NATIONAL & WORLD DIGEST November 10, 2007

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NYTimes.com

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Ordaining-Women-Synagogue.html?pagewanted=print

Synagogue's Hospitality Rankles Church

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 6:20 a.m. ET
November 10, 2007

ST. LOUIS (AP) -- The Archdiocese of St. Louis and a Jewish Reform congregation are on the same side when it comes to advocating for immigrants and the poor, often finding common ground in a zeal for social justice. But when the Central Reform Congregation offered its synagogue for Sunday's ordination of two women in a ceremony disavowed by the Roman Catholic church, it drew the ire of church officials and a pledge to never again partner with the congregation.

Two women who profess to be Roman Catholic -- Rose Marie Dunn Hudson, 67, of Festus, and Elsie Hainz McGrath, 69, of St. Louis -- are to be ordained by a former nun as part of Roman Catholic Womenpriests, a small movement that began in 2002 independently from the Roman Catholic Church.

The Reform congregation's rabbi, Susan Talve, informed her friend and colleague, the Rev. Vincent Heier, who directs the archdiocese office for ecumenical and interreligious affairs, of the decision.

Heier told her it was unacceptable.

''It's not appropriate to invite this group, to aid and abet a group like this, which undercuts our theology and teaching,''' Heier said he told Talve.

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WashingtonPost.com

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/10/AR2007111000261_pf.html

Synagogue's Hospitality Rankles Church

By CHERYL WITTENAUER
The Associated Press
Saturday, November 10, 2007; 6:20 AM

ST. LOUIS -- The Archdiocese of St. Louis and a Jewish Reform congregation are on the same side when it comes to advocating for immigrants and the poor, often finding common ground in a zeal for social justice. But when the Central Reform Congregation offered its synagogue for Sunday's ordination of two women in a ceremony disavowed by the Roman Catholic church, it drew the ire of church officials and a pledge to never again partner with the congregation.

Two women who profess to be Roman Catholic _ Rose Marie Dunn Hudson, 67, of Festus, and Elsie Hainz McGrath, 69, of St. Louis _ are to be ordained by a former nun as part of Roman Catholic Womenpriests, a small movement that began in 2002 independently from the Roman Catholic Church.

The Reform congregation's rabbi, Susan Talve, informed her friend and colleague, the Rev. Vincent Heier, who directs the archdiocese office for ecumenical and interreligious affairs, of the decision.

Heier told her it was unacceptable.

"It's not appropriate to invite this group, to aid and abet a group like this, which undercuts our theology and teaching,'" Heier said he told Talve.

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The New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/10/washington/10cable.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

F.C.C. Planning Rules to Open Cable Market

By STEPHEN LABATON
November 10, 2007

WASHINGTON, Nov. 9 - The Federal Communications Commission is preparing to impose significant new regulations to open the cable television market to independent programmers and rival video services after determining that cable companies have become too dominant in the industry, senior commission officials said.

The finding, under a law that gives the commission expanded powers over the cable television industry if it becomes too big, is expected to be announced this month. It is a major departure for the agency and the industry, which was deregulated by an act of Congress in 1996.

Officials say the finding could lead to more diverse programs; consumer groups say it could also lead to lower rates.

Heavily promoted by those groups and by the commission's Republican chairman, Kevin J. Martin, the decision would be a notable exception to the broad deregulatory policies of the Bush administration. Officials in various gencies have relaxed industry regulations and have chosen not to challenge big corporate mergers.

"The finding will provide the commission with additional authority to assure that there is opportunity for additional voices," Mr. Martin said Friday in an interview. "It is important that we continue to do all we can to make sure that consumers have more opportunities in terms of their programming and that people who have access to the platform assure there are diverse voices."

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The New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/10/opinion/10collins.html?ref=opinion

Rudy and Bernie: B.F.F.'s

By GAIL COLLINS
Op-Ed Columnist
November 10, 2007

The past seven years have given us some helpful hints on what we want to avoid in the next president. I'm starting to make a list.

Quality to avoid No. 1: Loyalty.

Whenever you read that a candidate "values loyalty above all else" - run for the hills. Loyalty is a terribly important consideration if you're choosing a pet, but not a cabinet member.

How about if this time we try for a president who would recruit gifted people who can accomplish great things, as opposed to a room full of dopes who will never write tell-all memoirs?

Loyalty is on our mind today because of the indictment of Bernard Kerik, the really, really loyal former New York City police commissioner. Rudy Giuliani, who was entirely responsible for Kerik's meteoric rise from mayoral chauffeur, has not seemed to draw any great lessons from his protégé's pectacular fall. Giuliani did say that he made a "mistake in not clearing him effectively enough," which sounds as if he is kicking himself for not sending a second squad of detectives out to interview Kerik's neighbors. In fact, the lapse in the "clearing" procedure involved Giuliani ignoring the city investigations commissioner when he arrived with the news that Kerik was involved with a company suspected of having ties to organized crime.

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The New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/10/opinion/10herbert.html?ref=opinion


Recession? What Recession?

By BOB HERBERT
Op-Ed Columnist
November 10, 2007

If it looks like a recession and feels like a recession ...

"Quite frankly," said Senator Charles Schumer, peering over his glasses at the Fed chairman, Ben Bernanke, "I think we are at a moment of economic crisis, stemming from four key areas: falling housing prices, lack of confidence in creditworthiness, the weak dollar and high oil prices."

He asked Mr. Bernanke, at a Congressional hearing Thursday, if we were headed toward a recession.

An aide handed the chairman his dancing shoes, and Mr. Bernanke executed a flawless version of the Washington waffle. He said: "Our forecast is for moderate, but positive, growth going forward." He said: "Economists are extremely bad at predicting turning points, and we don't pretend to be any better." He said: "We have not calculated the probability of recession, and I wouldn't want to offer that today."

With all due respect to the chairman, he would see the recession that so many others are feeling if he would only open his eyes. While Mr. Bernanke and others are waiting for the official diagnosis (a decline in the gross domestic product for two successive quarters), the disease is spreading and has been spreading for some time.

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The New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/10/opinion/10sat2.html?ref=opinion

Hope for the Everglades

Editorial
November 10, 2007

Seven years ago, Congress and the Clinton administration set in motion the most ambitious environmental initiative on the planet: an $8 billion, 40-year project to restore South Florida's ecosystem and, in particular, the Everglades, which had been punished by a half-century of uncontrolled development and starved of fresh water.

It was a 50-50 deal, and so far Florida has lived up to its share of the bargain, contributing more than $2 billion already. The federal response, crippled by an inattentive president and a divided, ineffectual Congress, has been pathetic - a mere $363 million - putting the whole enterprise way behind schedule.

Now, at last, comes some good news. Overriding a rare veto by President Bush, Congress this week approved a $22 billion water resources bill that has been hanging around for seven years. Like all big infrastructure bills, this one includes a little something for every member of Congress. But in addition to the pork, the bill also contains several necessary projects. Among them are coastal restoration in Louisiana and two big wetlands restoration projects in the Everglades.

For the Everglades, three tasks lie ahead. The first is to get the money. This water bill merely authorizes the necessary funds, which Congress must then appropriate. The second is to make sure that the Army Corps of Engineers, which is essentially running the Everglades project, spends it wisely and expeditiously. The water bill's biggest shortcoming is the absence of far-reaching reforms of the corps' operations that were proposed by Senator Russell Feingold but rejected by the House. The reforms sought to impose discipline on a notoriously dysfunctional agency.

The third task is to sustain the momentum. The departure of the Clinton administration and the retirement of Senator Bob Graham cost the Everglades many of its champions, and this is the kind of project that can fall by the wayside in time of war and massive deficits.

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The New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/10/opinion/10kayeintro.html?ref=opinion

Guantánamo by the Numbers

By DAVID BOWKER and DAVID KAYE
Op-Ed Contributors
November 10, 2007

SIX years ago this Tuesday, President Bush granted American armed forces sweeping authority to detain and interrogate foreign members of Al Qaeda and their supporters and to use military commissions to try them. By doing so, the president set in motion the creation of military commissions and the detention camp in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

The Bush administration may legitimately claim certain benefits from the Guantánamo system. Some dangerous men are held there, and valuable intelligence has probably been gathered, perhaps even some that has enabled the government to disrupt terrorist activities.

But the costs have been high. Guantánamo has come to be seen worldwide as a stain on America's reputation. The military commissions have failed to deliver justice, stymied by the federal courts' refusal to permit the president to create a system at odds with United States courts-martial and the international law of war.

Meanwhile, the number of detainees at Guantánamo has steadily dropped to a little over 300, from its peak of more than 700, no more than 80 of whom are likely to face any kind of American prosecution. Not a single defendant has gone to trial, and only one has pleaded guilty.

Today, most American leaders acknowledge the need for a new approach. The president himself has expressed a desire to see the detention camp closed. But he has only a little more than a year to do so before the next president takes office. It's time to take a close look at this system of detention and prosecution and move quickly to establish viable alternatives. With apologies to the Harper's Index, the following data provide a historical snapshot.

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The New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-China-Toys-Date-Rape-Drug.html?hp

China Bans Exports of Drug-Tainted Toy

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
November 10, 2007
Filed at 2:20 a.m. ET

BEIJING (AP) -- China's government has suspended exports of toys covered with a toxic chemical that have been subject to recalls from Australia to the United States after sickening children, the state-run Xinhua News Agency reported Friday.

China's move came as seven more U.S. children were reported ailing after ingesting Chinese-made toy beads because of the toxic chemical coating, bringing the total of U.S. children sickened to nine, according to a spokeswoman for the Consumer Product Safety Commission.

The Chinese government's quality control administration issued the export ban, sealed the toys at the sites where they were produced and ordered an investigation, Xinhua said in a brief report.

Millions of units of the popular toys, which are sold as Aqua Dots in the United States and as Bindeez in Australia, were recalled in those countries as well as in Britain, Malaysia, Singapore and elsewhere this past week after children began falling sick from swallowing the toy's bead-like parts.

Tests showed they were coated with the industrial chemical 1,4-butanediol. When ingested the chemical metabolizes into the ''date-rape'' drug gamma hydroxy butyrate, and may cause breathing problems, loss of consciousness, seizures, drowsiness, coma and death. In addition to the nine in the U.S., three children in Australia have taken sick.

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The New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/10/world/americas/10venez.html

Students Emerge as a Leading Force Against Chávez

By SIMON ROMERO
November 10, 2007

CARACAS, Venezuela, Nov. 9 - Finding Yon Goicoechea, a leader of the nascent student movement protesting the expanding power of President Hugo Chávez, is not easy. He changes cellphones every few days. After receiving dozens of death threats, he moves among the apartments of friends here each day in search of a safe place to sleep.

In an interview this week in a back room at one such residence, a villa in a leafy district in this city, Mr. Goicoechea described the movement that has supplanted traditional political parties in recent weeks as the most cohesive and respected challenger to Mr. Chávez's government.

"We believe in exhausting the democratic options available to us through peaceful action," said Mr. Goicoechea, 23, who studies law at Andrés Bello Catholic University here, referring to the students' opposition to a constitutional overhaul. In the polarized world of Venezuelan political debate, such parsed and polished statements are rare.

But what about the claims, from Mr. Chávez and his loyalists, that the students ultimately want to oust him from office? "We want social transformation, not a coup," Mr. Goicoechea said. "The real coup d'état is coming from Chávez, who wants to perpetuate himself in power."

Indeed, the students first burst onto the scene over the summer with protests against Mr. Chávez's move to push RCTV, a critical television network, off public airwaves. But the president's proposed charter, which would abolish his term limits, has led to much larger protests here and in other large cities this month.

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The New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/10/opinion/l10schools.html

November 10, 2007
Letters
A School Is More Than an A, B or C

To the Editor:

Re "50 City Schools Get Failing Grade in a New System" (front page, Nov. 6):

No doubt the mayor and the schools chancellor will now be the recipients of unending grief from those schools and principals who feel they were graded unfairly.

Grading schools is as absurd as grading students. The criteria for both are equally detrimental to achieving the goals of a truly useful education: self-awareness, an engaged citizenry and the skills necessary to generate meaningful, dignified work.

Until we address the core societal conditions that now make such goals unattainable for the vast majority, there is little hope that obfuscating parlor tricks like high-stakes testing, free cellphones for every child and schoolwide report cards will serve as successful incentives.

Roland Legiardi-Laura
New York, Nov. 6, 2007

The writer is producing a film on the history of schooling and is a guest teaching artist at University Heights High School.



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Forwarded by Susan Frishkorn
frishkorn@bellsouth.net

The Baltimore Chronicle

http://baltimorechronicle.com/2007/110807Lindorff.shtml

Suddenly, Impeachment Hearings Are Looking Like a Strong Possibility

by Dave Lindorff

Thu, 11/08/2007-You wouldn't know it if you just watch TV news or read thecorporate press, but this past Tuesday, something remarkable happened.Despite the pig-headed opposition of the Democratic Party's topcongressional leadership, a majority of the House, including threeRepublicans, voted to send Dennis Kucinich's long sidelined Cheneyimpeachment bill (H Res 333) to the Judiciary Committee for hearings.

The vote was 218 to 194.

Now the behind-the-scenes partisan maneuvering that preceded that vote wasarcane indeed, with Kucinich first exercising a member's privilege motion topresent his stymied impeachment bill to the full House, only to have SpeakerNancy Pelosi arrange for a colleague (Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-MD)offer a motion to table it. The Republicans, anxious to embarrass theSpeaker, threw a wrench into that plan, though, by voting as a bloc tooppose tabling. Since Kucinich already has 22 co-sponsors for his bill, itwas clear that the tabling gambit would fail. As soon as that becameapparent, rank-and-file Democrats, unwilling to be seen by theirconstituents as defending Cheney, rushed to change their votes to opposingthe tabling motion. In the end, tabling failed by 242 to 170 with 77Democrats supporting a pleasantly surprised Kucinich.

In order to avoid a floor debate on the merits of impeaching the eminentlyimpeachable Vice President Cheney, Pelosi and her allies then moved to sendKucinich's bill directly to the Judiciary Committee. They were joined bythree Republicans, including maverick Republican presidential candidate RonPaul (R-TX).

Now the hope of the Democratic leadership is that this means Kucinich'simpeachment bill will continue to be safely bottled up in a subcommittee ofthe Judiciary Committee. But it may not work out that way for them.

Whatever the explanation, this impeachment bill has been endorsed by a floorvote of the full House, with bipartisan support.

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The New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/10/washington/10tax.html

House Backs Tax Relief Bill, but Fate in Senate Is Unsure

By EDMUND L. ANDREWS
November 10, 2007

WASHINGTON, Nov. 9 - The House passed a $78.3 billion tax bill on Friday that would shield about 21 million people from the alternative minimum tax next year, and pay for it in part by ending tax breaks for private equity funds, hedge funds and other partnerships.

But the bill, approved 216 to 193, faces a highly uncertain future in the Senate. Republicans are staunchly opposed to any tax increases, and some Democrats are torn between appealing to their party instincts and alienating some of their big contributors.

President Bush has already threatened to veto the bill, which also includes xtensions of several other tax provisions, if it includes higher taxes that would shift more of the tax burden to the wealthy. He argues that Congress should freeze the alternative minimum tax without trying to make up the $50.6 billion revenue loss for the 2007 tax year.

Following Mr. Bush's prescription, however, would increase the budget deficit, something Democrats have vowed to avoid. Because it is not adjusted for inflation, and because of the way it interacts with Mr. Bush's tax cuts of 2001 and 2003, the alternative tax has exploded in the last six years and is set to hit people with incomes as low as $50,000.

Congress has prevented that expansion by passing a series of one-year "patches," but the cost of those patches has exploded. House Democrats said their bill was both fiscally responsible and fair, protecting middle-income families without additional borrowing by repealing tax breaks that benefit the wealthiest people in the world.

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The Washington Post

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/09/AR2007110901897.html

How to Win The War Of Ideas

By Robert Satloff
Saturday, November 10, 2007; A17

The resignation of Karen P. Hughes as undersecretary of state for public diplomacy gives President Bush an opportunity to fix one of the most glaring blunders in his administration's response to the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 -- a failure to prioritize ideological warfare over public relations.

Today, most Americans believe that the United States is fighting three wars: in Iraq, in Afghanistan and against violent Islamist extremists around the world (i.e., "the war on terror"). But as the Sept. 11 commission pointed out, we are, more accurately, engaged in what can be considered a fourth war, gainst the spread of the ideology of radical Islamism. In this war, the attlefields are the many cities, towns and villages where extremists seek to impose their absolutist view of sharia-based rule. The stakes in this contest are no less consequential for U.S. interests than those in the other three wars -- perhaps greater.

In terms of the narrow "war on terror," there is considerable evidence that the terrorists are losing. Captured al-Qaeda documents paint a portrait of a ovement in distress, fearing defeat. Al-Qaeda and its satellites have failed to overthrow local Muslim governments, galvanize popular support or make headway toward replacing the international order with one based on the collective action of the world's Muslims.

In the ideological battle, however, radical Islamists are doing well. They have taken advantage of the administration's "freedom agenda," and in Lebanon, Egypt and the Palestinian territories, they have made substantial progress. Elsewhere, Islamists are expanding their influence in other ways, exploiting governmental weakness or failure in educational, financial and social welfare systems.

The U.S. government has a great stake in the outcome of this contest. But our government operates as though this war barely exists and has focused its energies on the wrong problem.

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The Washington Post

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/09/AR2007110901790.html

The Real Pending Tax Hike

By Alex M. Brill
Special to washingtonpost.com's Think Tank Town
Friday, November 9, 2007; 4:57 PM

Washington is abuzz about the tax proposal introduced recently by House Ways and Means Chairman Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.). The bill tackles a host of tax policy matters but its centerpiece proposes to repeal the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) and offset that revenue loss with an $800 billion tax increase on the roughly 3.5 million taxpayers earning above $200,000 a year. The tax increase hikes marginal tax rates by nearly 5 percentage points. Republicans have been quick to attack this tax increase on small business owners and entrepreneurs and rightly point out that the high marginal tax rates in the Rangel plan would negatively impact the economy.

Yet Chairman Rangel's proposal is not the biggest hike on the horizon. Today's current tax code will "naturally" deliver a tax increase to all taxpayers in 2011. While Republicans have attacked the Democrat's proposal as "the mother of all tax hikes", the biggest tax increase is the pending expiration of the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts. That hike will boost tax collections by over $200 billion a year after 2011, more than twice the size of the revenue raisers proposed by Rangel.

The reason that these "natural" tax increases are on the horizon is a function of the legislative process and bizarre rules of the United States Senate. Senate procedures are such that while a permanent tax increase can be enacted with a simple majority vote under a budget process known as "reconciliation," a permanent tax cut requires support from 60 Senators. Tax cuts can be enacted through the 51 vote reconciliation process but the rules require those cuts to be temporary (up to ten years). As a result of these rules and slim Republican majorities in the Senate, the key individual tax cuts enacted by the Republican Congress over the last six years are set to expire at the end of 2010.

If Congress does not act to prevent these hikes, the impact will be dramatic. According to an analysis by the Treasury Department, for a family of four earning $50,000, it will be, an average tax hike of $2,100. Five million taxpayers currently paying no federal income tax will be brought onto the tax rolls. Marginal tax rates would rise for most taxpayers. The tax on dividend income would more than double and capital gains tax rate would jump from 15 percent to 20 percent. In a time when the tax on capital has been declining in other countries to encourage investment and attract capital, the U.S. tax code is scheduled to head in the opposite direction.

While these tax hikes are slated to occur under current law, the political reality of what will happen in the next few years is much more complicated. For one, after 2008, the President's budget won't be advocating a simple extension of current law. The next President, Democrat or Republican, will craft his or her own tax agenda. Second, budget pressures are rapidly becoming near-term problems and therefore likely to attract substantial political attention. Extending hundreds of billion in annual tax reductions without other changes may be politically untenable.

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The Washington Post

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/09/AR2007110902202.html?hpid=topnews

A Human Rights Champion, Cheerfully Defiant

By Emily Wax
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, November 10, 2007; A12

LAHORE, Pakistan, Nov. 9 -- Female prison guards sit in Asma Jahangir's art-filled living room, watching as she sips tea, smokes cigarettes and talks about how proud she is to be Pakistani.

Jahangir, a lawyer and head of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, was placed under house arrest last Saturday, and since then the government has turned her two-story family villa into a jail. More than 20 prison guards, some with submachine guns, are posted in her garden, and plainclothes officers in oversize suits peer through her windows.

Her country is now in a state of turmoil, following President Pervez Musharraf's declaration of emergency rule, which has included the firing of Supreme Court justices and the detention of hundreds of opposition leaders, lawyers and human rights activists.

But Jahangir remains defiant and upbeat, waving to neighbors and continuing to work on position papers on how to bring the rule of law, an independent judiciary and stability to Pakistan.

Life under house arrest has been "just lovely, and it hasn't hurt me," Jahangir, 55 and a mother of three, said Friday in an interview at her home. "I am so proud of Pakistanis and specifically of our lawyers for speaking out and getting their heads bashed in for a better Pakistan."

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The Washington Post

http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/postglobal/needtoknow/2007/11/voice_from_house_arrest_dont_l.html

Voice from House Arrest: Don't Let Pakistan Follow Burma

By Afsin Yurdakul

''I can't speak for too long on the phone,'' Asma Jahangir said in a calm, determined tone, ''the military might cut it off.'' Nonetheless, Pakistan's leading human rights lawyer and activist accepted my offer of a phone interview this morning. She spoke from her home, where she was being held under house arrest, via the one phone line that the Pakistani police had somehow forgotten to cut off.

She spoke quickly, not because she was nervous, but because she wanted to tell the world as much as she could about what is really going on behind the scenes of Pakistan's current political turmoil. She said the electronic media is completely shut down, and satellite dishes have been removed from the supermarket shelves, ostensibly by the military, to prevent people from getting or spreading any information about the state of emergency.

Jahangir urged the world not to turn a blind eye to violations of democracy and free speech in Pakistan, and called for maximum international pressure on General Pervez Musharraf.

However, as she was telling me that these are defining moments for her country's future, the police interjected, and we lost the connection. I called back immediately. A male voice answered (she had been home alone only moments before) and told me that 'she was not allowed to talk anymore,' because 'she was with the police.' At the moment I have no information regarding her status.

I originally conducted this interview for Turkey's NTV-MSNBC news portal, where it was published this morning in Turkish. I worry that the interview itself, intended as a chance for her to speak freely, is in fact a chilling example of the ban on free speech in Pakistan today.

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The Miami Herald

http://www.miamiherald.com/851/story/302630.html

The U.N.'s campaign to demonize Israel

By U.N. WATCH
Posted on Sat, Nov. 10, 2007

Below are excerpts from ''The United Nations and Anti-Semitism,'' a report
by U.N. Watch, a Geneva-based monitoring group.

An alien observing U.N. debates, reading its resolutions and walking its halls could well conclude that a principal purpose of the world body is to censure a tiny country called Israel. Beginning in the late 1960s, the full weight of the United Nations was gradually but deliberately turned against the country it had conceived by General Assembly resolution a mere two decades earlier.

The campaign to demonize and delegitimize Israel in every U.N. and international forum was initiated by the Arab states together with the Soviet Union and supported by what has become known as an ''automatic majority'' of Third World member states. In 1975, following a steady drumbeat of anti-Israel declarations, the majority of the General Assembly adopted the ''Zionism is Racism'' resolution. At the same time, it instituted a series of related measures that installed an infrastructure of anti-Israel propaganda throughout the United Nations.

It was not until 1991, after strenuous efforts by democratic forces that the nfamous resolution was repealed. However, in many ways the legacy of 1975 remains fully intact: a plethora of U.N. committees, annual resolutions, bureaucratic divisions, permanent exhibits in New York and Geneva headquarters -- all dedicated to a relentless and virulent propaganda war against the Jewish state. . . .

The U.N. campaign to delegitimize Israel has its desired effect. Sworn enemies of Israel or Jews brandish U.N. resolutions as evidence of international support and legitimacy. Others who may have held no previous bias become convinced that the Jewish state is an international outlaw, with similarly negative views about those seen as its supporters. . . .

Most worrying of all, the U.N. record between 2004 and 2007 shows an intensification of one-sided, redundant and irrational measures that, taken together, form an infrastructure to demonize and delegitimize the Jewish state. In 2006-07, for example, the extraordinary amount of annual General Assembly resolutions singling out Israel for condemnation were increased still further, intensifying an insidious double standard.

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The Miami Herald

http://www.miamiherald.com/851/story/302638.html

Prepare for the $100 oil tsunami

By FRIDA GHITIS
Posted on Sat, Nov. 10, 2007

By now, after years of skyrocketing fuel prices, the news that the price of a barrel of oil is hitting $100 doesn't exactly cause us to panic. When you consider that a barrel of crude cost just $11 in 1998, and double that at the beginning of the decade, the truly astonishing development is that our lives have changed so little as a result of the higher prices.

And yet, as some oil exporting countries swim in the riches of our gas money, the consequences of $100 oil are not always what you -- or they -- might expect.

Reshaping the world

Soaring prices at the pump could cause Western economies to slow down, and they will continue to enrich and embolden shady rulers in dangerous countries. But far beyond our SUV-clogged highways, the price of oil could reshape the world in unexpected ways.

Many countries, including major oil exporters, spend huge sums subsidizing fuel prices; the higher the price of oil, the higher the cost of these subsidies. At some point, the subsidies become too much and the government has to cut back, potentially sparking unrest. That was the experience of Venezuela in the late 1980s, when thousands of people died in riots that followed a cut in subsidies.

In Venezuela today, where the world's cheapest gasoline sells at about 8 cents a gallon, President Hugo Chávez is already laying the groundwork for a ossible cut in a subsidy that costs his deficit-riddled treasury about $9 billion a year.

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Local10.com

http://www.local10.com/print/14549402/detail.html

Does Skipping Meals Help Your Heart?
Monthly Fast Tied To Better Arteries

POSTED: 10:19 am EST November 9, 2007
UPDATED: 10:28 am EST November 9, 2007

Skipping food one day a month may be good for your health, researchers toldthe American Heart Association.

Doctors had noticed that Mormons -- members of the Church of Jesus Christ ofLatter-Day Saints -- who fast once a month have lower rates of heart diseasethan the general population.

Mormons are known for other practices that can boost health, such as aprohibition on tobacco use.

"People who fast seem to receive a heart-protective benefit, and thisappeared to also hold true in non-LDS people who fast as part of ahealth-conscious lifestyle," said Dr. Benjamin D. Horne of the IntermountainMedical Center.

Looking at medical record of more than 4,600 men and women from 1994 to2002, the team found that 61 percent of Mormons had significant narrowing inheart arteries. That compared to 66 percent for those who claimed anotherreligion or none at all.

When looking deeper at specific behaviors -- such as drinking caffeine andattending worship services -- they found that fasting was the biggestpredictor of who would have heart disease.

Fifty-nine percent of those who fast had heart disease, compared ot 67percent who did not.



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Local10.com

http://www.local10.com/print/14559201/detail.html

Author Norman Mailer Dead At 84
Debut Novel Was 1948's 'The Naked And The Dead'

POSTED: 8:11 am EST November 10, 2007

NEW YORK -- Norman Mailer has died.

The noted American author was 84 and died early Saturday at New York's Mount Sinai Hospital of kidney failure.

Word of his death came from Mailer's literary executor Michael Lennon, who is also his official biographer.

Mailer's debut novel "The Naked and the Dead" was published in 1948 and went on to become a classic, followed by other literary masterworks. The two-time Pulitzer Prize winner was revered for the insight, passion and originality of his works.

Over the years, Mailer encouraged an image as feisty, streetwise and high-living. He drank, fought, smoked pot, married six times and stabbed his second wife, almost fatally, during a drunken party.

He had nine children, produced five movies, dabbled in journalism and once ran for mayor of New York. At one point, he was banned from the Manhattan YWHA for reciting obscene poetry. And he crusaded against women's lib.

But in the end, as Newsweek magazine review Raymond Sokolov noted, "it is his writing that will count."


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