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http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/09/23/ap/politics/printableD8KA8T000.shtml
Dean Expedites Courting of Black Vote
DETROIT, Sep. 23, 2006
(AP) The Democratic Party can no longer sit back and wait until three weeksbefore an election to ask minorities for their vote, Democratic NationalCommittee Chairman Howard Dean said Friday.
"In many ways, the Democratic Party hasn't moved itself out of the '60s and'70s," Dean said in remarks to the DNC's African-American Leadership Summit,which is aimed at mobilizing black voters and encouraging more minoritycandidates for state offices.
"If we don't get smart about having folks on the ticket that look like thepeople whose votes were asking for, in meaningful positions of authority,then we're not going to win. And the party that gets to do that first is theparty that's going to win," Dean said.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/23/world/23aid.html?ei=5040&en=9d64eadf56f86706&ex=1159675200&partner=MOREOVERNEWS&pagewanted=print
September 23, 2006
Clinton Effort Reaps Pledges of $7.3 Billion in Global Aid
By CELIA W. DUGGER
A Sheraton hotel in Midtown Manhattan was the scene of feverish matchmakingover the past three days during Bill Clinton's second annual gathering onglobal problems.
Only those who promised to do something concrete about poverty, disease,conflict or climate change were invited. The entry fee for aspiringphilanthropists was $15,000. Hundreds lined up for the privilege.
In cafes, hallways and conference rooms, some of the many rich people Mr.Clinton has gotten to know over the years - and others he has never met orknows only as acquaintances - brainstormed with leaders of nonprofit groups,African health ministers and others who had their own plentiful ideas abouthow to put that wealth to work.
Kathy Sloane, a real estate broker with a cream-colored Chanel bag danglingon her arm, listened intently at workshops on global warming and religiousand ethnic conflict.
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http://www.theledger.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?Date=20060923&Category=NEWS&ArtNo=609230322&SectionCat=&Template=printart
Saturday, September 23, 2006
'Values Voters' Back in Spotlight
By ADELLE M. BANKS
Religion News Service
WASHINGTON -- With the primaries concluded and the general election looming,the question in Washington seems to be: Will the real values voter pleasestand up?
As conservative Christian groups gear up for their "Values Voters Summit" inthe nation's capital this weekend, critics on the liberal end of thespectrum are hosting events to say they have values too.
"We love the same God, read the same Bible and all aspire to follow the sameChrist," said the Rev. Robert Franklin, an Emory University professor andmember of the newly formed Red Letter Christians, which is named for thered-colored words of Jesus in many Bibles.
Rather than focusing only on abortion and homosexuality, voters also careabout issues like poverty, racial discrimination and HIV/AIDS, saysupporters of progressive groups like Sojourners/Call to Renewal, Catholicsin Alliance for the Common Good and Faith in Public Life.
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The Miami Herald
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/15592338.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp
Posted on Sat, Sep. 23, 2006
Abbas: Effort on gov't is 'back to zero'
MAGGIE MICHAEL
Associated Press
CAIRO, Egypt - Efforts to form a Palestinian government acceptable to theWest have gone "back to zero," Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas saidSaturday, a day after Hamas said a coalition government that recognizesIsrael is unacceptable.
The Islamic militant group has ruled alone since March, but this monthagreed to share power with Abbas' moderate Fatah Party in hopes of ending acrippling international aid boycott of the Palestinian Authority.
The Hamas-Fatah coalition deal sidestepped recognition of Israel. Instead,it said the government would seek to establish a Palestinian state alongsideIsrael, which implies recognition. However, the U.S. and Israel demanded aclear commitment from Hamas on the subject, and Abbas was forced to revisitthe issue.
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The Miami Herald
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/world/15590222.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp
Posted on Sat, Sep. 23, 2006
TRANSITION IN IRAQ
Chaos imperils women, religious sects
Law and order is breaking down in Iraq as militias, death squads and others take the law into their own hands. Women and religious minorities are among those vulnerable.
BY MARK BRUNSWICK
McClatchy News Service
BAGHDAD - A new report on human-rights violations in Iraq documents how devastatingly easy it is to die here -- and how increasingly difficult it is to live.
The report, prepared by the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq, said a breakdown of law and order threatens the fabric of life. Militias, death squads, organized crime and people who are ''taking the law into their own hands'' are filling the vacuum left by a central government incapable of providing stability.
The report documented how perilous everyday life is in Iraq for lawyers, journalists, police recruits, travelers and street vendors.
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The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/22/AR2006092201404_pf.html
Afghan Girls, Back in the Shadows
Home Classes Proliferate as Anti-Government Insurgents Step Up Attacks on
Schools
By Pamela Constable
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, September 23, 2006; A10
SHEIKHABAD, Afghanistan -- In a small, sunlit parlor last week, 20 little girls seated on rush mats sketched a flower drawn on the blackboard. In a darker interior room, 15 slightly older girls memorized passages from the Koran, reciting aloud. Upstairs was a class of teenage girls, hidden from public view.
The location of the mud-walled home school is semi-secret. Its students
include five girls who once attended another home school nearby that was torched three months ago. The very existence of home-based classes is a direct challenge to anti-government insurgents who have attacked dozens of schools across Afghanistan in the past year, especially those that teach girls.
"We are scared. All the home schools are scared. If I even hear a dog bark, I don't open the gate. I go up on the roof to see who is there," said Mohammed Sulieman, 49, who operates home schools for girls in several villages in the Sheikhabad district of Wardak province.
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The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/22/AR2006092201444_pf.html
In Iraq, a Journalist in Limbo
By Tom Curley
Saturday, September 23, 2006; A19
Bilal Hussein, an Iraqi photographer who helped the Associated Press win a Pulitzer Prize last year, is now in his sixth month in a U.S. Army prison in Iraq. He doesn't understand why he's there, and neither do his AP colleagues.
The Army says it thinks Bilal has too many contacts among insurgents. He has taken pictures the Army thinks could have been made only with the connivance of insurgents. So Bilal himself must be one, too, or at least a sympathizer.
It is a measure of just how dangerous and disorienting Iraq has become that suspicions such as these are considered adequate grounds for locking up a man and throwing away the key.
After more than five months of trying to bring Bilal's case into the daylight, AP is now convinced the Army doesn't care whether Bilal is or isn't an insurgent. The Army doesn't have to care. Bilal is off the street, and the military says it doesn't consider itself accountable to any judicial authority that could question his guilt.
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The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/23/us/23legal.html?ei=5094&en=48fa1d71c13d8435&hp=&ex=1159070400&partner=homepage&pagewanted=print
September 23, 2006
News Analysis
Detainee Deal Comes With Contradictions
By ADAM LIPTAK
The compromise reached on Thursday between Congressional Republicans and the White House on the interrogations and trials of terrorism suspects is, legal experts said yesterday, a series of interlocking paradoxes.
It would impose new legal standards that it forbids the courts to enforce.
It would guarantee terrorist masterminds charged with war crimes an array of procedural protections. But it would bar hundreds of minor figures and people who say they are innocent bystanders from access to the courts to challenge their potentially lifelong detentions.
And while there is substantial disagreement about just which harsh interrogation techniques the compromise would prohibit, there is no dispute that it would allow military prosecutors to use statements that had been obtained under harsh techniques that are now banned.
The complex, technical and often ambiguous language in the 94-page measure was a subject of debate, posturing and, perhaps, some wishful thinking yesterday. Each side in the hard-fought negotiations - the White House and the three opposing Republican senators - declared victory.
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The Boston Globe
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2006/09/23/playing_shell_games_on_responsibility_with_iraq?mode=PF
Playing shell games on responsibility with Iraq
By Derrick Z. Jackson | September 23, 2006
THE SAME White House that trashed generals and bean counters for saying it would take hundreds of thousands of more troops and billions more dollars to secure Iraq is now blaming the puppet government for not securing the country.
The blame is arriving through one of those senior- administration- official-speaking -on- background" whisper campaigns. One such official told The New York Times that President Bush is peeved at Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki of Iraq. ``The thing you hear the most is that he never makes any decisions," the official said. ``And that drives Bush crazy. He doesn't take well to anyone who talks about getting something accomplished and then refuses to take the first step."
In the Los Angeles Times, a Bush official said that the White House is getting ``frustrated. . . . There is a little bit of impatience." Another official said Maliki's get-tough-on-violence ``rhetoric has to be matched by concrete action . . . acting on the ground on its own behalf."
While his minions cut the knees out from under Maliki, Bush himself acts like the general manager of a sports team who declares he has full confidence in the coach during a losing season. Bush said on CNN, ``I'm impressed by President Maliki. I've talked to him. I've seen the decision-making process that he's put in place." White House press secretary Tony Snow continues to declare that reports of Bush losing faith in Maliki are ``absolutely false."
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The Boston Globe
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/editorials/articles/2006/09/23/a_toturous_compromise?mode=PF
GLOBE EDITORIAL
A toturous compromise
September 23, 2006
JOHN MCCAIN and two other Republican senators rebelled last week against President Bush's bid to pass rules for interrogating and trying terrorism suspects that violate the Geneva Conventions, but the senators have now agreed to a compromise that leaves the conventions on life support at best. Under the deal struck Thursday, the Geneva rules on abusive interrogations are not formally rewritten. Yet Bush -- who undercut McCain's own 2005 anti torture law with a signing statement -- is granted the right, an aide said, to permit methods that he will not have to disclose.
One of the three senators, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, says he thinks the compromise will forbid the use of ``waterboarding," or simulated drowning, but that's not certain. Unless Congress wants to set a precedent for other countries to use in mistreating US troops in future conflicts, it should insist that interrogations be conducted in accordance with the Army's field manual and that any special trial commissions use the military's court-martial procedures, which are sound.
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Boston Globe
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2006/09/23/congress_in_dark_on_terror_program?mode=PF
Congress in dark on terror program
Few briefed on CIA interrogation
By Rick Klein, Globe Staff | September 23, 2006
WASHINGTON -- As lawmakers prepare to debate the CIA's special interrogation program for terrorism suspects, fewer than 10 percent of the members of Congress have been told which interrogation techniques have been used in the past, and none of them know which ones would be permissible under proposed changes to the War Crimes Act.
Only about 40 of the 535 senators and representatives -- the top members of leadership in both parties, members of the House and Senate intelligence committees, and a small handful of others -- have been briefed on the past practices of the CIA program, which permits more aggressive interrogation tactics than those used by other agencies.
The lack of consultation means that senators and representatives will be voting next week to authorize a program that most know little about, raising questions about Congress's oft-repeated vow to increase its oversight of the war on terrorism.
``You're not having any checks and balances here," said Norman J. Ornstein,
a resident scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute. ``It
sure doesn't look to me as if they stood up and did anything other than bare their teeth for some ceremonial barking, before giving the president a whole lot of leeway. I find it really troubling."
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http://www.365gay.com/Newscon06/09/092206hiv.htm
Roche Allows 3 African Companies To Produce Anti-HIV Drug
by The Associated Press
September 22, 2006 - 7:00 pm ET
(Basel, Switzerland) Pharmaceutical company Roche Holding AG said Friday it will help three African companies produce one of its anti-HIV drugs.
Roche will provide the companies - Aspen Pharmacare in South Africa, Cosmos Ltd. and Universal Corp. in Kenya - with the technical assistance necessaryto produce saquinavir, the active ingredient in the Swiss-basedpharmaceutical's Invirase treatment.
The three companies will produce the drug in Africa and will be allowed toexport it to other developing countries.
``It is both encouraging and heartening that local African manufacturers aretaking steps to increase their capacity to produce and provide HIV medicineslocally,'' said Lembit Rago, a medicine expert at the World HealthOrganization.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/23/opinion/23sat2.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&pagewanted=print
September 23, 2006
Editorial
A Bad Court-Splitting Plan
The Senate held hearings this week on a proposal to split the SanFrancisco-based United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in two.The idea is being promoted as a way to reduce the court workload. The NinthCircuit is very large and busy, but the proposal would actually do little tosolve the overload problem. Its real aim is not efficiency, but aconservative, anti-environmental agenda.
The Ninth Circuit, which covers nine Western states plus Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands, is the largest of the nation's federal judicialcircuits. The reason is simple: California. With the state's enormousgrowth, the number of cases presented to the Ninth Circuit has also grownrapidly, although there is no evidence that the court has been unable tohandle its work.
If Congress wanted to help, it would divide California into two differentcircuits. But instead, it is considering a bill that would put Californiaand Hawaii into a "new" Ninth Circuit, which would have more than 70 percentof the court's current caseload, while putting the remaining states in anewly created 12th Circuit. To make matters worse, the new Ninth Circuitwould get less than 60 percent of the allotment of permanent judges.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/23/opinion/23sat4.html?pagewanted=print
September 23, 2006
Editorial
Punishing Refugees Twice
America's excellent record of giving refuge to the persecuted is flagging - and one of the biggest barriers seems to have arisen inadvertently.
In their haste, Congressional authors of the Patriot Act and its sister RealID provision tucked a clause into the immigration laws barring entry toanyone who has provided "material support" to a terrorist organization. Whocould argue with barring people who have aided terrorists?
But the Bush administration has chosen to interpret "material support" toinclude people who act under duress - someone pressed at gunpoint to supplya glass of water, or forced to dig graves or pay ransom for a kidnappedchild, or held hostage in her home (and thus provided shelter toterrorists). The result is to victimize these people twice.
The law's definition of a terrorist group - two or more people who take uparms against a state - also makes no allowance for motive. Members of theVietnamese Montagnards and Cuban Alzados - groups created by the UnitedStates that remain staunch supporters - are now blocked from entry.
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/22/AR2006092201439_pf.html
The War of the Hacks
By Colbert I. King
Saturday, September 23, 2006; A19
It's amazing what a few days away from this politics-obsessed town can dofor one's perspective. Seen from afar, the congressional debate over the warand terrorism comes across as a Washington event designed to show thatDemocrats are wimps on national security and to boost Republicans as truedefenders of the homeland. Or Republicans are portrayed as clueless warmongers hell-bent on sending other people's sons and daughters intobattle.
In reality, the struggle on Capitol Hill is not about terrorism. It's aboutgaining and holding power in the fall election. And it is a disgusting sightto behold.
Only five years after a horrifying new reality crashed into America, thepolitical parties have lost sight of the nation's interests. Now it's allabout getting elected.
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The New York Times
http://select.nytimes.com/2006/09/23/opinion/23dowd.html?pagewanted=print
September 23, 2006
Op-Ed Columnist
Axis of Sketchy Allies
By MAUREEN DOWD
WASHINGTON
It helps to plug your book at the White House.
At a news conference with President Bush, Pervez Musharraf was asked about his claim on "60 Minutes" that Richard Armitage had threatened to bomb Pakistan back to the Stone Age if it did not cooperate in routing the Taliban in Afghanistan. After coyly sidestepping the question, saying he had to save such juicy tidbits for his book's publication next week, he shot up over 1,000 spots on Amazon.com.
General Musharraf told Steve Kroft he found the Stone Age crack "very rude,'' and Mr. Armitage was on the defensive yesterday, explaining that he had been tough with Pakistan just after 9/11 but had not made any Flintstones threats.
The former deputy to Colin Powell needn't apologize. That was the last time our foreign policy was on track, when we were pursuing the real enemy. It's all been downhill from there.
The Pakistan president is a smooth operator, a military dictator cruising around the capital with his elegant wife and enormous security contingent, talking about how much he likes democracy, which he won't yet allow.
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The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/23/opinion/23sat1.html?pagewanted=print
September 23, 2006
Editorial
Turning Back the Clock on Rape
In recent decades, women's advocates and human rights activists have made huge progress on the issues of rape and sexual assault - in the United States and globally. Both crimes are now more powerfully defined in state and federal laws. In international law, where rape and sexual assault have long been classified as torture and war crimes, the world has begun to accept the importance of enforcement. In 1998, a tribunal convicted a paramilitary chief for watching one of his men rape a woman in Serbia. A year ago, the world rose up in outrage when United Nations peacekeepers raped women in Congo.
You'd think this was a settled issue. But it's been opened up again in the bill on jailing, interrogating and trying terror suspects that President Bush is trying to ram through Congress in a pre-election rush. Both the White House and Senate versions contain provisions on rape and sexual assault that turn back the clock alarmingly. They are among the many flaws that must be fixed before Congress can responsibly pass this legislation.
Rape, sexual assault and sexual abuse are mentioned twice in the bill - once as crimes that could be prosecuted before military tribunals if committed by an "illegal enemy combatant," and once as "grave breaches" of the Geneva Conventions that could be prosecuted as war crimes if committed by an American against a detainee. But in each case, the wording creates new and disturbing loopholes.
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The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/23/washington/23detain.html?pagewanted=print
September 23, 2006
Differences Settled in Deal Over Detainee Treatment
By KATE ZERNIKE and SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
WASHINGTON, Sept. 22 - After weeks of internal wrangling over legislation to interrogate and prosecute terrorism suspects, Republicans on Friday put aside their differences, setting the House and Senate on a path to approve a compromise struck with the White House before lawmakers break to campaign for the midterm elections.
The House leader who on Thursday had been the only Republican to raise objections to the deal between Senate Republicans and the White House said Friday that he decided he liked the compromise legislation even better than the bill his committee had passed.
"The new provisions are excellent," said the leader, Representative Duncan Hunter, the California Republican who is chairman of the Armed Services Committee. "I like them."
Mr. Hunter, whose committee had endorsed a bill looking much like what the White House had initially proposed, said that although he was still reading the compromise, he believed that the House and the Senate could agree on a common bill, eliminating the need for a conference between the two, and making it possible to win final passage in the five days before Congress adjourns for the midterms.
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Forwarded from Victoria Lavin
Daily Queer News
dailyqueernews@yahoo.com
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20060921.wmushareff21/BNStory/International/?cid=al_gam_nletter_newsUp
Musharraf: U.S. threatened to bomb Pakistan 'into stone age'
Associated Press
WASHINGTON - President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan says the United States threatened to bomb his country back to the Stone Age after the 9-11 attacks if he did not help America's war on terror.
Mr. Musharraf says the threat was delivered by Richard Armitage, then the deputy secretary of state, to Mr. Musharraf's intelligence director, the Pakistani leader told CBS-TV's 60 Minutes.
"The intelligence director told me that (Armitage) said, 'Be prepared to be bombed. Be prepared to go back to the Stone Age,"' Mr. Musharraf said in the interview to be shown Sunday on the CBS television network.
It was insulting, Mr. Musharraf said. "I think it was a very rude remark," he told reporter Steve Kroft.
But, Mr. Musharraf said he reacted responsibly. "One has to think and take actions in the interests of the nation and that is what I did," he said.
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Forwarded from Victoria Lavin
Daily Queer News
dailyqueernews@yahoo.com
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/southflorida/sfl-922pakistanstoneage,0,6290844.story?coll=sfla-home-headlines
White House denies it threatened to bomb ally Pakistan back to 'the Stone Age'
By DEB RIECHMANN
Associated Press
September 22, 2006, 4:15 PM EDT
WASHINGTON -- President Bush said Friday he was ``taken aback'' by apurported U.S. threat to bomb Pakistan back to the Stone Age if it did notcooperate in the fight against terrorism after the Sept. 11 attacks.
He praised Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf for being one of thefirst foreign leaders to come out after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to standwith the U.S. to ``help root out an enemy.''
At a joint White House news conference, Musharraf said a peace treatybetween his government and tribes along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border isnot meant to support the Taliban.
He said news reports had mischaracterized the deals. ``The deal is not atall with the Taliban. This deal is against the Taliban. This deal is withthe tribal elders,'' Musharraf said.
Said Bush: ``I believe him.''
He said that Musharraf had looked him in the eye and vowed that ``the tribaldeal is intended to reject the Talibanization of the people and that therewon't be a Taliban and there won't be al-Aqaida (in Pakistan).''
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