qua est diplomacy?

And a Pure Islamic State is What?

proficuus

Expleo

Whatever; However

Has anybody checked out the economics in the higher stroke areas? Lower national salary averages and the added burden of the exorbitant cost of fruits and vegetables would be a trade-off for stress related heart attacks instead of the strokes from working two jobs just to eat poorly and pay exceedinly rising costs of living.

Eyes Wide Shut

mi Casa et su Casa

“As we have said repeatedly, a real settlement of the Kosovo problem could only be achieved on the basis of accord between the parties, the Serbs and the Albanians in Kosovo, not on the basis of some enforced solutions,” Kamynin said.

He added that Russia was pushing for “jointly determining next steps that would encourage a process of negotiations in order to find a compromise solution

Chinese companies are currently building the Merowe Dam in Sudan. The project is displacing 70,000 people from the fertile Nile Valley and moving them into the Nubian Desert. Peaceful protests against the project have been violently oppressed by the Sudanese authorities. Ali Askouri, a leader of the affected communities and president of the Piankhi Research Group, said in Shanghai:

“Projects that do not address the needs of the affected people will fuel conflicts and social disintegration. China should consult African civil society groups and affected communities in the projects it finances.”

Week End?

Romney is not the wealthiest candidate ever to run for president.

Steve Forbes, who ran unsuccessfully for the GOP nomination in 1996, had an estimate net worth of more than $430 million. John Kerry, the 2004 Democratic presidential nominee, reported a net worth between $165 million and $235 million in 2005, most of it controlled by his wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry.

Bill

ArticleE1
An Historical Overview of the Persecution of Christians under Islam.

Apostasy Bill Calls for Death to Converts from Islam – Christian Newswire
n addition to life in prison or death, offenders yield all properties in their name to Muslim relatives and forfeit custody of any minor or biological child under their care.Davinci is Dead

FOXNews.com – Pakistan Christians Receive Threatening Letters Urging Conversion – International News
Christians in northwest Pakistan have received threatening letters warning them to shut their churches and convert to Islam,

FOXNews.com – Rice: U.S. Ties to Russia ‘Complicated’ Over Putin’s Moves to Consolidate Power – Poli
Just ahead of her departure for Moscow next week, Rice said the United States and Russia are working well together on a number of issues but that the overall ties remained “complicated” by a rollback in reforms and Russia’s contentious relations with its neighbors.

allAfrica.com: Algeria: Africa Insight – Al Qaeda’s Deadly Hand Hangs Over Algeria And Morocco (Page
Last month’s terrorism acts in Morocco and Algeria have rekindled fears that the region might face a new period of instability and insecurity.

U.S. melamine probers find empty Chinese factories | U.S. | Reuters
“We visited the two facilities and there is essentially nothing to be found because they are closed down,”

Peruvians sue oil giant over Amazon pollution | Waste and pollution | Guardian Unlimited Environment
The claim alleges that over the course of three decades Oxy, as it is known, engaged in “irresponsible, reckless, immortal and illegal practices” in an “unchecked effort to profit from Amazonian oil”. It adds: “These practices were below accepted industry standards, prohibited by law, and Oxy knew they would result in the severe contamination of water and land.”

Comment is free: Transparency’s silver lining
One of the lessons of the Wolfowitz debacle is that it does actually matter how stakeholders and employees feel about the bank’s leadership.

United Press International – Energy – Briefing
“The first nuclear power plant of Turkey will be built by 2015,” Cakiroglu said. “We have the necessary know-how for this.”

United Press International – Energy – Analysis
Russian gas giant Gazprom relies on Turkmen gas to help satisfy its supply contracts, as production at home stagnates and energy demand across Europe grows.

allAfrica.com: Botswana: Sweden Grants P13.5 Million for Okavango Basin (Page 1 of 1)
The management of the Okavango River Basin, Botswana, Namibia and Angola has received a P13.5 million boost from the government of Sweden.

www.washingtoninstitute.org/templateC05.php?CID=2600
Turkey has traditionally suffered from a “majoritarian malaise,” with right-wing parties — such as the National Front coalitions in the late 1970s — interpreting their control of parliament as a popular mandate to ignore democratic checks and balances.

Article or Op-Ed

There seem to be two parallel realities today regarding Iran’s nuclear program. On the one hand, most of the international community appears to oppose Iran going nuclear, and the Bush administration has helped forge two U.N. Security Council resolutions (despite Russian and Chinese hesitancy) that impose limited sanctions on the Iranian nuclear and missile industries, as well as individuals and entities associated with them. Even though the sanctions were far less stringent than those the administration initially sought, they seem to have created dissonance within the Iranian elite. Criticism of Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has become much more open and far more pointed. One newspaper associated with Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei went so far as to say that Ahmadinejad was using the nuclear issue to divert attention from the failings of his government. As Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns, the administration’s point person on the issue, put it, “We’ve roiled their government, and I think we’ve shocked them a bit.”

That’s the good news. Now the other reality: The Iranians continue to press ahead with their nuclear program.

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Star dies in monstrous explosion
“Of all exploding stars ever observed, this was the king,”

Mini-continent discovered-Health/Science-The Times of India
“Our findings show that a continental fragment of a size hitherto never suspected must have existed between India and the Antarctic.”

BBC NEWS | Asia-Pacific | Koreas agree cross-border train
Military officers from North and South Korea have given the go-ahead for the first train crossing over the heavily fortified border in more than 50 years.

NDTV.com
close ties with Washington were “a necessity for the balance of the world.”

euro|topics – Current

Germany – Die Zeit

Elif Shafak on Turkish-European connections

euro|topics – Press review – Archive – Nicolas Sarkozy’s European plans
Nicolas Sarkozy’s European plans

Pope kicks off anti-abortion mission in Brazil. 10/05/2007. ABC News Online
“I am well aware that the soul of this people, as of all Latin America, safeguards values that are radically Christian,” the Pope said in Portuguese after he was greeted by Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

King Herod’s tomb unearthed, Israeli university claims – CNN.com
An Israeli archaeologist has found the tomb of King Herod, the legendary builder of ancient Jerusalem and the Holy Land, Hebrew University said late Monday.

“Dn’t equate actions with religion” Sohail Mohammed

Living without Health Insurance

Why Every American Needs Coverage

By Joseph Antos

Posted: Tuesday, May 8, 2007

TESTIMONY

House Committee on Energy and Commerce, Subcommittee on Health

Publication Date: April 25, 2007

…Awe

After a search of more than 30 years, Ehud Netzer of the Hebrew University says he has located the tomb at Herodium, a site south of Jerusalem.

Herod was noted in the New Testament for his Massacre of the Innocents.

Told of Jesus’ birth, Herod ordered all children under two in Bethlehem to be killed, the Gospel of Matthew said.

By Dafna Linzer
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, May 7, 2007; A17

On Douglas Feith’s first day as a visiting professor at Georgetown last year, he dropped in on another new professor down the hall. George Tenet, the former director of central intelligence, was friendly and welcoming, Feith recalled. Feith, who as the No. 3 at the Pentagon had served in the Bush administration with Tenet, suggested they get together for lunch.

Not long afterward, Tenet moved his office, four floors down. He told friends he wanted to be as far away as possible from Feith.

The tale of the two professors is shaping up as a reproduction in miniature of the Bush administration’s titanic struggle over Iraq.

The two men, who played key roles in building President Bush‘s case for war, had spent countless hours together in meetings in 2002-2004, poring over intelligence and hammering out policy. Feith recalls the relationship as amicable, even if they often disagreed.

No longer. Tenet and Feith are teaching rival versions of recent history and taking their disagreements public. Each is teaching a class that reflects his own worldview and experience in institutions — the Defense Department and the CIA — that saw the world in starkly different terms. Both classes concentrate on al-Qaeda and the events preceding Sept. 11, 2001, as well as on Iraq.

“They come from such different points of view, the way they argue is so different, it is hard to imagine they worked for the same president,” said David Salvo, a graduate student and one of only two students admitted to both classes.

In his new memoir, “At the Center of the Storm,” Tenet draws an unflattering portrait of Feith as a man eager to manipulate intelligence to push the country to war. Last week, Feith, who is completing his own memoir, shot back. In a critical review published in the Wall Street Journal, he highlighted factual errors in Tenet’s account while defending the work of his Pentagon office.

Feith said his memoir will portray an administration filled with intelligent people who expressed contrasting views about Iraq and al-Qaeda. Of Tenet, he said: “There was no animus between us. His experience came from inside the intelligence world, mine from the policy world. But obviously, we are writing books that are of a very different species.”

Salvo said neither professor used the class to defend his record. “They stood on their principles but acknowledged where things went wrong,” he said. They also blamed one another, with Feith noting the faulty CIA intelligence on Iraq’s weapons program and Tenet lashing out at the Pentagon for questioning CIA analysts’ work.

“There was definitely some tension over DOD’s work where Tenet really resented the fact, and he made it clear, that DOD was challenging the CIA’s assessments,” Salvo recalled. “And Feith on so many occasions really was challenging the CIA’s assessment, and he insisted that his office was not doing alternative intelligence work, but doing policy work.”

The readings in Tenet’s class, “Intelligence in Practice,” focus on Bush administration policy and the history of intelligence. Feith’s course, “The Bush Administration and the War on Terror,” covers the Iraq war and the battle against al-Qaeda.

Each professor asks his students to play the role he gave up in 2004. Assignments include briefing the president on threats and preparing plans for war. At one point, Tenet played the president, grilling students about terrorism threats and chastising them for being unprepared for rigorous inquiry, Salvo recalled.

Both classes’ reading lists include the 2004 report by the Sept. 11 commission. Tenet asks students to read the entire report. Feith assigns two early chapters on the rise of the al-Qaeda threat, leaving out portions elsewhere that criticize the work of his Pentagon office. Both rely on the writings of Bernard Lewis, a Princeton historian who has written extensively on the rise of fundamentalist Islam.

Two of the required readings on Tenet’s syllabus are books by The Washington Post‘s Bob Woodward, chronicling the administration’s views of its first years in office. Woodward, who reviewed Tenet’s memoir in yesterday’s Book World in The Post, was also a guest lecturer in Tenet’s class. Woodward’s 2004 book, “Plan of Attack,” said that Tenet assured Bush in December 2002 that the intelligence on Iraq’s weapons was a “slam dunk.”

In his memoir, Tenet called that a misrepresentation and said that he used the phrase to describe the ease with which a case for war could be made to the public.

” ‘Slam dunk’ came up on the very first day of class,” Salvo said of Tenet’s course. “He didn’t really address it, but I remember him telling us that you own every word you say or write down and that it’s with you forever.”

Feith’s longer reading list is focused more on al-Qaeda than on the Bush administration, but Salvo said the class discussion always veered toward the policies Feith helped formulate.

Students in Feith’s class took their final exam Friday, and Tenet’s students must complete a 10-to-15-page final paper this week. Tenet has declined newspaper interviews since his book was published, relying on television appearances to promote the memoir.

“I think both of them honestly said there are things they got wrong,” Salvo recalled. “Tenet said on multiple occasions, ‘We just got WMD wrong,’ and from a professional standpoint that really bothered him. From Feith’s point of view, I think the Iraq strategy and the policy are things he will believe in until the day he dies, but he readily acknowledged that the plans on the ground did not go well and that the Bush administration hasn’t done the best job setting benchmarks for what is success in Iraq. They were both pretty honest.”

Staff researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.

Tribunal Update

Project Highlight

Tribunal: April

Reports on secret Serbian documents followed up by international media.

By Merdijana Sadovic, Hague programme manager

A series of IWPR articles on key documents which the International Court of Justice failed to demand from Serbia before ruling on Bosnia’s genocide case, generated a series of articles and debates in the international and local media. Also a new trial at the Hague tribunal sparked considerable international interest in April

A number of articles appeared in international media on some key documents from the Milosevic trial which were not submitted to the ICJ and which, apparently, might have changed the outcome of the ruling in Bosnia’s genocide case against Serbia. These articles were published in the Herald Tribune, the New York Times, AP, Jutarnji List, Dnevni Avaz, and were quoted in a number of electronic media, such as B92, Bosnian state and Federal television, BHT1 and FTV, and Croatian television HRT.

IWPR broke the story several weeks before, and a former leading tribunal prosecutor told us that the current media frenzy was set in motion by our reports on the issue.

As a result of media coverage of the secret documents, Croatia’s president and prime minister, Stjepan Mesic and Ivo Sanader, respectively have said they will demand access to them, as the Zagreb authorities prepare for their own lawsuit against Serbia.

Additionally, the trial of Macedonia’s former minister of interior Ljube Boskoski and another police official Johan Tarculoski started on April 16 at the ICTY – the first and most likely the only trial at this court involving Macedonians. It sparked a lot of interest in the international media and we gave interviews to the Polish newspaper Rzeczpospolita and Radio France International, and provided background information on the case to a number of journalists in Bosnia. We talked not only about the Boskoski-Tarculoski case, but also discussed the tribunal’s very slim chances of completing scheduled trials before the 2008/2010 deadline set by the UN.

Also in April, we began talks with a leading international broadcaster about producing a weekly half-an-hour programme for its Balkan section on subjects raised by our tribunal output. The aim of the project is to maximise our impact in the region.

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Exploded Star the Brightest Ever Seen

Blast Shakes Up Supernova Theory

By Marc Kaufman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, May 8, 2007; A01

Astronomers have spotted a cataclysmic explosion that marked the death of a huge, distant star in a blast five times as bright and powerful as any they had seen previously. They said yesterday that a similar fate may be imminent for a star in Earth’s galactic neighborhood.

The size and energy of the newly recorded blast, 240 million light-years away, have already begun to transform scientific understanding of how especially large stars explode, and have left awestruck researchers concerned — and a little excited — about what might happen to the similarly enormous and unstable star closer to home.

If that nearer star, named Eta Carinae, blows up like the one just discovered, they said, it could possibly spew dangerous radiation in Earth’s direction. More likely, however, it would erupt into the most luminous star in our sky — visible during the day and bright enough to let people read unaided at night for weeks and perhaps months.

The new discovery of a massive star exploding in a runaway thermonuclear reaction is especially exciting for scientists, who said it gives them important clues to the nature of the early universe and the formation and destruction of the earliest stars.

“This was a truly monstrous explosion, a hundred times more energetic than a typical supernova,” astronomer Nathan Smith of the University of California at Berkeley said of the exploded star, called SN 2006gy, which was believed to be as massive as a star can be.

“It’s so powerful that it requires a new explanation of how massive stars explode,” Smith said. Unlike most supernovas, which fade quickly, this exploded star has remained extremely bright since it was spotted in September.

Stars approaching this enormous size generally implode when they become unstable, leaving behind a black hole or a neutron star, a cold, extremely dense remnant. Astronomers considered it theoretically possible that such a massive star could instead explode and throw vast amounts of matter into space instead of collapsing, but they had never before witnessed it.

“Discoveries don’t get more exciting than this for a theorist,” said Mario Livio of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, who was not involved in the research but spoke at a NASA news conference yesterday.

“The suggestion is that we may be seeing a new type of explosion mechanism, never seen before, and that the first stars in the universe exploded with this mechanism,” he said. “At the same time, there may be a star in our own galaxy that could do the same thing — tomorrow.”

Livio said the enormous Eta Carinae, which is only 7,500 light-years away in our own Milky Way galaxy, has many features similar to those of the newly discovered exploded star and has been showing signs of instability that could lead to a similar supernova.

The potential danger comes from the fact that explosions of massive stars generally emit jets of intense gamma radiation, among the most powerful and harmful forces in the universe. If Eta Carinae did explode and a jet was pointed in the general direction of the solar system, Livio said, Earth could be endangered. But because the gamma-ray jets tend to be relatively narrow, like the beam of a lighthouse, the odds are that the jet would miss Earth.

Far more likely, Livio said, is that an Eta Carinae explosion “could be the best star show in the history of modern civilization.” That show, however, would be seen only in the Southern Hemisphere.

Stars as massive as Eta Carinae and the distant one that exploded have seldom been found — only a dozen or so have been detected among the 400 billion stars in the Milky Way. Eta Carinae was first observed as an especially bright star in 1843, when it was in the midst of a smaller surge in brightness. The extra luminosity faded around 1870, but the star began to brighten noticeably a century later.

Unlike Eta Carinae, the newly discovered exploding star is not prominent in the sky because it is so far away.

As astronomers peer to the farther reaches of the universe and back into time, they expect to find many more of the superlarge stars, which coalesced and were destroyed in a relatively short time after the Big Bang. These early stars are of enormous interest to astrophysicists because they can help explain how the original few elements of the universe — primarily hydrogen and helium — were fused together inside stars to form the heavier elements. Those stars also had to explode, rather than collapse into black holes, in order for the universe to become populated with the many elements it has.

The SN 2006gy supernova was first detected last September during a routine telescope sweep of the night skies by University of Texas graduate student Robert Quimby.

The extraordinary brightness of the star attracted the interest of astronomers at Berkeley and the University of Texas at Austin. The supernova was also examined at the Lick Observatory in California, at the Keck Observatory in Mauna Kea, Hawaii, and, perhaps most important, by NASA’s orbiting Chandra X-ray Observatory, operated by the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge, Mass.

Using the Chandra instruments, researchers were able to rule out the most likely alternative explanation for the huge supernova: that a white dwarf star with a mass about that of the sun exploded in a hydrogen-rich environment, leading to the unprecedented brightness.

The Chandra instruments, however, found that the exploded star was not producing the X-ray radiation expected under those conditions. With that established, Berkeley astrophysicist Dave Pooley said, the team became confident that SN 2006gy “was, in fact, the death of an extremely massive star.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/07/AR2007050700752_pf.html

Decidedly Un-deciding

Parameters

Kurds, Sunnis oppose Iraq Oil Bill

Rights and Wrongs?

TheHill.com

The Washington Times, America’s Newspaper

washingtonpost.com – nation, world, technology and Washington area news and headlines

United Press International – News. Analysis. Insight.

village voice > home

International – SPIEGEL ONLINE – News

newsblaster.cs.columbia.edu/

NewsInPictures – Your gateway to “News Pictures” on the internet

Main Page – Wikinews

International News, World News, Top News Stories, Global News & More | Reuters.com

WN Networks

World Political

World News

israel today > Home

Yale Israel Journal

israelinsider: Israel’s daily online news magazine

dbpubs.stanford.edu:8091/~testbed/doc2/WebBase/crawl_lists/crawled_hosts.10-2006.f

Writers Resources | Publicity| Public Relations

Routledge

WorldNews

BBC World News Headlines

BBC – Ouch! Disability Magazine – Weblog

Breaking News | News & Media | Latest Current – FOXNews.com

NewsMax: America’s News Page

TotalNEWS: all the News, on the Net, all the Time

ICC issues arrest warrants for Darfur war crimes suspects

Google News

News Index – The Original New Only Search Engine

The top news headlines on current events from Yahoo! News

C-SPAN

CNN.com – Breaking News, U.S., World, Weather, Entertainment & Video News

First Read

Man allegedly ran home ‘warehouse bank’ – Crime & Punishment – MSNBC.com

Loaded reptiles earn woman house arrest – Criminal Peculiarity – MSNBC.com

Daily Forex Forecast

www.MiddleEast.Org

Andrew

National Tragedy
Three years ago, I began a national campaign for academic freedom designed to promote the restoration of academic standards, including intellectual diversity, in institutions of higher learning. I did so having visited more than three hundred campuses in the previous fifteen years and having interviewed several thousand students during these visits. In the course of these visits, I came to be familiar with the massive corruption of the academic enterprise that had occurred since I was an undergraduate in the 1950s, which had transformed large segments of the liberal arts schools into political parties of the academic left. This corruption was the result of a determined campaign by Gramscian radicals to use the universities as a platform for their “transformative” agendas of radical social change. In pursuit of their goals, they had created entire academic departments and fields, while subverting others in order to institute programs of study that were ideological rather than scholarly in content and design. To further these goals, they had instituted a system of intolerance (“political correctness”) to de-legitimize alternative intellectual paradigms and ideas, and had put in place the largest and most effective blacklist in the history of the country, whose purpose was to rid faculties of independent-minded professors, who might interfere with their designs.
General Introduction to the “Indoctrination Studies” Section
By David Horowitz
September 15, 2006
Frontpage
magaazine

Border B_ _ _ _ _
Let’s take a look at the man who spoke these words, and who was entrusted by Mrs. Clinton to fill one of the most vital positions in her campaign.
Hillary’s Open Borders
Disgrace
By John Perazzo
FrontPageMagazine.com | April 24, 2007
Frontpage Magazine

A Democrat Love Affair
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (April 24) – Hamas militants fired a barrage of rockets and mortar shells toward Israel on Tuesday and said they considered a five-month truce with Israel to have come to an end.
Hamas Fires Rockets Into Israel
Muslim Militant Group Declares Truce Over
By IBRAHIM BARZAK
AP

Tax Hike
“I propose we eliminate 500,000 government contracting positions . . . and that we insist on competitive bidding for the remaining contracts,” Clinton declared
Hillary: I’ll Terminate Federal Contractors
From the NewsMax.com Staff
For the story behind the story…
Tuesday, April 24, 2007 11:29 a.m. EDT

Devolution
Crow has suggested using “only one square per restroom visit, except, of course, on those pesky occasions where two to three could be required”.
Crow calls for limit on loo paper
BBC News

Bacon on the Hill
When she couldn’t tally enough votes, she added $24 billion in pork – much in the form of agricultural subsidies helpful to rural Democratic lawmakers.
Pelosi insisted the spending wasn’t pork.
It’s unknown whether the non-partisan CRS would have made the same determination.
Transparency in Government Takes a Hit
Dave Eberhart, NewsMax
Tuesday, April 24, 2007

Based on content analysis of global media and interviews with many diplomats and journalists,
this paper describes the trajectory of the media from objective observer to fiery advocate,
becoming in fact a weapon of modern warfare. The paper also shows how an open society,
Israel, is victimized by its own openness and how a closed sect, Hezbollah, can retain almost
total control of the daily message of journalism and propaganda.
“The Israeli-Hezbollah War of 2006: The Media As A Weapon in Asymmetrical Conflict”

Manifesto
Perhaps the most serious charge made by the media throughout the war was that Israel was indiscriminately targeting civilians. Groups such as Human Rights Watch made the allegation, which was then publicized uncritically by reporters. Although Israel underscored that it was Hezbollah that was using civilians as shields, the media relied on the allegations of Kenneth Roth, the executive director of HRW, who charged, falsely, that Israel’s military showed “disturbing disregard for the lives of Lebanese civilians.”
The Media’s War on Israel
By Mitchell Bard
FrontPageMagazine.com | April 24, 2007

Andrew

Don’t dismiss him

By RACHEL BERNS Colorado Daily Staff
Wednesday, April 11, 2007 8:53 PM MDT

For the past two years, Professor Ward Churchill has faced an ongoing battle with his employers at CU. Now, almost a year after being recommended for dismissal by former Chancellor Phil DiStefano, powerful scholars from across the nation are speaking out to reverse Churchill’s discharge.

Law Professor Derrick Bell of New York University’s School of Law, Noam Chomsky of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and other prominent professors are involved in this effort and published a letter in the recent edition of the New York Review of Books.

“The New York Review of Books is the most widely read periodical by intellectuals in America and other parts of the world,” said Reggie Dylan on April 2, who worked with Professor Richard Falk in drafting the letter. “(The letter’s) purpose is to draw attention and to make people aware of the gravity of the case and to call on them to do everything they can to challenge the administration.”

In early 2005, Churchill’s Internet-published essay regarding the 9/11 terrorist attacks became a source of criticism. In it, he questioned the innocence of many killed that day and caused an outrage. While Interim Chancellor DiStefano supported Churchill’s right to freedom of speech, he publicly condemned the statements made in the essay.

After over a year of review and investigation, the University’s Standing Committee on Research Misconduct recommended that Churchill be penalized for repeated acts of “serious research misconduct” in June of 2006. In August of that year, the University of Colorado Student Union (UCSU) passed a resolution supporting the university’s decision to fire Professor Churchill.

Shortly after, scholars from across the country began showing their support for Churchill. Dylan said that the opposition for the case has been kept out of the public eye until recently and that there are a growing number of scholars from around the country who support the reversal of the pending dismissal. The publication of the letter is meant to encourage more people to speak out.

He said that the letter is just the beginning of a new wave of outrage and that newspapers from around the country are asking that copies of the letter be printed in their papers.

The letter states, in part, “The relentless pursuit of and punitive approach of the University of Colorado at Boulder to Professor Ward Churchill is a revealing instance of the ethos that is currently threatening academic freedom. The voice of the university and intellectual community needs to be heard strongly and unequivocally in defense of dissent and critical thinking. And one concrete expression of such a resolve is to oppose the recommended dismissal of Ward Churchill from his position as a senior tenured faculty member.”

The bigger issue, Dylan claimed, is the way CU President Hank Brown was hired (he recently announced his plans to retire in 2008). He said that Brown, a former Republican senator, is a co-founder of the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA), which claimed that American universities are the “weak link” in the country’s defense of terrorism. Brown replaced former CU President Elizabeth Hoffman almost immediately after she stated that Churchill’s case resembled McCarthyism.

“Brown is now in a position to decide whether Churchill will be fired,” Dylan said. “He claims he is an honest broker and (that) he hasn’t made a decision. This is an absolute lie. Brown was brought into the university to get rid of Churchill.”

Ken Mcconnellogue, the associate vice president for university relations, said this claim is false. He said that President Brown was brought to the university to do the job of a president and that the notion he was brought to CU for “this one expressed purpose is ridiculous.

“People are free to express their opinions and if they want to do that through a paid advertisement, that’s their prerogative,” Mcconnellogue said in regard to the letter.

Former CU professional research assistant Ernesto Vigil, who was employed with the Center for Study of Ethnicity and Race in America (CSERA) from 1989-1990, delivered a notarized document consisting of 30 pages about Churchill to Regent Hall in April 2005. According to Colorado Daily archives, Vigil believed the paper proved that Churchill was not an American Indian and that he committed academic fraud on multiple occasions.

“Ward Churchill is a fake and this has been known for a long time,” Vigil told the Colorado Daily in 2005. “This stuff is not new. These aren’t new revelations.”

According to the article, several professors have doubted some of Churchill’s research on Native American history. Professor Fay G. Cohen of Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia reported that Churchill plagiarized an essay she wrote about Indian fishing treaty rights.

CU alumnus and director of the Independence Institute’s Campus Accountability Project, a higher education policy center dedicated to free speech, individual rights and fiscal accountability Jessica Peck Corry authored a report on legal standards for inquiry in the Churchill investigation. In the report, she stated that not only does CU have the legal right to dismiss Professor Churchill, but also the legal responsibility.

“Education is about honoring truth, always and everywhere,” the report states. “Tenure is about keeping your word, a two-way contractual obligation. Hence academic freedom confers no license to lie. By this standard, and nothing less, must all our universities and all their professors be judged.”

She states that in order for the university to withhold its “professional integrity and academic legitimacy,” CU should terminate the Churchill’s position as a tenured professor. Corry acknowledges the professor’s right to the First Amendment, but believes that there are grounds for dismissal due to his actions that concur with the Laws of the Regents provisions for the termination of tenured faculty including “his demonstrable professional incompetence, his neglect of duty, and his flagrant, persistent failure to meet minimum standards of professional integrity.”

“At this point, any defense of Ward Churchill is simply a defense of bad scholarship and bad ethics,” Corry said in an e-mail Wednesday. “While three years have passed since thousands of people across America called for Churchill’s resignation, CU is still trying to fire him at the cost of hundreds of thousands of dollars to taxpayers.”

Many university students and officials continue to stand behind Professor Churchill and believe in the reversal of his dismissal. Throughout the remainder of the week, the Students and Faculty for True Academic Freedom (STAF) will hold numerous local events in support of him.

Contact Rachel Berns about this story at (303) 443-6272, ext. 113, or at editor@coloradodaily.com.

Andrew

Don’t dismiss him

By RACHEL BERNS Colorado Daily Staff
Wednesday, April 11, 2007 8:53 PM MDT

For the past two years, Professor Ward Churchill has faced an ongoing battle with his employers at CU. Now, almost a year after being recommended for dismissal by former Chancellor Phil DiStefano, powerful scholars from across the nation are speaking out to reverse Churchill’s discharge.

Law Professor Derrick Bell of New York University’s School of Law, Noam Chomsky of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and other prominent professors are involved in this effort and published a letter in the recent edition of the New York Review of Books.

“The New York Review of Books is the most widely read periodical by intellectuals in America and other parts of the world,” said Reggie Dylan on April 2, who worked with Professor Richard Falk in drafting the letter. “(The letter’s) purpose is to draw attention and to make people aware of the gravity of the case and to call on them to do everything they can to challenge the administration.”

In early 2005, Churchill’s Internet-published essay regarding the 9/11 terrorist attacks became a source of criticism. In it, he questioned the innocence of many killed that day and caused an outrage. While Interim Chancellor DiStefano supported Churchill’s right to freedom of speech, he publicly condemned the statements made in the essay.

After over a year of review and investigation, the University’s Standing Committee on Research Misconduct recommended that Churchill be penalized for repeated acts of “serious research misconduct” in June of 2006. In August of that year, the University of Colorado Student Union (UCSU) passed a resolution supporting the university’s decision to fire Professor Churchill.

Shortly after, scholars from across the country began showing their support for Churchill. Dylan said that the opposition for the case has been kept out of the public eye until recently and that there are a growing number of scholars from around the country who support the reversal of the pending dismissal. The publication of the letter is meant to encourage more people to speak out.

He said that the letter is just the beginning of a new wave of outrage and that newspapers from around the country are asking that copies of the letter be printed in their papers.

The letter states, in part, “The relentless pursuit of and punitive approach of the University of Colorado at Boulder to Professor Ward Churchill is a revealing instance of the ethos that is currently threatening academic freedom. The voice of the university and intellectual community needs to be heard strongly and unequivocally in defense of dissent and critical thinking. And one concrete expression of such a resolve is to oppose the recommended dismissal of Ward Churchill from his position as a senior tenured faculty member.”

The bigger issue, Dylan claimed, is the way CU President Hank Brown was hired (he recently announced his plans to retire in 2008). He said that Brown, a former Republican senator, is a co-founder of the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA), which claimed that American universities are the “weak link” in the country’s defense of terrorism. Brown replaced former CU President Elizabeth Hoffman almost immediately after she stated that Churchill’s case resembled McCarthyism.

“Brown is now in a position to decide whether Churchill will be fired,” Dylan said. “He claims he is an honest broker and (that) he hasn’t made a decision. This is an absolute lie. Brown was brought into the university to get rid of Churchill.”

Ken Mcconnellogue, the associate vice president for university relations, said this claim is false. He said that President Brown was brought to the university to do the job of a president and that the notion he was brought to CU for “this one expressed purpose is ridiculous.

“People are free to express their opinions and if they want to do that through a paid advertisement, that’s their prerogative,” Mcconnellogue said in regard to the letter.

Former CU professional research assistant Ernesto Vigil, who was employed with the Center for Study of Ethnicity and Race in America (CSERA) from 1989-1990, delivered a notarized document consisting of 30 pages about Churchill to Regent Hall in April 2005. According to Colorado Daily archives, Vigil believed the paper proved that Churchill was not an American Indian and that he committed academic fraud on multiple occasions.

“Ward Churchill is a fake and this has been known for a long time,” Vigil told the Colorado Daily in 2005. “This stuff is not new. These aren’t new revelations.”

According to the article, several professors have doubted some of Churchill’s research on Native American history. Professor Fay G. Cohen of Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia reported that Churchill plagiarized an essay she wrote about Indian fishing treaty rights.

CU alumnus and director of the Independence Institute’s Campus Accountability Project, a higher education policy center dedicated to free speech, individual rights and fiscal accountability Jessica Peck Corry authored a report on legal standards for inquiry in the Churchill investigation. In the report, she stated that not only does CU have the legal right to dismiss Professor Churchill, but also the legal responsibility.

“Education is about honoring truth, always and everywhere,” the report states. “Tenure is about keeping your word, a two-way contractual obligation. Hence academic freedom confers no license to lie. By this standard, and nothing less, must all our universities and all their professors be judged.”

She states that in order for the university to withhold its “professional integrity and academic legitimacy,” CU should terminate the Churchill’s position as a tenured professor. Corry acknowledges the professor’s right to the First Amendment, but believes that there are grounds for dismissal due to his actions that concur with the Laws of the Regents provisions for the termination of tenured faculty including “his demonstrable professional incompetence, his neglect of duty, and his flagrant, persistent failure to meet minimum standards of professional integrity.”

“At this point, any defense of Ward Churchill is simply a defense of bad scholarship and bad ethics,” Corry said in an e-mail Wednesday. “While three years have passed since thousands of people across America called for Churchill’s resignation, CU is still trying to fire him at the cost of hundreds of thousands of dollars to taxpayers.”

Many university students and officials continue to stand behind Professor Churchill and believe in the reversal of his dismissal. Throughout the remainder of the week, the Students and Faculty for True Academic Freedom (STAF) will hold numerous local events in support of him.

Contact Rachel Berns about this story at (303) 443-6272, ext. 113, or at editor@coloradodaily.com.

Security Council resolution 1435 (2002)

The Arab Peace Initiative, 2002

Moussa: No plans to modify Arab peace initiative

Hamas, the Arab Peace Initiative and reality

Ban Ki-moon lauds Arab League’s commitment to revitalize Middle East peace plan

19 April 2007 – United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today welcomed the statement by a committee of League of Arab States regarding the resuscitation of the Arab Peace Initiative, which in the past he has called one of the pillars of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

Yesterday’s announcement by the Arab Ministerial Committee for the Arab Peace Initiative “indicates increased engagement of the League of Arab States to reinvigorate the peace process,” according to a statement issued by Mr. Ban’s spokesperson.

The Initiative, adopted during the Beirut Arab Summit in March 2002, is based on the principle of land for peace.

The plan calls for Israeli withdrawal from all Arab lands occupied since 1967, recognition of an independent Palestinian State and provision of a just solution to the issue of Palestinian refugees. In return, Arab countries would recognize Israel, end their conflict and normalize relations.

Mr. Ban also “looks forward to meeting with” the Initiative’s Ministerial Committee, which was created by the League to promote the peace process.

In his opening address at the League of Arab States summit last month, Mr. Ban said that the Initiative “suggests a new way forward for the region” after decades of division over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Ban Ki-moon lauds Arab League’s commitment to revitalize Middle East peace plan

War against Iran is only one drop of blood away

Russia Plans World’s Longest Tunnel, a Link to Alaska

Al-Qaida Chief Appointed

Terror Group Posts Execution Video

Bush fears nuclear arms race in Middle East

Iran tells U.S. it has no details on ex-FBI agent

Muslim militants behead 7 captives in Philippines

U.S. calms allies on missile shield, but not Russia

German minister sparks row over anti-terror measures

Reporter’s Notebook: A New Kremlin Curtain Being Drawn

Pakistanis March Against Clerics Behind ‘Talibanization’

Ivanov: U.S. interfering in Russia

Taliban impersonating police

US takes firm line in nuclear negotiations with India

US favours diplomacy on Iran: Gates

Maliki sees ‘open battle’ for control of Iraq

UN agency confirms advances by Iran’s nuclear program

Bush: Iraq Must Not Become Terrorists’ Safe Haven

President Bush Discusses the Global War on Terror in Tipp City, Ohio

The New New World Order

Turks wary of possible Islamist power play

Ralston: Turkey may cross Iraqi border late April

Turkish belligerence and Kurdish naiveté

US against possibility of cross-border operation

Tehran urges Ankara to implement energy deal

Merkel warns Erdoğan about Hamas

EU welcomes Turkey’s reform action plan

Political identity of PM is not clear, claims Baykal

Turkey expects actions from Iraq

Iraqi Turkmen Front seeks support for Kirkuk demonstration

Iran seeks united front against US dominance at Egypt meeting

Turkish Jews to appeal US Congress on resolution

Iraq, Kurds play hardball on expanding territory

Ahmadinejad: U.N. Sanctions Have No Effect on Iran Armed Forces

Iranian Weapons Intended for Taliban Intercepted in Afghanistan

Ahmadinejad: New U.N. Sanctions Will Mean More Nuclear Development

Olmert: No Syria attack plans

U.S. eyes Iran in Afghanistan

Bomb Kills 4 U.N. Guards in Afghanistan

US: ‘Iran weapons going to Taliban’

Qaeda group says Iraq a ‘university of terror’

U.N. Council Authorizes Lebanese Mission

Nigerian army attacks Islamists

U.N. council authorizes Lebanese mission

Russia could inspect Polish missile site : U.S

Spy chief wants expanded powers

WORLD BRIEFINGS
By Suzan Fraser
ASSOCIATED PRESS
April 11, 2007

Moscow vexed by Iran air defense drills

Bush reprimands Democrats over delay in war financing

Ahmadinejad Bluffing to Hide His Weakness

World Condemns Iran’s Defiance Over Nuclear Program

Iraqis demand U.S. ouster

Extremists force women to hide under head scarves

Islamic Unity Conference Condemns Zionist Aggression against the Palestinian people

Member of US House of Representatives: “Syria Believes in Dialogue in its relations with America

THE NEW TOTALITARIANS:
SOCIAL IDENTITIES AND RADICAL ISLAMIST
POLITICAL GRAND STRATEGY

By NASSER KARIMI
Associated Press Writer

• Rich, powerful gather in Swiss Alps

• Senate weighs resolution against Iraq strategy

• The New Mass Migration

• Give Iraq war a chance, says Bush

• Kenya: Country Hands Over Close to 40 Islamists to TFG

• Noriega to Fight Panama Conviction After September Prison Release

• Jordan king urges Iran to avoid ‘rattling’ stability in region

• Iran vows to crush any threat as US steps up rhetoric

http://gatesofvienna.blogspot.com/2006/06/raised-from-stones.html

Thirteen Centuries of religious repression is resurfacing.  We in America sit here with our "Bill" that says we have freedom from religion, which protects us, at least until some supreme court farce 're-interprets' our rights as United States Citizens, and the incipient infusion of Islam becomes acceptable.  But what about the rest of the world that is being slowly undermined by Muslim jihadist values?  They don't have the choice.  If Islam becomes the religion and ideology of a nation, all non-muslims become second rate citizens, with new imposed values such as;

1) the inequality of rights in all domains between Muslims and dhimmis; 

2) the social and economic discrimination of the dhimmis; 

3) the humiliation and vulnerability of the dhimmis.

and ultimately "the lives of the dhimmis and their property being

forfeited.

These are all excellent arguements to continue the "Good Fight".  But what we as Americans are failing to realize while we masticate every word in the Davinci code in an attempt to prove that it ultimately denies the deity of Christ, is that the infusion around us called Islam absolutely denies the deity of Christ.  We have such outrage and passion against fiction in the name of adverse sensitivities, but where is the Outrage, nay the responsibility, to expose and wage spiritual warfare against what is factual, and an imminent threat.  Thirteen centuries of Christians cried "Our God Reigns" in silence and behind closed doors because of Dhimmitude, we as Americans need to wake up to the Spiritual cause at hand.  If for no other reason to wage spiritual war in the Name of Christ for those of the world that can be enslaved.

Muslim Rule

Council of Religions

To grasp the concept of post-modernism, one must adhere to the concept of reversing the magnetic poles of the Socio-Politico-cultural world. i.e. our current situation accomodates everything to a white, male, affluent supremacy and is in absolute need of complete deconstructionist rendering. ( I guess it would be like so much waste being scooped off of the top of rendered butter.)  A big kudo for ZSM.  Very shortly leaders of nations will be making the same as the immigrant workers they ignore sifting through their border protections.

 New Wave of Immigration Requires Support for Multiculturalism

Stephen Hicks on Post-Modernism

Wage Protections?

If THE POTUS is at fault for the corruption that so readily exhibits itself in cosmopolitan business, he should have every right to attempt to rectify corporate greed and capitalist binging.

Which means people can still think and have faith in God for whatever it is that He gives them faith for.

Here’s a little thing I wrote…

If we can neither prove nor disprove God with the faculties of reason, neither should we purport to bind the workings or abilities of His Spirit with Reason.

The book by Tournier ‘Guilt and Grace’ deals with these conundrums quite extensively.

Which means people can still think and have faith in God for whatever it is that He gives them faith for.

Here’s a little thing I wrote…

If we can neither prove nor disprove God with the faculties of reason, neither should we purport to bind the workings or abilities of His Spirit with Reason.

The book by Tournier ‘Guilt and Grace’ deals with these conundrums quite extensively.

"When a people master nuclear technology and nuclear fuel, nothing can be done against the."

With a voiced foreign policy that calls for Israel (which happens to be a sovereign nation) to be wiped off of the map, I have to wonder if there isn't a bit more to General Hassan Firouzabadi's words.

A Connection?

Iran says nuclear drive is unstoppable

Searchconsevative links
Related articles

More related articles

With that being said let me submit a corollary. Had this been before the death and resurrection of Christ, I imagine that we would have a mandate to wipe out the Infidel, taking no prisoners and leaving nothing of theirs to be found or used. But with the advent of the resurrection we have a new mandate. Christ said that there is no way to the Father except through Him and that he who believed on Him should have everlasting life. He also said that He did not come to earth to condemn its people but to save them and grant them an eternal life with the Father. He goes to His fathers house to prepare a place for us. The last I checked, this implied in no way that we should annihilate any other religion but offer to every being on this earth the grace and love that God himself shows to all people.

There are those that would submit that Islam is a peaceful religion. Peace is accomplished through a sense of self-worth and security that comes from knowing the Fathers heart. With the current state of affairs in the State of Islam, I have to wonder who their father really is.

And Then There Were Three.

Take a look at these articles and see if they come together for you as they did for me…

Is A War Going On In Texas?
Street gangs, a transnational security threat
Recruitment, redemption in the MS-13
http://dailybulletin.com/news/ci_3386933
For a great commentary with images see:
http://michellemalkin.com/archives/004363.htm
Also try:
http://www.searchconservative.com/search.php?q=drugs+and+border+crossing&scBtn=Search
And:
http://www.searchconservative.com/search.php?q=+border+crossing&scBtn=Search

Islam, in a sense is a religion that adheres to the view that human nature
is inherently evil and that there is a just and contrite punishment for
whenever and however that evil might decide to show itself. In order to
keep control of its’ adherents, it must subvert any notions that might
question its validity. Which is why intellectualism and “free thought” are
ideas that are shunned rather than promulgated for the good of those involved,
and it’s leaders have a propensity toward isolationism and fear.
It comes off as an amalgam of a failed version of communism confounded even
more by the words of a vociferous and punishing God spoken through none other
than a prophet.
All of this rather than just another version of an abusive authoritarian.
For now we’ll call it a variation on a scheme.

Added by Colorado Conservative. Image appears at Chronwatch.
Iran confirms uranium enrichment
http://www.2la.org/syria/iraq-wmd.php
http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20040816-011235-4438r.htm
Iran seeking to draw western Afghanistan into its sphere of influence

Iran news feed

Given all this time has passed, isn't it time we call a truce in the War on Terror? We no longer fear going outside and life again centers on Super Bowls and political grandstanding over things like judicial appointments. We don't need to fight anymore…or do we?

Let's take a look at what we've accomplished…

• Afghanistan and Iraq have the first real chance at succeeding in crawling out of their political hell after our military invasions. Come on, folks. You really think they were better off under Omar and the scurvy little spider called Saddam?
• Al Qaeda has not had the resources to launch a major attack in the western hemisphere
• Spies and traitors (and they are) have been apprehended, from the Shoe Bomber to Jose Padilla.
• Hussein, trial antics aside, stands a slight chance of losing his head to the religion he paid lip service to. Megalomaniacs and supermen beware.

Let's not be remiss to review what we've thus far failed to do…

• Usama bin Laden still has not been captured, although his health is very, very questionable. Mullah Omar and friends are likely keeping him company.
• We did not prevent the Spanish train bombings of 3/11/04 (not 2 years distant), nor the London Underground bombings of 7/7/2005, only 214 days ago as of this writing.
• Iraq managed to spirit away it's WMD to Syria. Iran, not to be left out, is ramping up it's nuke program. By the way, Michelle Malkin makes a great point of how this fury against the Danish is Iranian pressure on the IAEA.
• Our southern border leaks like a sieve and one can easily wonder if a vial of smallpox has made it's way in. If you thought a suicide bomber was bad…

Clearly, we are not safe. Physical safety from your enemies depends on chance or God (depending on your beliefs). We have much work we could be doing to increase our safety but aren't. Tighten the borders? Oh, but then we'd tick off the produce industry for taking all their illegal–I say immoral–and cheap labor. Force Syria to cough up the WMDs? Not without Israelis standing with guns in the middle of Damascus conducting a search. The French wouldn't stand for that, and everyone loves the French.

Relentless pressure is the only option we have. We must keep it up.

The University of the Holocaust: On Anti-Semitism Now