World AIDS Day 19

World AIDS Day 19: "This is World AIDS Day. The first was in 1988. 'Silence is death,' Kofi Annan says. 'This year alone, well over four million people were newly infected and nearly three million people died of the disease.'

-Africa not faring well, UN official says. Stop AIDS, Keep the Promise.

-AIDS is a leading cause of death for African Americans, who accounted for nearly half of newly diagnosed HIV/AIDS cases last year, even though they are only 12 percent of the population. African Americans accounted for 66 percent of women with AIDS in 2005 and 67 percent of children under 13 with AIDS."

(Via Martini Republic.)

Pelosi Picks Reyes to Head Panel on Intelligence

Pelosi Picks Reyes to Head Panel on Intelligence: "Incoming House speaker Nancy Pelosi today named Representative Silvestre Reyes of Texas to become next chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, ending weeks of closed-door lobbying and public posturing among top candidates for the post.

By choosing Mr. Reyes, a Vietnam veteran and former Border Patrol agent who has served on the committee since 2001, Ms. Pelosi passed over the panel's top Democrat, Rep. Jane Harman of California, with whom Ms. Pelosi has long feuded.

...

'His appreciation for the dangers inherent in the operation of secret activities in a democracy ensures that he will be a zealous protector of the civil liberties that define us as a nation,' she said.

Unlike Ms. Harman, Mr. Reyes voted against the congressional resolution authorizing the United States to go to war in Iraq."

(Via NY Times.)

Protesters Seek Leader's Ouster in Lebanon

Protesters Seek Leader's Ouster in Lebanon: "BEIRUT, Lebanon (AP) -- Hundreds of thousands of protesters from Hezbollah and its pro-Syrian allies massed Friday in downtown Beirut seeking to force the resignation of Western-backed Prime Minister Fuad Saniora, who was holed up in his office ringed by hundreds of police and combat troops.

The protest, which police estimated at 800,000, created a sea of Lebanese flags that blanketed downtown and spilled onto the surrounding streets. Hezbollah officials put the number at 1 million -- one-fourth of Lebanon's population."

(Via NY Times.)

No graceful exit

No graceful exit: "The Baker Commission will reportedly advocate the beginning of troop withdrawals but leave unclear what the pace of such a pullback should be and whether combat brigades would merely be redeployed to safer bases inside Iraq. According to the Times, the study group is fixated on Washington's favorite fig leaf, a diplomatic effort designed to obscure the weakness of the American position by reaching out to Iran and Syria.

It is easy to guess why the commission has apparently confused blandness with boldness: an irresistible temptation to tiptoe through the tulips in trying to sway the dead-enders in the White House. Baker and his Democratic co-chairman Lee Hamilton clearly believed that a 10-0 consensus -- even with blurry language -- was more potent than a sharply worded, but divided, committee report.

Still, many in Washington believe that the imprimatur of Baker and Company alone will work miracles. 'It's the preface to the final stage,' said a prominent Republican who has served in prior administrations. 'It sends the message that Republicans are pretty frustrated on the ground in Iraq and pretty frustrated on the ground at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. It makes the White House know that 'stay the course' at any level is not a winning solution.'"

(Via Salon.)

U.S. Will Pay $2 Million to Lawyer Wrongly Jailed

U.S. Will Pay $2 Million to Lawyer Wrongly Jailed: "The federal government agreed to pay $2 million Wednesday to an Oregon lawyer wrongly jailed in connection with the 2004 terrorist bombings in Madrid, and it issued a formal apology to him and his family.

The unusual settlement caps a two-and-a-half-year ordeal that saw the lawyer, Brandon Mayfield, go from being a suspected terrorist operative to a symbol, in the eyes of his supporters, of government overzealousness in the war on terrorism.

...

Despite doubts from Spanish officials about the validity of the fingerprint match, American officials began an aggressive high-level investigation into Mr. Mayfield in the weeks after the bombings. The fact that he had represented a terrorism defendant in a child-custody case in Portland spurred further interest in him. Using expanded surveillance powers under the USA Patriot Act, the government wiretapped his conversations, conducted secret searches of his home and his law office and jailed him for two weeks as a material witness in the case before a judge threw out the case against him.

The settlement includes an unusual condition that frees the government from future liability except in one important area: Mr. Mayfield is allowed to continue a lawsuit seeking to overturn parts of the Patriot Act as a violation of the Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable search and seizure."

(Via Google News.)

A Story We Should All Know

A Story We Should All Know: "'I have come to America seeking three things. An acknowledgement that the United States government is responsible for kidnapping, abusing and detaining me; an explanation as to why I was singled out for this treatment; and an apology because I am an innocent man who has never been charged with any crime.' -- Khaled El-Masri, a victim of extraordinary rendition.

The case of our client Khaled El-Masri is one we should all be watching carefully. Yesterday, he stood up in a courtroom to challenge the Bush administration's use of 'extraordinary rendition,' abduction, detention and interrogation in secret overseas prisons.

While it is a credit to our system of justice that Mr. El-Masri can now demand accountability from his CIA kidnappers, all of us must ask, how have we let our country stray so far from its ideals?

Mr. El-Masri's story is a frightening catalogue of abuses. A father of six, he was forcibly abducted in Macedonia while on vacation, handed over to the CIA and flown to a secret interrogation center in Afghanistan where he was beaten, drugged and repeatedly denied legal counsel. After two months, CIA operatives informed director George Tenet that they were holding an innocent man. But it still took two more months before he was released -- flown in secret to Albania and left alone on a hillside in the middle of the night.

People need to hear his story, and the agencies and private companies responsible must face real justice for their violations of U.S. laws as well as universal human rights laws."

(Via AfterDowningStreet.org.)

Pakistan tells NATO to “accept defeat by Taliban”

Pakistan tells NATO to “accept defeat by Taliban”: "Senior Pakistani officials are urging Nato countries to accept the Taliban and work towards a new coalition government in Kabul that might exclude the Afghan president Hamid Karzai.

Pakistan's foreign minister, Khurshid Kasuri, has said in private briefings to foreign ministers of some Nato member states that the Taliban are winning the war in Afghanistan and Nato is bound to fail. He has advised against sending more troops."

(Via Crooks and Liars.)

Assassination by Polonium

Assassination by Polonium: "Everyone has probably caught the bits and pieces of headlines on the former Russian spy, Alexander Litvinenko, who was poisoned and died last week. There is little conclusive information and the assassination has been linked in the press both to the murder of Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya and the Yukos affair. It's a James Bond style mystery, but in that great BBC news voice.

The interesting part is that he was poisoned with polonium-210, an extremely rare and highly radioactive element. It is even rarer in quantities that could be used for poisoning, since they would have to be manmade. Most of the news sources are quoting experts as saying that the Po-210 could have only been produced in major laboratory. This point makes the theories (which I will describe below) about Litvinenko's death very troubling from the standpoint of securing access to radioactive materials"

(Via ArmsControlWonk.com.)

What is Russia's Real Game (Again, with Viktor Bout?)

What is Russia's Real Game (Again, with Viktor Bout?): "But there is another, barely noticed development in the United States that should be extremely worrisome. A small sporting goods store in rural Pennsylvania was just busted for selling telescopic rifle scopes, binoculars and optics, which need State Department export authorization, to a Russian company that did not have such a license.

As the my colleauge and co-author Stephen Braun write in the Los Angeles Times, the affidavit for carrying out the search states that the Russian company is 'Tactica Ltd., a Moscow firm that was described by investigators as 'a member of the 'Vympel Group,' which is a known identifier for an elite counter-terrorism unit that is controlled by the Russian Federal Security Service [formerly the KGB].''"

(Via The Counterterrorism Blog.)

Vote Disparity Still a Mystery In Fla. Election For Congress

Vote Disparity Still a Mystery In Fla. Election For Congress: "Almost since the time the votes were tallied here on election night, the race for Florida's 13th Congressional District has been surrounded by a contentious mystery:

Why were there no votes for Congress recorded from more than 18,000 people who chose candidates in other races?"

(Via Wonkette.)

Order freezing alleged terrorist funds ruled down

Order freezing alleged terrorist funds ruled down: "A federal judge in Los Angeles has ruled that the Bush administration violated the Constitution when it froze the assets of more than two dozen alleged terrorist groups after the Sept. 11 attacks.

U.S. District Judge Audrey B. Collins, in a ruling released Monday, held that an executive order Bush issued Sept. 24, 2001 — designating 27 groups and individuals as 'specially designated global terrorists' — was 'unconstitutionally vague.'

Collins said the order was flawed because it failed to explain the criteria used to make the designations and because it included no process to challenge the decision.

'The president's designation authority is subject only to his unfettered discretion,' the judge said. "

(Via Google News.)

EU nations 'knew about CIA jails'

EU nations 'knew about CIA jails': "Many EU nations were aware that the CIA used their territory for the transfer or detention of terror suspects, a draft European parliament report says.

The report follows months of investigation by a special committee of MEPs led by an Italian, Claudio Fava.

'Many governments co-operated passively or actively (with the CIA),' said Mr Fava, quoted by AFP news agency.

He accused top EU officials including foreign policy chief Javier Solana of failing to give full details to MEPs.

The report echoed allegations made in June by the Council of Europe - Europe's leading human rights watchdog - that European states were complicit in illegal CIA operations as part of the US-led 'war on terror'."

(Via BBC News.)

Salvaging Bush's Mideast disaster

Salvaging Bush's Mideast disaster: "The real 'front line of the war on terror' is Palestine. By brokering a lasting peace, the U.S. can make up for Bush's colossal blunders."

...

"As the Iraqi debacle lurches from dreadful to nightmarish, with 140,000 U.S. troops caught in a vicious purgatory, it is all too easy to forget that the real 'front line of the war on terror' is in Jerusalem, not Baghdad. The Israeli-Palestinian crisis is not a matter that America wants to deal with. There is zero debate about it in Congress, where unswerving support for Israel continues to be the only thing that Democrats and Republicans agree on. It divides the left. It is such an emotional, sensitive issue that most people don't even bring it up. And it's easy to simply dismiss it as intractable.

But like it or not, the fact remains that the now 39-year-long Israeli occupation of Palestinian land continues to be the most incendiary issue in the Arab-Muslim world, the single thing that most inspires hatred of the U.S. A U.N.-sponsored group recently found that tensions between Islam and the West are caused not by religion but overwhelmingly by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which has acquired a symbolic significance larger than itself. The conflict affects virtually every problem in the region, including Iraq -- a fact recognized by world leaders from British Prime Minister Tony Blair to Jordan's King Abdullah to the leaders of France, Spain and Italy, who just presented their own peace plan. Until the U.S. brokers a lasting peace between Israel and the Palestinians -- and only America can do it -- we will stumble impotently around in the Middle East, despised by all except the corrupt despots we prop up, while the anti-American rage that breeds jihadists grows."

(Via Salon.)

AIDS to Be 3rd Leading Cause of Death

AIDS to Be 3rd Leading Cause of Death: "Within the next 25 years, AIDS is set to join heart disease and stroke as the top three causes of death worldwide, according to a study published online Monday.

When global mortality projections were last calculated a decade ago, researchers had assumed the number of AIDS cases would be declining. Instead, it's on the rise. Currently ranked fourth behind heart disease, stroke, and respiratory infections, AIDS is set to become No. 3, say researchers in a new report in the Public Library of Science's Medicine journal. It accounts for about 2.8 million deaths every year. But the researchers estimate a total of nearly 120 million people could die in the next 25 years.

Overall, the researchers predict that in three decades, the causes of global mortality will be strikingly similar worldwide - apart from the prevalence of AIDS in poorer countries. Most people will be dying at older ages of noninfectious diseases like cardiovascular disease, stroke and cancer."

(Via The Drudge Report.)

Iraq 'on the brink of civil war'

Iraq 'on the brink of civil war': "The United Nations Secretary General, Kofi Annan, has publicly said that Iraq is teetering on the brink of civil war.

Mr Annan said concerted action to dampen the vicious sectarian violence gripping Iraq was urgently needed.

The continuing and escalating violence in Iraq has prompted a flurry of diplomatic activity this week.

Iraqi President Jalal Talabani is due to meet Iran's supreme leader, while US President George W Bush flies to Jordan later to meet Iraqi PM Nouri al-Maliki."

(Via BBC News.)