Much Ado 'Bout Nothing

The Washington Post Published A News Piece Yesterday With The Following HeadLine.

Published on Monday, October 8, 2007 by the Washington Post    by Dan Balz

"Clinton’s Iran Vote Prompts A Harsh Back-and-Forth"

The Article had less dramatic news then The headline Suggest. In fact , if you were scanning The Headlines for what to read next ect, You just might get the impression That the The Rock, Mrs. Hillary Clinton Had Somehow Stirred the flames underneath the already Tence Feelings between Iran and President Bush, who Speaks For,in Effect, The Whole of All Americans.

Now, I'm not a big " Anybody's Fan", But after reading The short artical, I had to say "Good for you Hillary" For telling us exactly what the Bill in Question was and then how the amended version was very moderate in tone and Diplomacy With tact ! 

Here it is >>

Clinton’s Iran Vote Prompts A Harsh Back-and-Forth

by Dan Balz

NEW HAMPTON, Iowa - Randall Rolph said he came to New Hampton, Iowa, on Sunday to see Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) with an open mind about whether to support her candidacy. After a tough exchange over Iran, he left saying he had ruled her out.

                      Randall Rolph was one of several hundred people who turned out in this small town  in northern Iowa for Clinton’s appearance. When she called on him for a question, he pulled out a piece of paper and read a question about Iran.

Rolph asked Clinton to explain her Senate vote Wednesday for a resolution urging the Bush administration to label the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps a terrorist organization. Rolph interpreted that measure as giving Bush authority to use military action against the Iranians.

“Well, let me thank you for the question, but let me tell you that the premise of the question is wrong and I’ll be happy to explain that to you,” Clinton began.

She offered a detailed description of the resolution, which she said stressed robust diplomacy that could lead to imposing sanctions against Iran, and then pointedly said to Rolph that her view wasn’t in “what you read to me, that somebody obviously sent to you.”Continued

Syria Steps Up To The Forefront As They Resort To Gestapo Ways

Syria: Stop Arrests for Online Comments

Two Internet Activists Held Incommunicado,

" May Be ‘Disappeared "

NEW YORK - October 8 – Syria should immediately release writers and activists detained solely for expressing their opinions or reporting information online, Human Rights Watch said today. Syrian authorities have held two men in incommunicado detention since June for expressing online views that are critical of the Syrian government. Authorities have refused to disclose the whereabouts of the detained men to their families. On September 23, the Supreme State Security Court sentenced a third man to two years in prison for posting online comments that displeased the authorities.

“The fact that Syria arrests people solely because they criticize the state speaks volumes about the government’s utter disregard for the most basic human rights,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “Even worse, Syrian intelligence has the nasty habit of not telling families where their loved ones are being detained – in effect, disappearing them for periods of time.”

On June 7, the Mantaqa Branch of Military Intelligence detained Karim `Arbaji, 29, allegedly for moderating http://www.akhawia.net/, a popular online forum for Syrian youth covering social and political issues. Persons familiar with the case told Human Rights Watch that the Mantaqa Branch may have transferred him to the Palestine Branch in Damascus, but the authorities have provided no official notification of `Arbaji’s whereabouts. On June 30, 2007, Military Intelligence in the coastal city of Tartous arrested Tarek Biasi, 22, because he “went online and insulted security services,” according to a person familiar with the case. Biasi remains in incommunicado detention, his whereabouts unknown. On September 23, the Supreme State Security Court sentenced Ali Zein al-`Abideen Mej`an to two years in prison for “undertaking acts or writing or speeches unauthorized by the government ... that spoil its ties with a foreign state” because he posted comments online attacking Saudi Arabia.

The UN General Assembly condemned “enforced disappearances” as “a grave and flagrant violation” of human rights, and defined the violation in these terms: “[P]ersons are arrested, detained or abducted against their will or otherwise deprived of their liberty by officials of different branches or levels of Government ... followed by a refusal to disclose the fate or whereabouts of the persons concerned or a refusal to acknowledge the deprivation of their liberty, which places such persons outside the protection of the law.” The UNGA Declaration on the Protection of all Persons from Enforced Disappearance states that enforced disappearance violates the right not to be subjected to torture, and constitutes a grave threat to the right to life.

Syrian security services frequently require internet cafe owners to spy on customers that access “sensitive” sites. On December 13, 2006, Political Security arrested `Ahed al-Hindi, 23, and one of his relatives, in an internet cafe in Damascus, because al-Hindi was sending comments and information to opposition websites outside Syria. The owner of the internet cafe had filmed al-Hindi posting the comments. Al-Hindi and his relative were released on January 15, 2007.

Syrian authorities recently took measures to restrict the use of anonymous comments that many Syrian writers rely on to escape state surveillance. On July 25, 2007, the Syrian minister of communications and technology, `Amr Salem, issued a decree requiring all website owners to display “the name and e-mail of the writer of any article or comment [appearing on their site] ... clearly and in detail, under threat of warning the owner of the website, then restricting access to the website temporarily and in case the violation is repeated, permanently banning the website.” In the first documented application of the directive, the Ministry of Communications and Technology restricted access to http://www.damaspost.com/, a popular Syrian news website, for 24 hours after a commentator identified as “Jamal” criticized the head of the Journalists’ Union and the al-Ba`ath newspaper for nepotism.

Under international law, the rights to privacy and free expression entail a corollary right to communicate anonymously. Allowing persons to speak anonymously, without fear of reprisal or stigma, encourages the sort of expression that is critical to protection of rights and a democratic society – from political pamphleteering, to anonymous tips for journalists, to “blowing the whistle” on corruption by officials or companies. While the right to anonymity is not absolute, the restrictions imposed by the Syrian decree eliminate it altogether in the name of repressing purportedly “criminal” expression.

The Syrian government blocks websites that span a range of categories. Authorities impose most substantial filtering against sites that criticize government policies or support Syrian opposition groups. Censored websites also include Arabic newspapers outside Syria that carry materials critical of the government, such as the London-based al-Quds al-Arabi (http://www.al-quds.co.uk/) and al-Sharq al-Awsat (http://www.asharqalawsat.com/), the Beirut-based al-Mustaqbal (http://www.almustaqbal.com.lb/), the Kuwaiti newspaper al-Seyassah (http://www.alseyassah.com/), as well as websites belonging to Syrian opposition or Kurdish political parties and Islamist websites. OpenNet Initiative, a partnership of four leading universities in the US, Canada and the UK, which monitors government filtration and surveillance of the internet, says that filtering of political websites in Syria is “pervasive.” The Syrian government’s censorship also covers popular websites such as Google’s blogging engine, www.blogspot.com, and www.youtube.com.

The last six years have seen an explosion of internet use in Syria, with close to 1 million of the country’s 18 million people now online, compared to just 30,000 in 2000. The Arab Advisors Group, an Amman-based business-consulting firm, projects that the number of Syrian internet users will exceed 1.7 million by 2009.

Human Rights Watch called on Syria to cease blocking websites that carry material protected by the right to free expression and access to information, and to release all those detained solely for exercising these rights, online or otherwise. Full Story

Bush, Smarter Than Scientists

Published on Monday, July 16, 2007 by Agence France Presse

Bush Administration Accused of Putting Ideology Above Science

by Jean-Louis Santini

WASHINGTON - Testimony from President George W. Bush’s former surgeon general last week has fueled charges that his administration has trumped science in favor of its political and religious ideologies.

The administration has been at loggerheads with scientists since it came to power in 2001 on issues ranging from stem cell research to global warming and the theory of evolution.

It stood accused again of putting ideology over science this week after the administration’s former surgeon general charged that it deliberately quashed or downplayed several important health reports for political reasons.

Dr Richard Carmona, a Bush appointee who held the post as the country’s chief health educator from 2002 to 2006, told a Congressional committee Tuesday that he was not authorized to discuss certain sensitive subjects in public.

They included embryonic stem-cell research, whose federal funding Bush restricted in 2001, the controversial morning-after pill and sex education.

Carmona admitted to lawmakers that when he had taken up his post he had been “still quite politically naive” but he was “astounded” by the “partisanship and political manipulation” he witnessed.

Health department spokesman Bill Hall rejected Carmona’s accusations, saying: “It has always been this administration’s position that public health policy should be rooted in sound science.”

Michael Halpern, a member of the influential Union of Concerned Scientists, an advocacy group, said scientists believe the Bush administration is the “worst” ever in terms of political interference and censure.

“Information inconvenient to the administration’s priorities is sidelined,” Halpern told AFP.

In 2004, the Union of Concerned Scientists organized a petition signed by more than 12,000 scientists, including 50 Nobel prize winners and former senior science advisers to several US presidents, to denounce political interference by the Bush administration.

“Scientists believe that political interference is unacceptable,” the petition said.

“If our policy makers are going to make fully informed decisions about our health, safety, and environment, they need access to independent science,” it said. “Reforms can and should be put in place to insulate science from politics.”

The petition has apparently had little impact on the White House.

In 2006, NASA’s top climate expert, James Hansen, accused the administration in a New York Times interview of pressuring him to censure his research on global warming, notably during the 2004 presidential campaign.

His charges were confirmed by other staffers at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, leading Democrats as well as Bush’s own Republicans in Congress to call for greater scientific transparency in the agency.

A NASA press official, George Deutsch, who was close to Bush’s reelection campaign, was forced to resign after being accused by Hansen for barring journalists from interviewing him.

In his book “The Assault on Reason,” former vice president Al Gore said that Deutsch, who has no scientific education or university diplomat, wrote a memo to scientists saying that the Big Bang is “not proven fact; it is an opinion.”

“This is more than a science issue, it is a religious issue,” Deutsch wrote, according to Gore, the former Democratic candidate who lost the 2000 election to Bush.

Copyright © 2007 Agence France Presse

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Most Want War Funding Cut

Published on Tuesday, October 2, 2007 by The Washington Post

Most in Poll Want War Funding Cut

by Jon Cohen and Dan Balz

Most Americans oppose fully funding President Bush’s $190 billion request for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and a sizable majority support an expansion of a children’s health insurance bill he has promised to veto, putting Bush and many congressional Republicans on the wrong side of public opinion on upcoming foreign and domestic policy battles.

                        The new Washington Post-ABC News poll also shows deep dissatisfaction with the president and with Congress. Bush’s approval rating stands at 33 percent, equal to his career low in Post-ABC polls. And just 29 percent approve of the job Congress is doing, its lowest approval rating in this poll since November 1995, when Republicans controlled both the House and Senate. It also represents a 14-point drop since Democrats took control in January.

Despite discontent with Congress this year, the public rates congressional Republicans (29 percent approve) lower than congressional Democrats (38 percent approve). When the parties are pitted directly against each other, the public broadly favors Democrats on Iraq, health care, the federal budget and the economy. Only on the issue of terrorism are Republicans at parity with Democrats.

Part of the displeasure with Congress stems from the stalemate between Democrats and the White House over Iraq policy. Most Americans do not believe Congress has gone far enough in opposing the war, with liberal Democrats especially critical of their party’s failure to force the president into a significant change in policy.

At the same time, there is no consensus about the pace of any U.S. troop withdrawals from Iraq. In July, nearly six in 10 said they wanted to decrease the number of troops there, but now a slim majority, 52 percent, think Bush’s plan for removing some troops by next summer is either the right pace for withdrawal (38 percent) or too hasty (12 percent would like a slower reduction, and 2 percent want no force reduction). Fewer people (43 percent) want a quicker exit.

John Csanadi of Nanuet, N.Y., said he has mixed feelings about what to do next in Iraq. Asked about Bush’s proposal for a modest drawdown of troops, he said: “It’s a start. Not the best solution, but at least it’s a start.”

Sara Carter, a schoolteacher from Westland, Mich., called Bush’s plan “better than it might be, not as good as it could be.”

But Don Hiatt of Las Vegas said he sees the proposal as a holding action by a president stalling for time. “I think he’s trying to just play it until he gets out of office and let the next president handle it, and that’s not a good thing if that’s what he’s doing,” Hiatt said.

Overall, 55 percent of Americans want congressional Democrats to do more to challenge the president’s Iraq policies, while a third think the Democrats have gone too far. The level of agitation for more action in opposition to the war has not dissipated since August 2005, when Democrats were the minority party in Congress. Rest of The Story>>>http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/10/02/4251/

When I Hear Impeachment, I :)

Then I pray. Neo

   "Well let me be among the 1st to say I Love Oregon" and that we now have what we can Call more than half-dozen Confirmed States that Represent Millions of American Voters Across These United States. And There's more in the wings who for no good reason, Have Not Answered The Bell. Well There's still Time.......   " Let Us Pray "  &     GOD Bless

Oregon Impeachment news Link, This Story Received a Ton Of Comments , if not the Story I'd Go just for The Comments :)

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/10/02/4255/