, a man who never - ever - lied to his people about Britain's defeats in war. But fantasy knows no bounds.
Science Friday: Thank Heaven For Baby Universes
by DarkSyde
Fri Dec 01, 2006 at 03:17:32 AM PST
Just the name sounds monstrous: Black-hole. The related mathematics and terminology behind concepts like a Schwarzchild Radius, the Kerr Solution, or an Einstein-Rosen Bridge, are usually enough to spook all but the most determined layperson into full intellectual retreat. But the basics of a black-hole don't require advanced math or counter-intuitive physics to appreciate. The fundamental force that creates them is one we all know well. Even more exciting, in the near future, black holes may be transformed by technology from distant, inaccessible objects embedded deep in space and time, to laboratory curiosities right here on earth, and some say we'll be able to use them to make baby universes as well!
NPR -- Is this a joke? No, say a bunch of physicists. ... One day it may be possible to go into a laboratory on Earth, create a "seed" -- a device that could grow into a universe -- and then there would have to be a way to get that seed, on command, to safely expand into a separate, infinite, unexplorable but very real alternate universe.
A black-hole is any physical object which has been compressed into a volume so small, that the escape velocity from its surface exceeds the speed of light. If the compressed version is a sphere, then for any mass, there will exist a defined radius which would render it a black hole. For an object as massive as the earth, this radius works out to just under half an inch. For the sun, it would be around two miles. In physics, this critical dimension is known as the Schwazchild Radius. You can calculate the SR for any mass -- including your own body -- here.
A round fired from a cannon on the surface of earth eventually falls back, unless it is fired with enough velocity to overcome earth's gravity. The more massive the planet, the higher the gravity, and the greater the escape velocity will be. Black holes are so dense and massive that the escape velocity exceeds the speed of light, even photons fall back, just like the cannon ball on the right. Illustration by Karen Wehrstein
From outside, such an object would appear perfectly black, because no light can escape, and that's why it's called a black-hole. Of course, if all light is trapped, inside, it could be lit up brighter than a supernova.
One way black holes can form, we think, is when a massive star convulses and dies leaving behind a super dense core that implodes. Large stars burn out fast. Under the right conditions, a typical large galaxy can produce billions of blue-white super-giant stars in just a few million years, ultimately leaving huge numbers of steller mass black holes behind. Since there are more stars in the center of the galaxy, it's not surprising that that's where left over stellar mass black holes might merge to form a single, successively larger, supermassive black hole. Although there is some debate as to which came first: the super-massive black hole or the galaxy.
Left: Lobes of hot matter stretching for tens of thousands of light-years from the core of the elliptical galaxy NGC 4261, shown in radio wavelengths. Right: The core of NGC 4261 is this accretion disk several hundred light years in diameter swirling around what is thought to be a titanic black hole.
But there is growing speculation that tiny, submicroscopic black holes may exist, or may have once existed. Even more bizarre, some astronomers wonder if our entire universe could have grown from such an exotic seed, weighing in at only a few kilograms!
Cosmologists now theorize that the total energy of our entire universe might be zero, after we add up the positive contributions from matter and dark energy to the negative contribution of gravity. That means if we create just the right conditions in the lab, we can create a completely new universe basically out of nothing. It's simply a matter of balancing the cosmic books!
Incredibly, we may be able to produce the black holes soon. Starting around 2008, the Large Hadron Collider is expected to be up and running, and it might be able to create very, very tiny black holes. It's unclear to say the least how to impregnate a mini-black hole with this evolving negative and positive energy tug of war. But who knows, one day, in the not too distant future, we may be able to create baby universes. And thank heaven for little universes, for little universes get bigger every day ...
Bush, Maliki and That Memo
President Bush’s news conference yesterday with Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki of Iraq had an even greater than usual sense of unreality about it, with Mr. Bush insisting that Mr. Maliki is “the right guy for Iraq” and that American troops will stay “until the job is complete,” while Mr. Maliki asserted that his country is a democracy and he is not a captive of Shiite militias.
But the disconnect seemed even more stunning once you realized that Mr. Bush’s national security adviser had sent him a memorandum three weeks ago describing how Iraq was being pulled apart by sectarian hatreds and warning that Mr. Maliki was either “ignorant of what is going on” or unwilling or unable to stop it.
The memo, which was published by The Times this week, at least answers the question of whether Mr. Bush is being told what’s going on in Iraq. In it, his national security adviser, Stephen Hadley, describes how Mr. Maliki’s Shiite-dominated government has deprived Sunnis of basic services, blocked military actions against Shiite targets and purged Iraq’s most effective military commanders to ensure Shiite dominance. The memo also warns that Mr. Maliki may not have “the political or security capabilities” to free himself from his narrow militia-dominated political base.
But the president’s performance this week — his refusal to impose any deadlines on Mr. Maliki to start reconciliation talks and break with the militias, and his refusal to give the Pentagon a deadline to stand up an effective Iraqi Army — tells us once again that Mr. Bush does not listen.
That does not bode well for James Baker and the Iraq Study Group, which, according to reports, is likely to call for some pullback of American combat troops along with more aggressive regional diplomacy. Yesterday, Mr. Bush seemed eager to preempt that advice, brushing off suggestions that he talk directly to Iran and insisting that there would be no “graceful exit” from Iraq.
Mr. Bush’s lack of curiosity was well known even before he became president, but as time has gone on and bad news has mounted, that disinterested quality has turned into a stubborn refusal to hear bad news. The country simply cannot afford it any longer. Three years of having Mr. Bush trust only his gut has plunged Iraq into bloody chaos and done untold damage to America. There needs to be an urgent change in policy.
Mr. Hadley’s memo actually provides a clue to how Mr. Bush has managed to avoid facing hard facts. Despite the horrific situation it describes, the policy recommendations fail to convey any strong sense of urgency and seem to shrug off American responsibility for what has gone wrong. Either the president’s security adviser was afraid to be as blunt as the situation requires or he, too, has managed to convince himself that the disaster is really not all that disastrous.
The president’s advisers need to tell him all the harsh truths about Iraq in the vivid terms they require; they need to tell him how little time he has left to act. This administration has been orchestrating a foreign policy disaster of epic proportions, and history will remember both that the president failed to hear the warning bells and that many others failed to ring them loudly enough.
Powell says U.S. should talk to Iran
LONDON (Reuters) - Former U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell does not believe the United States will attack Iran and says Washington should speak to Tehran and Syria.
Powell, who said Iraq was in a civil war on Wednesday, was speaking to the Leaders in London Business Forum on Thursday.
Answering a question from Reuters, Powell said: "Iran is a regional power and it will have to be dealt with. We should find ways to speak to them and also speak to the Syrians."
Both Iran and Syria have been accused by the U.S. government of sponsoring terrorism and fomenting violence in Iraq. Iran has also been accused of trying to build nuclear weapons. Both countries deny the accusations.
"I hope that over time Iran will play a responsible part in the region," he said. "As you know Iran is doing very well now, they have no particular pressure on their nuclear program."
He said he could not speak for the administration of President Bush but he could not see any circumstances which would cause a military conflict between the United States and Iran.
"We all agree that it's not a good thing for Iran to develop their nuclear program if it could develop nuclear weapons, but the United States is not going to attack Iran," he said.
Powell said the Bush administration would have to work with the United Nations and Russia to keep Iran from evolving its nuclear program beyond power generation.
The Iraq Study Group, a commission of five U.S. Democrats and Republicans, is set to release a report on December 6 which is expected to call for regional talks as the way forward in Iraq, including involvement by Syria and Iran.
Thursday, November 30, 2006
Interview with Jimmy Carter
CENK: Welcome back to The Young Turks on Air America Radio. Now joining us, the 39th President of the United States of America, Jimmy Carter. President Carter, welcome to The Young Turks.
CARTER: Thank you very much.
BEN: Lets first start with the discussion you had with Wolf Blitzer at CNN. Custom has dictated for sometime now that Presidents don't criticize other Presidents. But you called Iraq one of the worst blunders any President has ever made. First of all I would like you to tell us why it ranks that highly and also is it really time to put what I call a non-sensical custom to bed.
CARTER: Well, you know, it has been a disaster. I think the administration and the present administration and even the neo-cons who orchestrated the invasion of Iraq, all look back on it and know it was a very great tragedy.
Its alienated most of the nations of the world away from us, dropped the esteem for America - the popularity of America, the trust of America to unprecedented lows, and now of course what we are trying to do is not to succeed in our original plans but to get out of Iraq with a minimal loss of life and prestige.
I think in many ways anyone that would argue that is was a success or a good decision, would be totally wrong. I'm not going to criticize President Bush because I agree with him on many things, but I believe that this was one of the biggest mistakes in foreign affairs that I've ever known.
CENK: President Carter is also the author of Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, we want to ask about that in one second. You mentioned the neo-cons, they have often criticized you President Carter for not acting stronger against Iran when the hostages were taken. Do you feel at anyway you are vindicated for what has happened in Iraq and that attacking Iran at the time would not have been a wise idea?
CARTER: Well I don't feel the need for vindication, I had the choice of destroying Iran and in the process they have American hostages, or trying to resolve it peacefully and getting the hostages released. As a result of my decision, which was not an easy one, every single hostage came back safe and free. See I don't know how anyone could say the opposite decision should have been made. I think the results speak for themselves.
CENK: Now getting on to the Palestinian/Israeli conflict, President Carter has written a book Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid. President Bush often talks about how we are fighting against people who hate us for our freedom and he views that as our primary problem in the Middle East. I think that the primary problem in the Middle East is that we have never solved the Palestinian/Israeli issue, and in fact we have been completely one-sided about it, and that is why people hate us in the Middle East. What do you think about those two competing theories?
CARTER: Well, at this point, the general consensus in the Middle East and that in the last six years we have been completely one-sided. In the last six years there hasn't been one meeting for negotiations between the Israelis and the Palestinians since President Clinton was in office. And this is the first time since 1967, maybe even since Israel was founded as a nation that no effort has been made to find reconciliation and peace for Israel.
My hope is that we will have peace talks, even in the last two years of this administration so far we haven't had that. There is a consistent debate that goes on about Israel's policies in Palestine everyday. In this country there is no debate about it at all, it's completely a one-sided presumption that everything Israel does is right and everything that the Palestinians do is wrong.
As a matter of fact the title of my book is Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid. I'm not talking about apartheid in Israel, it's a good democracy and people are treated fairly whether they are an Arab or Jew, people have a chance to vote, but in the occupied territories there is a horrible example of apartheid. Where we have seen Israel occupy the land, confiscate the land and settle the land, eschew the Palestinians from their own property and build highways between the 200 or so Israeli settlements and not even let the Palestinians use those highways, they can't even cross those highways. This is a horrible example of the persecution.
CENK: So are you saying the United States is supporting the apartheid in the occupied area as executed by the Israeli government?
CARTER: I'm saying that the United States is supporting Israeli government's policies although we are calling for this policy to be changed. As we know the international court said we have written a Road Map for Peace, which President Bush endorsed enthusiastically. The Road Map for Peace spells out a requirement, the first requirement is to withdraw from occupied territory.
The Palestinians have endorsed the Road Map for Peace, one hundred percent. The Israeli's have rejected every substantive aspect of the Road Map for Peace. This is a fight that I wrote in my book based on the choices of the Israeli government. There are very few Americans that are aware that the Israelis rejected the Road Map for Peace. So it is a very one-sided problem now. I hope that both sides will come together if the United States will orchestrate the opportunity.
BEN: We are essentially out of time and only have time for one more question, talking to the 39th President of the United States, Jimmy Carter. Mr. President, you are an Evangelical Christian, how do you account then for the sort of rabid support for everything Israel does without qualification from so many Evangelical Christian leaders in this country, and how do you think that influences the administrations politics?
CARTER: Some Christians who I know very well, very devout people, believe a certain interpretation of Revelations, that in my opinion are quite weird, in that in the coming of Christ that the holy land has to be occupied by the Jews and not by anyone else and then in the end that all Jews will have to be killed or either converted to Christianity. This is a very seriously distorted interpretation of the Scriptures that I am very familiar with.
BEN: President Jimmy Carter, the 39th President of the United States, it was real pleasure. Thanks for coming on the show, interesting as always to talk with you.
CARTER: Have a good day, thank you very much.
CENK: Thank you, and the book is Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid.
Hawking: Man must leave planet Earth
Mankind will need to venture far beyond planet Earth to ensure the long-term survival of our species, according to the world's best known scientist, Professor Stephen Hawking.
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Returning to a theme he has voiced many times before, the Cambridge University cosmologist said today that space-rockets propelled by the kind of matter/antimatter annihilation technology popularised in Star Trek would be needed to help Homo sapiens colonise hospitable planets orbiting alien stars.
And he disclosed his own ambition to go into space. "Maybe Richard Branson will help me," he said, a reference to the space tourism plans of Virgin tycoon Sir Richard Branson, using the privately built SpaceShipOne to take people into space from 2008.
Prof Hawking, who is confined to a wheelchair by motor neuron disease, MND, was commenting using a muscle below his right eye to operate - via a switch on his glasses - his voice synthesiser.
He was speaking ahead of the presentation of Britain's highest scientific award, the Royal Society's Copley Medal, previously granted to Charles Darwin, Michael Faraday, and Albert Einstein.
He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that scientists still have "some way to go" to reach his prediction in his bestselling A Brief History of Time that mankind would one day "know the mind of God" by understanding the complete set of laws which govern the universe.
This set of laws, which will probably rely on theory that requires more than three dimensions of space and one of time, could be uncovered within 20 years, not least because next year the giant LHC atom smasher will go into operation in the CERN nuclear physics laboratory in Geneva to provide new information for that quest by simulating conditions not seen since the birth of the universe as well making antimatter in a special factory.
Prof Hawking said that this knowledge may be vital to the human race's continued existence.
"The long-term survival of the human race is at risk as long as it is confined to a single planet," he said. "Sooner or later, disasters such as an asteroid collision or nuclear war could wipe us all out. But once we spread out into space and establish independent colonies, our future should be safe.
"There isn't anywhere like the Earth in the solar system, so we would have to go to another star.
"If we used chemical fuel rockets like the Apollo mission to the moon, the journey to the nearest star would take 50,000 years. This is obviously far too long to be practical, so science fiction has developed the idea of warp drive, which takes you instantly to your destination. Unfortunately, this would violate the scientific law which says that nothing can travel faster than light.
"However, we can still within the law, by using matter/antimatter annihilation, and reach speeds just below the speed of light. With that, it would be possible to reach the next star in about six years, though it wouldn't seem so long for those on board."
The science fiction series Star Trek has used matter/antimatter annihilation as an explanation for the warp drive. But, in reality, he said that scientists believe that the flash of radiation produced when matter and antimatter are brought together and destroy one another could in fact one day be used to drive craft to close to the speed of light.
Prof Hawking today said that his own ambition was to take part in a more conventional form of space travel. "I am not afraid of death but I'm in no hurry to die. My next goal is to go into space," said Hawking, who was diagnosed with MND at 21 and told by doctors he had only a few years to live.
He told The Daily Telegraph that he has offered to give his own DNA to a project to scan the human genetic code for clues to the cause, in an initiative backed by the Motor Neurone Disease Association.
"Motor neurone disease is as common as multiple sclerosis, but it has received much less public attention and awareness," he said.
"This may be because it often kills its victims in two or three years from the first appearance of symptoms, so they aren't around to be noticed. I am one of a few long term survivors, so I have a duty to call attention to this terrible disease, and to press for research into its causes, so we can find ways of curing it, or at least preventing it in the future.
"We know that biological processes are controlled by DNA, so a natural first step is to study the DNA of those with motor neurone disease, and compare it to the DNA of those without. For this reason, I strongly support the Whole Genome Project, and will be contributing my own DNA to it."
The project will be led by two clinical geneticists working in the field, Dr Ammar Al-Chalabi of King's College London and Prof Robert Brown of Harvard University, near Boston. At the moment, doctors do not know the cause of over 97 per cent of cases of the disease, though they do know that genetic factors play an important role.
In 10 per cent of cases, where the disease run in families, genetic mutations in the DNA are totally responsible for causing the disease.
In the remaining 90 per cent of so-called sporadic cases, such as that affecting Prof Hawking, genetic mutations are still believed to be a major factor in predisposing people to the disease. The trigger, Prof Hawking believes, is "likely to be the result of exposure to infection or toxins. There may well be a variety of causes that give rise to similar symptoms, but the Genome Project should provide the clue to the mechanism, and help find ways to repair the damage, or prevent it in future."
"The problem is that the genetic information contained within our DNA is like having 200 volumes of the London telephone directory - and we are searching for the equivalent of single spelling mistakes," said Dr Al-Chalabi.
"The 'Whole Genome Scan' is a means of rapidly narrowing the search to 'hot spots' of the equivalent of a few pages."
Once this has been done, the information will be made available to scientists all over the world, allowing them to conduct painstaking 'letter-by-letter' analysis to find the disease-causing genetic mutations, potentially saving many years of fruitless research.
To do this research successfully, large numbers of DNA samples from people with MND and unaffected individuals are needed. The researchers already have access to samples from 5,200 individuals in total (including samples from the MND Association's own DNA Bank) and Prof Hawking is among those who have offered to help.
The researchers will collaborate with scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to use a 'gene-chip' , which attaches chemical 'markers' at almost 320,000 sites across the whole length of each sample of human DNA. The project is also backed by a number of US-based charities. If many more of these chemical markers are found sticking to particular regions of the DNA in MND samples compared to non-MND cases, it indicates that the genetic mutation is likely to be somewhere within these region, allowing researchers to quickly focus in on these regions and perform further detailed hunts for 'candidate' genes.
The disease attacks the upper and lower motor neurones, causing weakness and wasting of muscles, increasing loss of mobility in the limbs, and difficulties with speech, swallowing and breathing.
It can affect any adult at any age but most people diagnosed with the disease are over the age of 40, with the highest incidence occurring between the ages of 50 and 70.
The incidence or number of people who will develop the disease each year is about two people in every 100,000 The prevalence or number of people living with MND at any one time is approximately seven in every 100,000.
Wednesday, November 29, 2006
Stepping Into Iraq
By Nawaf Obaid
Wednesday, November 29, 2006; A23
In February 2003, a month before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, the Saudi foreign minister, Prince Saud al-Faisal, warned President Bush that he would be "solving one problem and creating five more" if he removed Saddam Hussein by force. Had Bush heeded his advice, Iraq would not now be on the brink of full-blown civil war and disintegration.
One hopes he won't make the same mistake again by ignoring the counsel of Saudi Arabia's ambassador to the United States, Prince Turki al-Faisal, who said in a speech last month that "since America came into Iraq uninvited, it should not leave Iraq uninvited." If it does, one of the first consequences will be massive Saudi intervention to stop Iranian-backed Shiite militias from butchering Iraqi Sunnis.
Over the past year, a chorus of voices has called for Saudi Arabia to protect the Sunni community in Iraq and thwart Iranian influence there. Senior Iraqi tribal and religious figures, along with the leaders of Egypt, Jordan and other Arab and Muslim countries, have petitioned the Saudi leadership to provide Iraqi Sunnis with weapons and financial support. Moreover, domestic pressure to intervene is intense. Major Saudi tribal confederations, which have extremely close historical and communal ties with their counterparts in Iraq, are demanding action. They are supported by a new generation of Saudi royals in strategic government positions who are eager to see the kingdom play a more muscular role in the region.
Because King Abdullah has been working to minimize sectarian tensions in Iraq and reconcile Sunni and Shiite communities, because he gave President Bush his word that he wouldn't meddle in Iraq (and because it would be impossible to ensure that Saudi-funded militias wouldn't attack U.S. troops), these requests have all been refused. They will, however, be heeded if American troops begin a phased withdrawal from Iraq. As the economic powerhouse of the Middle East, the birthplace of Islam and the de facto leader of the world's Sunni community (which comprises 85 percent of all Muslims), Saudi Arabia has both the means and the religious responsibility to intervene.
Just a few months ago it was unthinkable that President Bush would prematurely withdraw a significant number of American troops from Iraq. But it seems possible today, and therefore the Saudi leadership is preparing to substantially revise its Iraq policy. Options now include providing Sunni military leaders (primarily ex-Baathist members of the former Iraqi officer corps, who make up the backbone of the insurgency) with the same types of assistance -- funding, arms and logistical support -- that Iran has been giving to Shiite armed groups for years.
Another possibility includes the establishment of new Sunni brigades to combat the Iranian-backed militias. Finally, Abdullah may decide to strangle Iranian funding of the militias through oil policy. If Saudi Arabia boosted production and cut the price of oil in half, the kingdom could still finance its current spending. But it would be devastating to Iran, which is facing economic difficulties even with today's high prices. The result would be to limit Tehran's ability to continue funneling hundreds of millions each year to Shiite militias in Iraq and elsewhere.
Both the Sunni insurgents and the Shiite death squads are to blame for the current bloodshed in Iraq. But while both sides share responsibility, Iraqi Shiites don't run the risk of being exterminated in a civil war, which the Sunnis clearly do. Since approximately 65 percent of Iraq's population is Shiite, the Sunni Arabs, who make up a mere 15 to 20 percent, would have a hard time surviving any full-blown ethnic cleansing campaign.
What's clear is that the Iraqi government won't be able to protect the Sunnis from Iranian-backed militias if American troops leave. Its army and police cannot be relied on to do so, as tens of thousands of Shiite militiamen have infiltrated their ranks. Worse, Iraq's prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, cannot do anything about this, because he depends on the backing of two major leaders of Shiite forces.
There is reason to believe that the Bush administration, despite domestic pressure, will heed Saudi Arabia's advice. Vice President Cheney's visit to Riyadh last week to discuss the situation (there were no other stops on his marathon journey) underlines the preeminence of Saudi Arabia in the region and its importance to U.S. strategy in Iraq. But if a phased troop withdrawal does begin, the violence will escalate dramatically.
In this case, remaining on the sidelines would be unacceptable to Saudi Arabia. To turn a blind eye to the massacre of Iraqi Sunnis would be to abandon the principles upon which the kingdom was founded. It would undermine Saudi Arabia's credibility in the Sunni world and would be a capitulation to Iran's militarist actions in the region.
To be sure, Saudi engagement in Iraq carries great risks -- it could spark a regional war. So be it: The consequences of inaction are far worse.
The writer, an adviser to the Saudi government, is managing director of the Saudi National Security Assessment Project in Riyadh and an adjunct fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. The opinions expressed here are his own and do not reflect official Saudi policy.
Tuesday, November 28, 2006
Son also rises in testy Webb-Bush exchange
Webb, a decorated former Marine officer, hammered Allen and Bush over the unpopular war in Iraq while wearing his son’s old combat boots on the campaign trail. It seems the president may have some lingering resentment.
At a private reception held at the White House with newly elected lawmakers shortly after the election, Bush asked Webb how his son, a Marine lance corporal serving in Iraq, was doing.
Webb responded that he really wanted to see his son brought back home, said a person who heard about the exchange from Webb.
“I didn’t ask you that, I asked how he’s doing,” Bush retorted, according to the source.
Webb confessed that he was so angered by this that he was tempted to slug the commander-in-chief, reported the source, but of course didn’t. It’s safe to say, however, that Bush and Webb won’t be taking any overseas trips together anytime soon.
“Jim did have a conversation with Bush at that dinner,” said Webb’s spokeswoman Kristian Denny Todd. “Basically, he asked about Jim’s son, Jim expressed the fact that he wanted to have him home.” Todd did not want to escalate matters by commenting on Bush’s response, saying, “It was a private conversation.”
A White House spokeswoman declined to give Bush’s version of the conversation.
Monday, November 27, 2006
Woman Faces Fines for Wreath Peace Sign
In this undated photo provided by Lisa Jensen, a wreath is seen in Pagosa Springs, Colo. Pagosa Springs Colorado homeowners are battling over whether a Christmas wreath that includes a peace sign is an anti-Iraq war protest or even a promotion of Satan. (AP Photo/provided by Lisa Jensen)By ROBERT WELLER
DENVER (AP) - A homeowners association in southwestern Colorado has threatened to fine a resident $25 a day until she removes a Christmas wreath with a peace sign that some say is an anti-Iraq war protest or a symbol of Satan.
Some residents who have complained have children serving in Iraq, said Bob Kearns, president of the Loma Linda Homeowners Association in Pagosa Springs. He said some residents have also believed it was a symbol of Satan. Three or four residents complained, he said.
"Somebody could put up signs that say drop bombs on Iraq. If you let one go up you have to let them all go up," he said in a telephone interview Sunday.
Lisa Jensen said she wasn't thinking of the war when she hung the wreath. She said, "Peace is way bigger than not being at war. This is a spiritual thing."
Jensen, a past association president, calculates the fines will cost her about $1,000, and doubts they will be able to make her pay. But she said she's not going to take it down until after Christmas.
"Now that it has come to this I feel I can't get bullied," she said. "What if they don't like my Santa Claus."
The association in this 200-home subdivision 270 miles southwest of Denver has sent a letter to her saying that residents were offended by the sign and the board "will not allow signs, flags etc. that can be considered divisive."
The subdivision's rules say no signs, billboards or advertising are permitted without the consent of the architectural control committee.
Kearns ordered the committee to require Jensen to remove the wreath, but members refused after concluding that it was merely a seasonal symbol that didn't say anything. Kearns fired all five committee members.
