New Review: The End of Poverty

The following is a brief excerpt from a review posted on PopandPolitics.com:

When I picked up “The End of Poverty,” the new book by world renowned clinical economist and professor Jeffrey Sachs, from a Barnes & Nobles book store a few weeks ago, the woman at the counter read the cover and said, “Ah, if only this could be true.”

Poverty is a malignance that will most likely plague humankind for as long as we inhabit the earth. However, the point of this book is not to impart some airy-fairy, half-baked idea on how to eliminate all realms of poverty from today’s world, but instead to offer up a concrete plan for eliminating “extreme poverty” from the darkest corners of modern civilization.

Certainly anyone who has grown up in America has seen poverty up close at one time or another. Beggars and homeless folks in the subway, drug addicts and dealers on the corner, children left alone in public housing for hours -- if not days -- on end; these are all examples of poverty that don't seem to be going anywhere in the near future. However, that is not the extreme poverty addressed by Sachs.

Instead, he uses "The End of Poverty" to paint a vivid picture of what real, extreme poverty looks like and why it must and can be cured within the next 20 years. In Africa, for example, where there have been societal collapses in Sudan, the Congo, and Rwanda among other places, one of the main reasons why hostilities broke out in the first place was because the people in those countries were completely bereft of any kind of assistance or real means to live.

Work Inside the Home Is Still Work, Right?

{Theresa Funiciello, a former welfare mother, is the author of Tyranny of Kindness: Dismantling the Welfare System to End Poverty in America (Atlantic Monthly Press) This article was originally published in Ms. Magazine, April 1998.}

In a landmark divorce settlement, a Connecticut judge awarded an estimated $20 million of General Electric executive Gary Wendt’s assets to his former wife and the mother of his children, Lorna Wendt. She argued that she was an equal partner working with him to advance his career, that she’d given up her own career to raise their two daughters, and that her work in the home enabled his success—so current assets and stock options, and other deferred income earned during the 32 year marriage but not yet vested, were half hers. To a significant degree, the court confirmed the economic value as well as the social benefit of Lorna Wendt’s not quite invisible labor to her family and by extension, to GE. She’ll receive a bundle at least partly because, as the saying goes, “every mother is a working mother.”

Except, apparently, if you are poor. In the welfare debate that put an end to Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), Wendt’s point that mothering has value and is work was entirely missed. Tens of millions of adults in the U.S. were raised on welfare by poor mothers who managed to keep them alive and teach them values. The “results” are everywhere—doctors and truck drivers, waiters and teachers—contributors to society whose mothers stretched the puniest incomes to meet their families’ needs and sang all the lullabies by themselves.

But the national confusion over “work” has resulted in a system of so-called reform that negates these accomplishments and requires every needy mother to get a job outside the home, even if the family becomes poorer (less than one in three welfare mothers with a high school diploma escapes poverty through wage work). The new welfare law also effectively takes from poor mothers the power to decide how best to care for small children and hands it over lock, stock and barrel to the same welfare bureaucracy that so miserably administered AFDC. Competent, caring mothers who fail to sustain wage work risk the total withdrawal of income support. And although poor families are receiving less income assistance than before “reform,” government is actually paying billions more to states for everything from substandard child care to massive computer systems that became necessary for increased bureaucracy. Duh.

The point is not to restore AFDC to its former ignominy. Policymakers should be asking how to structure social or tax policy to secure—with dignity—food, shelter, and clothing, regardless of a person’s place of work. Instead, they focused on red herring issues like “dependency” (though surely welfare mothers were no more dependent than Gary Wendt). We already know what happens if income is unavailable to poor mothers with children. It was called the nineteenth century. It was not pretty.

Trouble is, too often slips of the tongue, and pen, breach feminists’ own pact, implying that the generic meaning of the word “work” is only that activity for which one is paid. In so doing, we allow wages (or the lack thereof) to define our own and our sisters’ value.

Whether hanging from the chandeliers of the glass ceiling or falling through the cracks in the floors below, we all remain cheap dates in the gross national product. Whether CEOs or cashiers, women’s jobs outside the home fetch the lowest relative wages because our historic work in the home is perceived as valueless. Many of the new, low-paying jobs are “mother replacements,” such as child care. The good news is that having had to pay for so much work that was once hidden hasn’t hurt the economy—it shows up these days in national statistics as employment growth.

On the other hand, leaving home for the marketplace doesn’t always help families or society, and those who stay home shouldn’t be forced to choose poverty and a slap in the face for “not working.”

We’re not by any stretch close to full productive choice. Redefining work and the benefits that ought to come from it is a start. Fashioning a modern distribution system that supports those without wages and those whose wages are insufficient, in a way that enhances a robust market economy and a healthy society, would help us cross safely into the new millennium. Tall order, yes. Impossible, no.

Wishing Death

This post is also available at Blogger News Network

Conservative radio host Laura Ingraham announced on Tuesday that she had been diagnosed with breast cancer and according to The National Ledger, she came through her cancer surgery successfully and will be back on the air tomorow. That's good. I'm happy for her. Cancer is a terrible disease and my heart goes out to anyone that is afflicted with this terrible illness.

I didn't write about this when I saw it originally posted on Newsmax.com because while I felt sorry for her, it wasn't the sort of thing I tend to report on. I favor more stories with universal appeal and the medical woes of one woman, albeit a famous one, doesn't interest me as far as what I employ this site for. However, while surfing blogs Wed night, I came across a site called "Crooks and Liars" that appears to be pretty liberal, which is fine and the author of the site handled the story well enough.

"We may disagree on many things Laura, but be well, good luck and come back soon."

If that had been the end of it I wouldn't be writing this post. This brief post garnered 30 comments by the time I stumbled upon it. Some of the comments were:

"awesome, I hope it's uncurable. Bitch"

"I wish Ann Coulter got it instead but then she is a man and men rarely get breast cancer."

"It's too bad they caught it in time."

"Wish for Ann, Testicular cancer"

"So I guess that having an abortion and being an lying right wing skank can cause breast cancer?"

"She's still hot." ::::shrugs:::

In all fairness, some of the comments simply wished her a speedy recovery while lamenting her politics while others were criticized for wishing death on the woman.

I have some questions here, how does being this way help you sell your ideas to a public that can be convinced to vote for George W. Bush...twice? How does wishing death on a political entertainer help your cause? Exactly how do suppose to win over people with that sort of rhetoric? Is this really how you want to be seen - as people who wish death on those who have philosophical differences from you?

I'm sure somebody is going to point out something that Rush Limbaugh said once upon a time, which they think will justify the vitriol being aimed at Ms. Ingraham. It doesn't. If Limbaugh or Hannity said something similar to the comments above about a liberal entertainer then they were wrong. However, political discourse shouldn't be denigrated down to "two wrongs make a right." For God's sake people, grow up. Like Henry Rollins once said, "Rise above!"

...It's like "The Secret of My Success" only less sexier and with more atomic weapons

This post is also available at Blogger News Network

I spend a good portion of this blog crying about Armageddon and such but there are certain times when I read current events and they trigger and rather silly image in my head. Usually I'm writing about how France does all it can to undermind the US such that outside of sharing intelligence and general trade, there's not much they can agree on. As it turns out, the US and France have a mutual interest in seeing regime change in Syria for a variety reasons. However, Iran has a stake in seeing the Assad regime staying put so now it is attempting to stroke France by mediating between them and Syria. Now this is the same Syria which just brought its troops out of Lebanon as promised and additionally is also where Iran's Hezbollah is trying to repackage itself as a political party. Meanwhile, France via President Jacques Chirac is pushing to allow Iran to continue to enrich uranium, the key ingredient in making an atomic bomb. And then of course there's the US who appears to be wiping the egg of their face and the Iraq-WMD rhetoric, crossing the word "Iraq" and replacing it with "Iran".

In an international policy sense, these series of stories where nations jump back and forth to different sides of an issue reminds me of the end of the Michael J. Fox movie, "The Secret of My Success." At the end of the movie nearly the entire cast is jumping in and out of each other’s bed while trying to hide various affairs from each other until one of the leads announces, "That's it, the sexual revolution is over! Everybody out of the bed!"

Two specific articles caught my eye while surfing Google News on these topics. One from the World Peace Herald stated that, "Iranian President Mohammed Khatami is undertaking a mediation to ease tensions between Syria and France over Lebanon, reports said Tuesday.

Beirut's daily As-Safir quoted "informed sources" as saying Khatami exchanged letters in that regard with French President Jacques Chirac and Bashar Assad of Syria.

Syrian-French relations deteriorated significantly after Paris and Washington joined hands in passing U.N. resolution 1559 calling on Syria to pull its troops and intelligence personnel out of Lebanon."

The other one comes from the Daily Times out of Pakistan and it states, "A former US official said on Monday the Bush administration was inching more and more towards a regime change in Syria...He pointed out that when a senior State Department official was asked on a recent radio programme if the US now out to change the Syrian regime, she did not offer an answer. He said the course on which the administration was embarked carried “unintended consequences”. The administration wanted to achieve regime change in Damascus “on the cheap”...It is also the view in Washington that Iraq cannot be controlled without controlling Iran, he stressed. He said after 9/11, Syria provided invaluable intelligence to Washington that saved American lives. He added that the Bush administration does not see the world in terms of “nuances” and some of its policies defied logic.

In answer to a question, one of the panelists said it was those around Vice President Dick Cheney and Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld who were pushing the Syria regime change policy forward. There was also pressure from French President Jacques Chirac who suspected Syria of being involved in the assassination of his friend and reported financial contributor, Lebanese leader Rafiq Harreri. In reply to another question, Leverett said there was no evidence that Syria had had any dealings with the AQ Khan network."

So let's review: the US seems to be hellbent to go to war in Iran and at least instigate revolution in Syria. France is all for regime change in Syria but would like to see Iran continue to dominate in the Middle East and more specifically stick it to the US. Iran wants an atomic bomb and is fusing its fate with that of Syria. France for all kinds of strange reasons doesn't seem to think there’s anything too wrong with Iran having an atomic weapon. France also wants to see the EU become a superpower antithesis to the US but it's own people will mostly likely vote "no" on the constitution and set the whole operation back for God only knows how long. And somewhere in the middle of all this are Russia, Venezuela, N. Korea, China/Taiwan and good old Cuba.

Everybody got all that? Good, because there will be a test at the sound of the BOOM...

Weapons Inspector Ends WMD Search in Iraq

This post is also available at Blogger News Network

OK, all you libs, progressives and Democrats...you get one free "I told you so" and that's all.

"WASHINGTON (AP) - Wrapping up his investigation into Saddam Hussein's purported arsenal, the CIA's top weapons hunter in Iraq said his search for weapons of mass destruction "has been exhausted" without finding any.

Nor did Charles Duelfer, head of the Iraq Survey Group, find any evidence that such weapons were shipped officially from Iraq to Syria to be hidden before the U.S. invasion, but he couldn't rule out some unofficial transfer of limited WMD-related materials.

He closed his effort with words of caution about potential future threats and careful assessment of this and other unanswered questions.

The Bush administration justified its 2003 invasion of Iraq as necessary to eliminate Hussein's purported stockpile of WMD."

Now unofficially anthing is possible but as it stands now the Bush administration and its subsequent intelligence agencies made a huge error selling their war strictly on the potential threat of WMD's. I will concede this much, based on the above story Iraq was certainly not an "imminent threat". I would venture to guess however, that if we had chosen not to go to war with Iraq then the sanctions would have come down in short order and eventually, someday, Iraq would have posed the sort of problem Bush and co. thought they were posing when our boots landed on the grounds of Baghdad.

For all of the people who thought the war was a good idea based soley on WMD's and then felt cheated and or lied to, I suppose your feelings have been validated. As I've said before, I never thought that was our true intent though I'm disappointed we can't find evidence that material was both dumped in rivers and shipped to Syria. But like I said, that's the official word, I suppose anything is possible and we don't yet what kind of evidence Syria may be sitting on. However, given our luck so far I would have to think I'm holding out for a fools ransom.

World ignores Republic of Congo's crisis - U.N.

Well, at least the UN and I agree on one thing. I saw this after I posted the next column so read both as the introduction applies to both stories.

KINKALA, Congo, April 23 (Reuters) - Less than 3 percent of funds needed to tackle a humanitarian emergency in the Republic of Congo have been received, highlighting the oil-producer's plight as a forgotten nation in crisis, the United Nations said.

Congo's civil war officially ended in 1999 but sub-Saharan Africa's fourth biggest oil producer has no peacekeeping force and is struggling to disarm former rebels who continue to attack civilians in the Pool region, far from international eyes.
"This is scandalous. We need to have a better response to this emergency," Aurelien Agbenonci, the head of the U.N. in Congo, told Reuters in an interview.

"Of the nearly $22 million needed, just over 20 percent has been promised and under three percent has actually been given," he said. "This is a low-level conflict which appears not to interest people as there is neither war nor peace."

Despite the official truce, clashes in 2002 and 2003 between government soldiers and the rebels, known as Ninjas, rocked the peace process and undermined a disarmament programme in the central African country of three million people.

Thousands of Ninjas, named after ancient Japanese warriors glamourised by Hollywood, who have not been disarmed and are no longer part of a structured rebel movement roam around the Pool region west of the capital Brazzaville.

Known for their trademark purple scarves and Rasta-style dreadlocks, the gunmen live off civilians and reguarly hijack the train that links the landlocked capital to the oil-producing coastal town of Pointe Noire.

There are no international peacekeepers in Congo, a former French colony, and analysts say the government seems unwilling, or unable, to put an end to the attacks in Pool.

The U.N. is due to open an office in Kinkala, a town at the heart of the Pool region, but Agbenonci said media attention on other conflicts around the world had taken its toll and the lack funds meant several aid agencies working in Pool may shut down.

"I also know many aid workers who used to work here but who have ended up being pulled out and sent to Darfur. This is very symbolic of our problem," he said.

According to the U.N., thousands were killed during Congo's war -- some put the toll as high as 10,000 -- and some 150,000 civilians fled the latest bout of violence in March 2003.

Although Congo is rich in oil, Pool is an economic backwater where many schools have remained closed for up to eight years, there are few health facilities and the road to the coast has been reduced to deeply rutted paths cut into the red soil.

Agbenonci said the humanitarian and economic woes of the region needed to be addressed to avoid reigniting the conflict.
"The stability of the Pool is the stability of the whole of Congo but it doesn't seem to be a priority. There are no resources in Pool, just its people," he said. "There is a very free flow of weapons, so there is still a risk of rebellion."

"This place is a time bomb we need to defuse."

"Ninjas" roam and loot in Congo's lawless Pool

At some point later in the week I'll be posting a link to my new book review, "The End of Poverty" by Jefferey Sachs. In that book Professor Sachs states that the US among other "rich" countries have already signed on the dotted line to fund programs designed to lift Africa out of extreme poverty and give it the chance to succeed that both India and China have had. The magic number is 0.7% of our GDP I believe. Mind you, we've already said we'd do this. The problem is we actually haven't. What we give Africa amounts to $.16 per person. That person has to use that $.16 to combat AIDS and malaria, acquire food, shelter and clothing, and possibly educate their young. They obviously can't and the result is what we're seeing in the Congo and the Sudan as well as what we've seen in Liberia and Rwanda. It's like we have the cure for what ails an entire continent and react by saying, "meh...let'em die." It's malign neglect and in this country if you did what we're doing to Africa to a child you'd be arrested and your child would be up for adoption (unless you live in Florida, then your child would just die).

There's a ton of blogs talking about the filibuster fight, the Minutemen, Tom Delay, and of course the new Pope. This is my fight, for as long as I have this blog and the ability to write I will keep jumping up and down and pointing at a continent on fire as much as one man with an internet connection can. No desire to "bring democracy to the world" can be taken seriously when "Ninjas" are free to attack UN convoys and child armies are as big a problem as Iraqi suicide bombers.

From Reuters: MINDOULI, Congo, April 24 (Reuters) - The U.N. convoy was meant to deliver aid and attend a soccer tournament to mark reconciliation between rebels and government forces in the Republic of Congo's troubled Pool region.
But at the first checkpoint, Pool's top official was pulled by drunken "Ninja" rebels from his car. At the second roadblock, dope-smoking, grenade-wielding fighters looted whatever aid and valuables they could find in the U.N. vehicles.

"Go and tell (President Denis) Sassou Nguesso that Pool is for the rebels and he shouldn't send his government men here, let alone in U.N. convoys," barked a rebel, who went by the name of "The Laughing Cow", as he poked grenades into the U.N. vehicles on Saturday.

The United Nations says the humanitarian emergency in this thickly-forested part of sub-Saharan Africa's fourth biggest oil producer is a forgotten crisis: where war may have ended but there is no peace.

Congo's conflict officially ended in 1999 but there were clashes several times in 2002 and 2003 between fighters based in Pool, led by the charismatic Pastor Frederic Ntoumi, and forces loyal to the president.

While the rebels say they are willing to join a disarmament process, bands of gunmen continue to pillage villages and hijack passenger and goods trains travelling through Pool, which is west of the capital Brazzaville on the way to the oil-producing coastal town of Pointe Noire.

Few in Mindouli, a dusty town several kms (miles) down the rutted, red dirt road from the Ninja checkpoints, were surprised by the harassment, saying that's a taste of reality in Pool.

"This is what people here have to endure every day each time they try and travel by road or take the train to the coast or the capital," said an aid worker in the town.

PLENTY OF WEAPONS

Congo is an oil-rich nation attracting millions of dollars of investment but analysts question the government's capacity and will to resolve the festering crisis in Pool.

Many in the convoy said the roadblock was symptomatic of the problem -- a government that cannot control the territory and bands of armed youths roaming around the region with little leadership, hope or education but plenty of weapons.
Aid workers said the pillaging and lack of roads, many of which have disappeared into the red earth and thick scrub, leave Pool's residents with few options other than subsistence farming which just entrenches their poverty.

The "Ninja" rebels, named after ancient Japanese warriors glamourised by Hollywood, have shaved the trademark Rasta-style dreadlocks they had vowed to keep until the end of the war.

But the looters, some barechested, some barefoot, others in football shirts, drugged, holding Kalshnikov assault rifles, knives, machetes and grenades, still looked menacing.

They scattered into the bushes with their booty when bursts of automatic gunfire announced the arrival of their superiors, sporting purple scarves and Rasta-style woolly hats even though their tresses have now been shorn.

In Mindouli, a town bristling with government soldiers to protect a minister who flew in by helicopter to watch the soccer games, a senior government official played down the problems.

Paul Ngoma -- deputy to the man dragged from his car by the rebels a few hours earlier before being released -- said he was in control and the government was tackling the problem.

"Of course there are a few bandits who try and take advantage of the situation but in general the situation is very calm," he said.

"I think a forgotten crisis is a too strong. We represent the state and we are regulating the situation."

Vichy France 2000

This post is also available at Blogger News Network

France is playing with fire which may ultimately end up burning both Europe and America. I've been saying in the last couple of posts that the US needs to understand that world is slouching toward multi-polarity whether we like it or not and it would be advantageous to start strategizing with that in mind. I think we have begun to pass the "Unipolar moment" and now the US needs to reconfigure its new role in the world. However, that goes doubly so for France, which has a different problem. Their collective approach to world affairs is to do what strictly benefits the French surpassing the US as a global leader. Chirac and company are no more multi-polarist than the neo-cons in Washington. Unfortunately, as I've stated above, their Napoleonic quest to return to greatness at the cost of the US will most likely result in tragedy for both our countries.

First there's this from an April 13th Reuters story: "French President Jacques Chirac has been pushing the EU to drop its refusal to consider letting Iran enrich uranium, despite U.S. and European fears Iran could use enrichment technology for weapons, EU diplomats say...the talks took a new turn last month when negotiators from the EU's "big three" (EU3) and the office of EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana agreed in Paris to consider an Iranian proposal that it keep a small-scale enrichment programme that would be closely monitored by the U.N. nuclear watchdog.

Several diplomats said this shift -- which came just after Washington bolstered the EU position by offering its own incentives if Tehran scrapped enrichment -- was mainly the result of pressure by Chirac, who pushed the French Foreign Ministry to drop its refusal to consider Iran's plan.

"Jacques Chirac ... is the one who's taking the Iranian proposal under consideration," said an EU3 diplomat, adding the French president had the final say on foreign policy matters."

So while Chirac is apparently attempting to play the Iranians against us as a check, the French as a whole are showing their true racist yet globally inept colors by voting "no" on the EU constitution citing Turkey as the problem.

This from Zaman.com: "While the French have been intensively discussing the constitution, which they want to be in line with their traditions, one of the most important matters of debate is Turkey's possible future EU membership. Several French politicians from right to left on the political spectrum link Turkey's membership with the constitution and are calling on the French public to vote "no" on May 29th. It is an exaggeration to say that French people will vote "no" on the constitution only because of Turkey. As a matter of fact, French people also complain about the EU's moving away from the concept of enlargement and the understanding of a social state. One of the most controversial issues, however, is Turkey. Some French citizens, despite the fact that they would probably vote "yes" to Turkey's membership in a referendum that will be held after 10 or 15 years if Turkey completes EU negotiations with success, are asking "Why do we wait for 15 years? Let's say "no" to Turkey as of now." Turning the so-called Armenian "genocide" allegations into a principle in the world for the first time, France has a public, which has the deepest objection to Turkey's EU membership. Thıs attitude in France is hypocritical. As a matter of fact, Turkey's "tough" secularism, administrative system and linguistic borrowings when it encountered with the modern West are all from France. İn short, France has parallels with Turkey. Despite this fact, Turks are anxious this time that their march towards Europe will be blocked in Paris. It is rumored that French Foreign Minister Michel Barnier said: "Forget about negotiations on October 3rd." if the French would vote "no" on the Constitution in the referendum on May 29th."

Just so we all understand, then French are stroking the Iranians while attempting to alienate Turkey. While I continue to believe the French are not our enemy per se, I do believe their rather acute way of dealing with international politics is an accident waiting to happen.

Syrians End Military Presence in Lebanon

This post is also available at Blogger News Network

The party is over in Lebanon. But what does it all mean? Is this the beginning of warmer relations between Beirut and Washington, especially where Israel is concerned or will this be more of the same Islamist nationalism that tends to place itself against the interests of the US/Israel? One of the big questions is what about Hezbollah? That group is essentially the defacto army of militant Islam and its orders come from our seemingly newest target of pre-empitve agression, Iran.

Speaking of which, Iranian Foreign Minister KamalKharrazi on Saturday accused the United States of creating crisis in Lebanon, saying the Lebanese themselves should solve the country's problems, the official IRNA news agency reported. "The Americans are trying to create crisis in Lebanon and takeadvantage of critical situation there, while Lebanon's problems should be solved by its own people," Kharrazi was quoted as sayingin a meeting with leader of the Lebanon Socialist Progressive Party Walid Joumblatt. (xinhua.net)

Meanwhile, "Najib Mikati, Lebanon's prime minister designate, on Friday pledged that legislative elections would be held on time, while the country's two top security chiefs appeared on their way out - two key demands of the opposition and the US." (new.ft.com)

One can only hope that words, not bullets (as said in the in the new movie "The Interpreter") will be the norm in the coming years throughout the Middle East. This story out of Qatar may be a small bit of hope, "Lebanon’s Hezbollah said prisoner exchange negotiations with its arch-foe Israel were reaching a decisive stage but warned it could resort to force to free the last Lebanese detainees if talks failed." Threats of violence are the norm so to me the important thing here is that Hezbollah and Israeli officials are actually talking rather than shooting at one another.

Here is the full story from the AP:

BEIRUT, Lebanon (AP) - Syrian troops burned documents and dismantled military posts in their final hours in Lebanon Sunday, before deploying toward the border and effectively ending 29 years of military presence in the country.
A few score Syrian troops will remain in Lebanon for a farewell ceremony Tuesday that the Lebanese Army plans to hold in a town close to the Syrian border.

In Damascus, the Syrian capital, a government official said: "Within the next few hours, all the troops will be out of Lebanon."
"What will be left are those who will take part in the official farewell" on Tuesday, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

In the border town of Anjar, home of Syria's chief of military intelligence in Lebanon, Syrian officials appeared to be going about their business as usual Sunday.

But at the Deir el-Ahmar base, Syria's last major garrison in the Bekaa Valley, 15 tanks rolled on to flatbed trucks, ready for the drive home, witnesses told The Associated Press. Soldiers burned papers, knocked down walls and loaded ammunition on to trucks.

Syrian troops had already vacated at least 10 positions in the northern part of the Bekaa Valley on Saturday. Dozens of trucks carrying hundreds of soldiers and at least 150 armored vehicles, towing artillery pieces and rocket launchers, crossed the border into Syria, witnesses said.

"Tomorrow everything will be over," a Lebanese military officer said Saturday, speaking on condition of anonymity, as is typical for military officials here.

On Tuesday, Lebanese troops at a base in Rayak, few miles from the Syrian border, will conduct a ceremony to pay tribute to the Syrian Army's role in Lebanon, a Lebanese military officer said.

Afterward, the token Syrian force will leave, and there will not be a single Syrian soldier left in Lebanon. The Syrians entered Lebanon in 1976, ostensibly as peacekeepers in the year-old civil war. After the war ended in 1990, 40,000 Syrian troops remained in Lebanon, giving Damascus the decisive say in Lebanese politics.

Syria began withdrawing from Lebanon last month following international and Lebanese pressure in the wake of the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri on Feb. 14.

In September 2004, when the number of Syrian troops in Lebanon stood at about 14,000, the U.N. Security Council adopted a resolution calling on Syria to withdraw all its troops and intelligence operatives.

Last week, Lebanese and Syrian officials said the remaining 1,000 troops would be gone by April 26.

Secretary-General Kofi Annan said last week he was delaying until Tuesday the release of a report to the Security Council on Syria in Lebanon so he could confirm the full withdrawal.

New Review: South Park Conservatives

As part of the series of changes on this site, whenever a new review of mine has been posted on Popandpolitics.com I will cross promote it here with a short excerpt and a link to the site as well as a link on the sidebar under Mark Radulich's Book Reviews.

From the review:

“South Park Conservatives” by Brian C. Anderson narrates the new of era neo-conservatives and their standard bearers in the new media. It is essentially a who’s who guide to new conservatism in mainstream news and politics. It also paints the reader a picture of who the new, young, conservatives are and what they are all about.

The very name “South Park Conservative” is copped from conservative blogger Andrew Sullivan, who originally coined the phrase “South Park Republicans.” Here Sullivan is referring to the new breed of conservatives who cannot be easily pinned down on all social milieus and are just as likely to be wearing penny loafers and sports jackets as they are a “metal up your ass – Metallica t-shirt” and Doc Marten combat boots.

Anderson covers all of the players in the skyrocketing conservative movement who have been challenging what they perceive as a liberal media hegemony. The usual suspects are talk radio, Fox News, the blogosphere, conservative publishing houses like Regnery, a rising tide of organized college Republicans, and what Anderson refers to as the anti-liberals.

Somebody do something about the U.S. birthrate plunge

[This essay was written by Diane Pagen from Caregivercredit.org]

On Thursday, April 21st, USA today had a front page article, "US is getting old fast." It says we are only 25 years away from the impending crisis of having senior citizens outnumber children. The article suggests that the interests of children and the elderly will then compete for precious and limited tax dollars.

The article fails to mention one of the major causes of the crisis: that women all over the Western world are having far fewer children. In the U.S., they are doing this in part because our nation has no financial supports or incentives to bear the children that we need to replace those of us who are aging, or to take care of us in our final fragile years, as we all live about a decade longer than we did years ago.

While some believe that women are not having more kids simply because they don’t want to, there is data to show that is not exactly the case. Phil Longman wrote in his book, The Empty Cradle that for example, women born in 1960 desired an average of 2.3 children, but only produced 1.9.

Despite the fact that a proactive national policy, in the form of expanded refundable tax credits perhaps, plus more societal respect for those who raise kids, would likely reduce the impending disaster of having not enough caregivers to take care of the aging, government has not yet done anything to acknowledge our plummeting birthrates. What's more, it continues to foster an American culture where mothering (or parenting) full time is looked down upon for women who do not have a private source of income to sustain it (such as a high earning husband or a salary of her own from a paid job). Women in their twenties are actively not getting pregnant or choosing abortion, because they want to adhere to society’s expectation that they "make something of themselves" before having kids. As if having children were in itself nothing.

If women, particularly low-income women, felt respected in their role of mother, and if financial supports were available in a way that did not stigmatize, our birthrate would probably rise, and come 2030, we’d have millions more twenty somethings to be their for our seniors. When is our government going to take steps to address this enormous social and economic crisis that is at our heels? A government that promotes family values cannot continue to ignore how U.S. policies discourage having children.

As a 36 year old, college educated woman who still wants to bear children but has been putting it off so as not to be plunged into poverty, I know that I am not alone in this problem that is so ironic because more children are so desperately needed now.

We all need an immediate governmental response in the form of greater respect and income supports for people who are willing to take care of other people, whether children or aging people. Not every job that needs doing is in the paid marketplace. The sooner we free some of us up to do unpaid work, the sooner this crisis will be averted.

Chilean Women Chalk Up Income Gains

[It's Caregivercredit.com Weekends again. In a week where I've reported on malicious neglect in Africa, another possible war in the Middle East and the atrocities of WWII Japan, I'm glad to see some folks are doing well. Namely, according to this article by Jen Ross - WeNews correspondent, Chilean women. Now it should be common knowledge that the success of a society is congruent with the liberalization of women in the national workforce. It's a lesson Saudi Arabia should learn in the near future if it truly wants to move beyond solely an oil driven economy. In the meantime, it's good to see the Latin Americans are providing a decent example of said liberalization.]

SANTIAGO, Chile (WOMENSENEWS)--Once a week, Marlen Salgado gets out her broom and sets out for the sidewalks of her social housing complex, in the El Volcan ghetto, about 30 kilometers outside of Santiago.

Garbage bags hang haphazardly on trees and in heaps on the pavement, the stench mixing with that of feces from the scores of stray dogs. Salgado tries to clear the streets as best she can. Not a very gratifying way to make a living. But as a mother of three young children, Salgado says it lets her spend most of her time at home, while contributing financially.

"I make 20,000 pesos a month doing this," says Salgado, referring to the equivalent of about $30. "Add to that my husband's salary of 115,000 pesos and it was enough to get us out of the squatter community we were living in."

As a woman who works for pay, Salgado is still in the minority here.

She is also a point of debate over whether more work-force participation is necessarily a correct development goal.

Mariana Schkolnik, an economist with the social development division of the U.N.'s Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean in Santiago, sees a lot of gray area surrounding women's work-force participation rates.

"We also have to ask ourselves as a society, if it's realistic to have a 100-percent participation rate for women," she says. "Then who will care for a sick child? Pick him up from school? Who will care for aging adults? Who will prepare that delicious home-cooked meal? You'd need a whole makeover in the culture and the system of production."

10-Year-Old Employment Goals

International development experts have long argued that female employment in the labor force is essential for escaping poverty. And 10 years ago in Beijing, the bulk of the world's leaders agreed on the need to promote women's economic rights and independence. In a U.N. declaration known as the Beijing Platform, they committed their governments to improving women's access to employment and appropriate working conditions and control over economic resources.

In 1995, at the time of the Beijing meeting, Chile's female work-force participation stood at 25 percent. Today it's about 36 percent.

Some of that expansion has occurred in traditionally male-dominated financial sector, where female employment has skyrocketed over the past 10 years, climbing from 32 percent to 51 percent, according to a recent study from the U.N.'s Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean.

But while Chilean women's employment has risen significantly, it still lags far behind the regional average of 49 percent for Latin America overall.

In the past 10 years Chile has endeavored to promote female participation through a permanent awareness campaign and passing laws to provide equal opportunities, says Myriam Verdugo, deputy director of the government's National Service for Women.

"But what's really needed is a cultural change, whereby both men and women start to see children and family as a shared responsibility," says Verdugo. "We are a macho society with deeply rooted concepts of male power . . . and cultural change is very slow."

Topping the List of Beijing Goals

Teresa Valdez is a researcher in Santiago with an independent think-tank, La Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales, that recently concluded an analysis of Latin America's progress towards the Beijing Action Plan. She says despite the low participation, Chile tops the list for spurring women's progress towards the Beijing goals overall.

"Chilean women are the most educated in the region and those who do work have tended to have better jobs, with more protection," she says. "In Bolivia, on the other hand, it's mainly poor, indigenous women who work and they toil in poor conditions, in the informal sector, without contracts, so it's not the optimal kind of participation."

Valdez says Chile has instituted universal maternity leave and, just a few weeks ago, the Chilean Congress passed a law against sexual harassment in the workplace.

What's more, the economy is healthy and the national poverty rate has dropped substantially, down to 20 percent from 30 percent in 1995.

The government here estimates that at least 100,000 more families would be living in poverty if women weren't working for pay.

Poverty Protections Debated

Valdez says Chile has advanced more than most countries in the region when it comes to developing laws and policies to include women in the work force and providing protection for the poor.

But such programs have their downside, says Schkolnik, the economist with the U.N. Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean.

"If a poor household brings in $68,000 pesos working, while the social security provided by the state is $100,000 pesos, why would you work?" she says. "On the one hand, that's positive because it improves our social development indicators, but on the other hand, it's a disincentive for poor women to work."

Carla Lopez, an uneducated 25-year-old mother from El Volcan, says that's exactly why she doesn't work outside the home: "If I did, I would spend more on child care than what I would earn."

Chilean women continue to earn 30 percent less than their male counterparts, for the same work. The wage gap widens as wages rise, reaching 50 percent for the top jobs, where female representation is scarce. Only 5 percent of Chilean executives are women.

Housewives with University Degrees

While Valdez says the wage gap at the top of the work force is getting smaller, Schkolnik says that many Chilean housewives have university degrees and this indicates that women are still either reluctant or discouraged from attempting to enter high-salary jobs.

"That's a human capital that's being underutilized," she says. "Because of the importance they place on the family and the feeling of responsibility for being at home with their children and also a distrust of having someone else care for them."

The lack of affordable child care is another major barrier to women's entry to the work force. According to an opinion poll last year conducted by Adimark, a market researcher, that has remained one of the main concerns for many women considering entering the work force.

To that end, the government passed a law requiring companies with more than 20 female employees to provide free day care for children below the age of 5. But because most Chilean businesses are small or medium-sized, that law applies to only 20 percent of the firms.

In the informal sector, the government's National Service for Women has developed child care programs to assist seasonal agricultural workers. In March, the government will begin a new pilot program for year-long child care for a wider range of workers in Santiago. The state will split costs evenly with employers.

Jen Ross is a Chilean-Canadian freelance journalist who returned to her mother's homeland a year ago, to tell its untold, or under-told, stories.

US's Zoellick reluctant to describe Darfur violence as genocide

Well of course he is. It's only blacks in Africa, nobody important...The level of inherent racism against Africans in Western civilization is a blight on all things remotely considered progressive. This is only one example but there are plenty more. I guess the new policy toward Africa is wait it out long enough for AIDS, genocide and malaria to claim the whole population and then turn the newly emptied continent into Disneyland Africa for Western business investors.

This from the Sudan Tribune:

April 20, 2005 -- Comments made during a recent trip to Sudan by US Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick suggest a significant effort is underway by the Bush administration to downplay the catastrophe in Darfur. Not only did Zoellick make a series of comments that fully justify the Financial Times headline of April 15, 2005 ("Zoellick reluctant to describe Darfur violence as genocide"), but he offered a disturbingly, indeed untenably low estimate of human mortality in Darfur over the past 26 months of conflict. Zoellick also endorsed a level of troop strength for intervention in Darfur that clearly cannot address in adequate fashion any of the security issues defining the crisis; nor has Zoellick or the US State Department explicitly called for a peacekeeping mandate for forces operating in Darfur.

The ultimate purpose of this statistical and semantic lowballing of Darfur's urgent requirements and brutal destruction is evidently to forestall any need for a US commitment to humanitarian intervention. Unable to fashion a policy that halts genocide in Darfur, the Bush administration has instead committed to a strategy of re-definition. The administration's previous genocide determination---formally rendered by former Secretary of State Colin Powell in Senate testimony of September 9, 2004---has devolved into a "former Secretary of State" simply "making a point" to Congress (Financial Times, April 15, 2005). "I don't want to get into a debate over terminology," [Zoellick] said, when asked if the US believed that genocide was still being committed in Darfur against the mostly African villagers by Arab militias and their government backers" (Financial Times, April 15, 2005).

A determination that the ultimate human crime is being committed, with hundreds of thousands of victims to date, has been rendered a mere "debate over terminology." No matter that the US is a contracting party to the 1948 UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, with an explicit obligation to "prevent genocide" (Article 1). No matter that there hasn't been any change in the character of evidence making fully clear the genocidal nature of human destruction in Darfur. Indeed, current evidence continues to be of the same nature as that which justified Powell's fully researched genocide determination in September.

Given the rapid deterioration of security conditions in Darfur, and the likelihood of huge increases in human mortality in the coming months, the timing of Zoellick's backtracking remarks could hardly have been poorer, even as they are entirely consistent with the views implicit in recent remarks to the Washington Post (March 25, 2005) by current US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice (see analysis of Rice's comments by this writer, March 31, 2005; sudanreeves.org/).

But reneging words on the part of the Bush administration cannot change Darfur's ghastly realities. All indications are that insecurity for humanitarian operations in Darfur is accelerating, with armed attacks increasingly directed at humanitarian personnel (see below). The crisis is still defined by huge and increasing numbers of displaced persons, a decline in nutritional health in many quarters, the collapse of Darfur's agricultural economy (with attendant food inflation), a failure to pre-position adequate quantities of food prior to the approaching rainy season, and famine conditions that are already evident in many rural areas.

All of these reflect the ghastly success of Khartoum's National Islamic Front regime, and its Janjaweed militia proxies, in "deliberately inflicting on the [African tribal populations of Darfur] conditions of life calculated to bring about [their] physical destruction in whole or in part" (Article 2, clause [c] of the 1948 Genocide Convention). To date, approximately 400,000 human beings have died in the course of conflict (sudanreeves.org). Given the extreme vulnerability of Darfur's civilian populations, this number could double in coming months if insecurity forces the suspension of humanitarian operations.

What is especially disturbing about the weakening US moral and diplomatic commitment to halting genocide in Darfur is that it occurs amidst broad, bipartisan support for a stronger, more decisive US policy. The Congress declared last July---in a unanimous, bipartisan, bicameral vote---that Khartoum and its Janjaweed allies are guilty of genocide in Darfur. There are in the House of Representatives sponsors on both sides of the aisle for the Darfur Accountability Act. Senators Corzine (Democrat) and Brownback (Republican) were original sponsors of the Senate version of the bill. Republican and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist recently "urged the United Nations to recognize the killings in Darfur as genocide" (Associated Press, April 15, 2005):

"'The Khartoum government will not stop this killing until it is faced with stiff international pressure, Frist said on the Senate floor Friday. 'Every day the world fails to act, Khartoum gets closer to its genocidal goal, and every day the world fails to act it compounds its shame.'" (Associated Press, April 15, 2005)

But the Bush administration refuses to accept this fundamental truth about Darfur, and refuses to fashion or advocate an international, multilateral policy that reflects the urgency of ongoing genocidal destruction.

You can read more by clinking the title link.

AP: Oil-For-Food Investigators Resign

If Annan isn't being protected for God only knows what reason from up on high by the Prince of Darkness himself or at least the Bush Administration, I'll eat my hat!

UNITED NATIONS - (AP) - Two senior investigators with the committee probing corruption in the U.N. oil-for-food program have resigned in protest, saying they believe a report that cleared Kofi Annan of meddling in the $64 billion operation was too soft on the secretary-general, a panel member confirmed Wednesday.

The investigators felt the Independent Inquiry Committee, led by former U.S. Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker, played down findings critical of Annan when it released an interim report in late March related to his son, said Mark Pieth, one of three leaders of the committee.

"You follow a trail and you want to see people pick it up," Pieth told The Associated Press, referring to the two top investigators who left. The committee "told the story" that the investigators presented, "but we made different conclusions than they would have."

The investigators were identified as Robert Parton and Miranda Duncan.

Parton, as the senior investigative counsel for oil-for-food, had a wide purview. He was responsible for investigations into the procurement of companies under the oil-for-food program and he was the lead investigator on issues pertaining to allegations of impropriety relating to the secretary-general and his son Kojo Annan. Duncan worked on Parton's team.

Parton, a lawyer and former FBI agent who has worked on a hostage-rescue team abroad, confirmed to AP on Wednesday that he resigned a week ago, but he declined further comment.

Duncan did not respond to telephone and e-mail messages left at the Rockefeller Family Fund, where she is a member of the board. She is a granddaughter of billionaire David Rockefeller.

The committee's interim report last month faulted Annan's management of the oil-for-food program, which was set up to help ordinary Iraqis cope with crippling U.N. sanctions imposed on Saddam Hussein's regime after his 1990 invasion of Kuwait.

The report also said Annan didn't properly investigate possible conflicts of interest surrounding a U.N. contract awarded to the Swiss employer of Kojo Annan. The investigators criticized Kofi Annan for refusing to push his top advisers further after they conducted a hasty, 24-hour investigation relating to his son and found nothing wrong.

But the interim report cleared the secretary-general of trying to influence the awarding of the $10 million-a-year Swiss contract and said he didn't violate U.N. rules.

Annan said the report exonerated him - something Pieth denied at the time - and the secretary-general said he had no plans to resign. The investigation into Kojo Annan continues. Volcker has promised to deliver a final oil-for-food investigation report in mid-summer.

The oil-for-food scandal has been among a series of problems that have plagued the United Nations in recent months. U.N. peacekeepers have also been accused of sexual misconduct in Congo and other missions, while the former U.N. refugee chief was accused of sexual harassment.

Annan's spokesman Fred Eckhard said the resignations were an internal committee matter and refused to comment. U.N. officials have repeatedly said the report speaks for itself.

A spokeswoman at Volcker's committee, who would speak only on condition of anonymity, said the resignations came after the investigators had completed the work they signed on to do.

Pieth acknowledged disagreements within the committee about how to interpret the evidence on Annan, but he denied investigators were censored. He also praised the work of Duncan and Parton.

"I have high esteem for both Robert and Miranda," Pieth said. "It's not a bad parting. I think they are very capable people."

Pieth added, however, that he believed the two investigators got "personally very involved" in the probe and so grew upset. "Again, this is the nature of things," he said.

The inquiry committee has more than 70 investigators probing all aspects of oil-for-food, and Duncan and Parton were two of its most senior investigators.

The investigators report their findings to the three committee members - Volcker, Pieth and former Yugoslav war crimes prosecutor Richard Goldstone - who then make conclusions.

Pieth said the committee had deliberately created an atmosphere where investigators felt comfortable dissenting with others.

"I am also quite happy that there are people who dare to speak their mind because that is one of the problems with the U.N. - that you have these guys nodding their heads," Pieth said.

"We reproached the secretary-general that he was satisfied with his top guys, who told him after 24 hours that everything was fine," he added, referring to the internal probe of Kofi Annan. "It's not a good thing to have these guys who only say what you want to hear."

The oil-for-food program, which ran from 1996 to 2003, let the Iraqi government sell limited - and eventually unlimited - amounts of oil primarily to buy humanitarian goods.

But Saddam's government had authority to decide who would have the right to purchase oil and it is believed to have extracted kickbacks ranging from an estimated $9 billion to $21 billion.

Israel Warns U.S. Of Rising Prospect Of Middle East War In 2006

Never introduce a new product in August. The 2006 mid-term elections will be here before you know it and what better way to promote Republican candidates than with a regional war! OK, so I'm being really sarcastic here and I'm actually very upset about this.

War is a horrible thing but sometimes it's a necessity. I believe the saying goes, "war is diplomacy by another means." I really don't want to see tensions escalate to that extreme in the Middle East but the fact remains that if Iran is intent on building a bomb and/or elliminating Israel then war is what we will have, God save us all.

When it does happen I'm fairly certain China will use the opporotunity to invade Taiwan as I've said is previous posts. The truly sad thing about this for me is that with all the bellyaching about "neo-cons" and "liberals" it almost looks as if no matter how awful or how respectful our foriegn policy ends up being, or how cynical and opporotunistic our politics are, forces beyond our control in the developing world will pull us into one long dreadful nightmare.

Here's the story from the Watchman Herald Daily News:

Israel warns the United States of the rising prospect of a Middle East war in 2006.

U.S. officials said Israel has determined that the expected U.S. withdrawal from Iraq in 2006 would raise tensions in the region that could lead to a Middle East war. The officials said the Israeli assessment asserted that Iran would either lead or play a major role in any future war against the Jewish state.

"It is the biggest nightmare of [Prime Minister] Ariel Sharon," a U.S. official said. "He has relayed repeated messages to the administration that Iran and its Arab allies were preparing for war."

Officials said Sharon has raised this issue with President George Bush, Vice President Richard Cheney and leaders of the U.S. intelligence community. They said Sharon and Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz have assessed that an Iran emboldened with nuclear weapons and intermediate-range missiles was seeking to form a coalition against Israel for a war that could take place after a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq.

Sharon discussed Iran's nuclear weapons program during his visit to the United States last week. Officials said the prime minister, equipped with satellite photos, told Bush and Cheney that Iran has nearly reached the point of indigenous nuclear weapons capability. He said Iran still had several technical obstacles to overcome.

"Once they will solve it, that will be the point of no return," Sharon said in a U.S. television interview.

So far, the Bush administration has not supported Sharon's urging for an immediate response to Iran's nuclear weapons program. Officials said the administration has been supporting European Union diplomatic efforts for a permanent halt in Iranian uranium enrichment. They said the administration was prepared to give the EU until the end of 2005 to achieve its aim.

"We all have a shared concern and a shared goal, our shared goal is to make sure Iran does not develop a nuclear weapon," White House press secretary Scott McClellan said. "That would be a very destabilizing factor in the region. We continue to support those [EU] diplomatic efforts to resolve this in a peaceful manner."

Israel has told the United States that Iran was developing nuclear warheads for ballistic and cruise missiles. Officials said Israel assessed that Iran would have indigenous nuclear capability by 2006.

Sharon was also said to have urged Bush for military support to ensure that Israel would receive the supplies and weapons required to deter or fight any Middle East war in wake of the unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and northern West Bank. Officials said the prime minister asserted that Iran was encouraging Palestinian insurgency groups and Hizbullah to increase tensions along the southern and northern Israeli borders.

But officials said most of the U.S. intelligence community does not share the Israeli assessment of either an imminent Iranian nuclear threat or the prospect of a regional war in 2006. They said U.S. intelligence does not envision an Iranian nuclear bomb until at least 2010.

"Our intelligence community has used in the past an estimate that said that Iran was not likely to acquire a nuclear weapon before the beginning of the next decade," State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said on April 13. "That remains the case."

The U.S. priority in the Middle East, officials said, was for Israel's withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and the northern West Bank as well as the establishment of a Palestinian state. During his meeting with Sharon, officials said, Bush asserted that the establishment of a Palestinian democracy would result in regional stability.

"If you resolve the Israeli-Palestinian issue, you've resolved the problem with extremism," Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said. "You will not have resolved the problem with extremism. The only way that the problem with extremism gets resolved is if there is a competing ideology that is one based on freedom and liberty and tolerance." Officials said Bush also urged Sharon to end Israeli construction in the West Bank, saying this would torpedo U.S. efforts to encourage democracy in the Middle East. On Monday, the administration opposed Israeli plans to construct 50 housing units in the West Bank community of Elkanah.

"We will be seeking clarification from the government of Israel," McClellan said. "I think the president made his views very clear last week, as well, that Israel should not expand settlements."

On Tuesday, Assistant Secretary of State David Welch and Deputy National Security Advisor Elliott Abrams arrive in Israel to meet Sharon. Officials said the two U.S. envoys plan to focus their talks on the Israeli withdrawal as well as steps to help Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas.

Officials said they were monitoring reports from Israel that Sharon was likely to delay the withdrawal by at least three weeks.

"We think that withdrawal from Gaza and the four settlements on the West Bank creates an opportunity for all," Boucher said. "We need to work hard to prepare for that."

Afghan Opium Eradication Plan Continues

Yet another example of how our rediculous and racist drug war is tied to the loosely defined "War on Terror". As a conservative and a social worker I can tell you that Western governments, especially the United States would save more money and cure more people afflicted with drug addiction if we would stop investing the lion share of resources in policing and erradicating the drug trade and instead concentrate on treatment and on education. It's a simple fact, treatment costs less money and helps more people. The money we've spent since the inception of the Harrison Narcotics Tax Act of 1914, which was the catalyst for the "War on Drugs" has grown by leaps and bounds with nothing to show for it except a savvy drug population and cheap prison labor that looks suspiciously like slavery.

Of course the other bonus here is that now more than ever, our government can tie fighting drugs to foriegn policy by giving military aid for the sole purpose of destroying narcotics crops. It's also a great way to keep one hand on a quasi-friendly government like say Colombia. The following article from the AP talks about opium erradication in Afghanistan, which I'm sure came directly from Washington and has resulted in alienating the locals that were growing it as a cash crop. My one question about what has happened in Afghanistan is that when the Afghan troops were done destroying the fields, did anyone stick around to help ressurect a new cash crop to help the farmers or did they just leave a smoldering field and wished the locals the best of luck? One other question, I wonder where the next group of disgruntled Persians will come from to join the bevy of terrorist groups raging against Western Civilization?

Here's the story:

SANZERI, Afghanistan (AP) - Afghan police and soldiers are pressing ahead with a plan to eradicate the world's largest opium crop, moving from field to field in southern Kandahar province with cutters and large sticks as angry farmers look on.

Authorities have destroyed almost 50 acres of illegal poppy crops since Sunday in and around Sanzeri, Haji Mohammed, the local police chief, told The Associated Press.

Similar operations are under way in other parts of the country, though it will be some time until officials get a clear sense of how much of this year's crop is destroyed.

The eradication campaign was suspended April 12, its first day, when police sent to destroy poppy fields in Kandahar opened fire on rock-throwing protesters. At least seven people were hurt, though officials denied reports of fatalities.

Local and central government authorities have held meetings with tribal elders in an effort to restore calm, and it seemed to be working. On Tuesday, there was anger but no violence among the farmers as they watched officials hack through their crops.

"I had no idea whether growing this was legal or illegal," said one farmer, Mohammed Gull. "All I know is that I was about to harvest my field and now the government has destroyed everything. They have ruined me. I've lost everything."

Another farmer, Yar Mohammed, said the government has promised aid for the drought stricken region, but none had arrived.

"I have not seen it. The government should provide us with schools, roads and electricity and give us some other job we can do to make money if they don't want us to grow poppies," he said. "After this I will have no choice but to go begging for work in town to feed my family."

President Hamid Karzai has called for a "holy war" on drugs after Afghanistan's share of the market for opium, the raw material for heroin, leapt to 87 percent last year, sparking warnings that it is fast turning into a narco-state.

The president sent Gen. Mohammed Daoud, the deputy interior minister in charge of counter-narcotics, to Kandahar on Tuesday to oversee the operation.

Countries including the United States, Britain and France are training new police units to destroy poppy fields, smash drug labs and arrest smugglers while providing hundreds of millions of dollars to help farmers switch to legal crops.

But it is expected to take years to replace a crop that has powered Afghanistan's post-Taliban revival and provided a lifeline to war-impoverished rural communities.

Much of the country's opium crop is expected to be harvested in coming weeks, meaning time is of the essence. But in Kandahar, the going has been extremely slow.

Police have waited for days for the go-ahead from the governor to start eradication in other districts in the province.

Haji Mohammed, the district police official, expressed sympathy for the farmers but he said he would follow his orders.

"Certainly, the people in the area are very poor and need the help of the government and the international community," he said. "They should be given an alternative business or get help to improve their agriculture. But in accordance with our directives, we must destroy all their poppy fields.

Politics is Religion

A new Pope has been selected. The Holy Father is now German Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger whom will now be known as Pope Benedict XVI. I think this is a very political decision as it appears to be more based on lobbying for a resurgence of Church prominence as a political instiution rather than the best choice of person for the Pope or meeting the spiritual needs of its most ardent followers. Admittedly I'm not a papal scholar and I'm bitter about the the Pope not being African but it wasn't my call to make to make.

Glückwünsche!

Chinese Anger, Japanese Shame

This post is also available at Blogger News Network

Even the most illiterate amongst us Westerners knows that in Adolph Hitler’s Germany, millions of Jewish people were brutally murdered in the death camps of Auschwitz, Poland. In today’s world nobody can commit crimes against humanity without getting labeled as Hitler-esque. This is as it should be. Since the collapse of the ties that bind the world that became World War II, ever so slowly we’ve been trying to distance ourselves from that sort inhumane destruction. Has it happened, of course it has. But the most serious offenders of human dignity and some lesser so have been labeled as being a “Hitler” or like Hitler himself. Everyone from Pol Pot, the mass murderer of Cambodia to George W. Bush, the proponent of pre-emptive war and the man whom led the charge to depose Saddam Hussein to the exclusion of all else, seems to wear the albatross of Hitler at some point or another.

However, being a Westerner and having a somewhat depreciated historical view of life beyond the Atlantic Ocean, occasionally one can be quite surprised and disgusted by events far flung from our sphere of influence that are still affecting international relations to this day. On this marble we call a planet when two countries from the Far East are having a mud throwing fight, it is almost assured that we in the West will get dirty. Therefore it is a moral imperative to understand the who, what, when, where and why of whatever conflict is making waves wherever it may be.

This of course brings me to our 800lbs gorilla friend, the People's Republic of China and our pacifist trading partners to the East, Japan. The news out of Beijing and Tokyo is essentially a conflict over Japan attempting to garner a seat on the UN Security Council, which China is at this time adamantly against. “Japan's quest for a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council is one of the factors fueling the anti-Japan protests that have erupted across China. Hopes are fading fast that Japan will win a seat anytime soon.

Japan has joined Germany, India and Brazil in pressing a claim for a permanent Security Council seat. But Japan's bid is unlikely to even make it out of its own neighborhood with China and the two Korea's firmly opposed to their neighbor winning a seat.” (Voanews.com)

The story seems to have started around April 10th, when, “Boisterous anti-Japanese protesters yesterday hurled stones, eggs and plastic bottles at Japanese diplomatic installations in Beijing in a protest certain to heighten frictions between East Asia's two biggest powers…It also follows months of rising tensions, fueled by disputes over undersea oil deposits in the East China Sea, and a recent flare-up over the way Japanese textbooks portray Japan's wartime record.

It marked the biggest public protest in the tightly guarded Chinese capital since 1999, when angry Chinese gathered near the U.S. Embassy after warplanes bombed the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, during the NATO-led war over Kosovo.” (Philly.com)

Both of the above cited articles state that one of the problems the Chinese have with Japan stems from a newly released history book that seems to downplay the actions of the Japanese forces during the Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945). If you are like me and went to public school you’ve probably never heard of this until now. “The Second Sino-Japanese War was a major invasion of eastern China by Japan preceding and during World War II. It ended with the surrender of Japan in 1945…most historians place the beginning of the Second Sino-Japanese War on the Battle of Lugou Bridge (Marco Polo Bridge Incident) on July 7, 1937. However, Chinese historians place the starting point at the Mukden Incident of September 18, 1931. Following the Mukden Incident, the Japanese Guandong Army occupied Manchuria and established the puppet state of Manchukuo (February 1932). Japan pressured China into recognizing the independence of Manchukuo. China and Japan did not formally declare war against each other until after the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.

Following the Battle of Lugou Bridge in 1937, the Japanese occupied Shanghai, Nanjing and Northern Shanxi as part of campaigns involving approximately 200,000 Japanese soldiers, and considerably more Chinese soldiers. Chinese historians estimated that as many as 300,000 people died in the Nanjing Massacre, after the fall of Nanjing…The Japanese had neither the intention nor the capability of directly administering China. Their goal was to set up friendly puppet governments that would be favorable to Japanese interests. However, the actions of the Japanese army made the governments that they did set up very unpopular, and the Japanese refused to negotiate with either the Kuomintang or the Communists, which could have brought popularity.” (En.wikipedia.org)

There’s more to the story but what is important here and what is partially fueling the rage in China against the Japanese are the downplayed or underreported atrocities and acts of barbarity the Japanese army committed against the Chinese during this time period in such places as Nanjing. “Those suffered most from the barbarity were women. They were not only raped by the Japanese, they were often brutally killed by the Japanese after the rape. "Sometimes (Japanese) cut off their breasts to reveal their white ribs; sometimes Japanese pierce through their lower body with bayonets, let them cry in pain! Sometimes they sticks wooden sticks, reed pipe or carrots into their lower body and stir, until they are dead, Japanese soldiers clap their hands and loudly laugh alongside" (Ref. The Record of the Brutal Acts of the Japanese Invaders, Political Department, KMT Military Commission, Published July 1938).

CenturyChina.com has more details from this Hitler-esque episode. “During the period of the NanJing massacre, inside and outside the city, many female bodies [were raped and mutilated]…in a house close to the city wall at the XinZhong gate, laid the body of woman in her sixties, her lower body bloated; on north YangPi street, a girl laid dead, with her abdomen being cut open and intestines dragged out, two eyes wide open, blood in the mouth. In GuYiDian Street, a girl of age twelve laid dead, her under-ware was torn, her eyes closed and mouth open. These facts tell us: these women not only died under the butcher' knifes of the Japanese, they had been humiliated before they died.

The crime of rape that the Japanese committed were extremely savage, just like their brutal murders. The Japanese officers never restrained these brutal acts, they even encourage them, to satisfy their soldiers animal desire. As a consequence, Japanese invaders raped wherever they went. In ShangHai, SuZhu, WuXi, HangZhou... Japanese invaders did the same. The fate of the women in NanJing were particularly miserable.

After the fall of NanJing, Japanese invaders searched everywhere in NanJing in groups, whenever they found women, they gang raped them.”

The Japanese did worse, far worse than what I’ve written about here. They also haven’t apologized for it according to the Chinese. “China, South Korea and other Asian nations have long accused Japan of not apologizing adequately for invading and occupying its neighbors, and Chinese animosities are aggravated by their rivalry with the Japanese to be the region's dominant power.” (Timesargus.com) However Tokyo sees things rather differently and also has a different take one why China is exercising its veto at the UN. “Japan insists that it has apologized for its wartime atrocities, and has given China some $34 billion in development aid that is war reparation in all but name—a fact seldom mentioned in the Chinese media. Rather, the two rivals are engaged in an increasingly vitriolic struggle to dominate the economic, diplomatic and military future of Asia. China, flush with pride and power after 20 years of pell-mell economic growth, is spending heavily on its military and flexing its newfound diplomatic muscle. Japan, nervous about China's rise, is shedding the pacifism that has anchored its foreign policy since the end of World War II.” (Msnbc.msn.com)

The textbooks issue is a valid one regardless of whether or not it’s a red herring in the face of China simply trying to exercise its muscle in its sphere of influence. If Japan has apologized for its actions during the war than it won’t hurt to do again. It wasn’t that long ago former President Bill Clinton apologized for slavery, which ended well before that man was even born. While it is true that Japan may be able to do nothing to soothe the pain of World War II transgressions because the real issue is dominance not reparations, the actions were heinous and deserve to be acknowledged on the world stage. If Japan truly sees itself as more than just an economic power but instead a broker of influence then it needs to face up to its history and then move ahead to bigger and better things. I’m no fan of China at this time but I won’t support Japan rewriting the history of near genocide either.

Iraq Insurgents Fail to Brew Chemical Arms

The debate over whether or not there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq that led to the even greater argument over if we should go to war there boarders on the elementary and juvenile at times. At best it appears to be a conflict between two absolutist camps. The administration said we were going to find stockpiles in Iraq and we didn't, which validates the anti-war arguments. However, stockpiles and faulty intelligence aside, there are other caveats worth looking at in Iraq that make the question of whether or not military intervention was needed a murky one indeed. The following story by CHARLES J. HANLEY of the AP is about how Iraqi insurgents attempted to make chemical weapons to be employed against American troops. The insurgents also tried the same endeavor against the people of Jordan. Now I understand that one might say that Husseins Iraq had nothing until we got there and brought the terrorists and the desire to make CW and BW weapons into a crushed and defeated nation. Call me an ethnocentric alarmist but I'm more inclined to err on the side of extreme caution and use military intervention where necessarry rather than waiting for what Jello Biafra calls the, "The Big Kaboom" and then reacting as we did in Afghanistan. It is my belief that pro-action is better than no action in matters of our national security.

Here is the story:

One scenario in Iraq goes like this: Insurgents finally succeed in concocting chemical weapons and use them against U.S. troops. Not only could it happen, it nearly did, American arms investigators say.

They say Iraqi resistance groups have tried to manufacture "CW," and one might have managed it if the Americans hadn't swooped down on them. The danger has even spilled over into Jordan, where authorities say a plot hatched in Iraq aimed to kill thousands with "poison clouds." The threat demands "sustained attention," says the chief U.S. arms investigator.

The insurgents' work on chemical arms was disclosed in the final report of Charles A. Duelfer's Iraq Survey Group, the account of its fruitless 18-month hunt for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

In a little-noted annex of the 350,000-word document, the joint CIA-Pentagon teams tell of having broken up an insurgent group last June that for six months tried to make weapons agents.

The group had recruited a Baghdad chemist and obtained chemicals from farmers who looted state companies and from shops in Baghdad's chemicals market, the report said. They first tried to make tabun, a nerve agent, but couldn't get the ingredients. Then the chemist, who had no weapons-making experience, was unable to manufacture the blistering agent mustard, although he had the right chemicals, the report said.

The insurgents hired another chemist, who succeeded in making ricin base, a poisonous plant extract, from castor beans, but at that point a U.S. raid on the laboratory, at Baghdad's al-Abud trading complex, disrupted the network.

The raiders did not capture leaders and financiers of the "al-Abud network," who the report said included Sattam Hamid Farhan al-Gaaod, an international trader said to have been close to ousted president Saddam Hussein. The insurgents also apparently took away nine mortar rounds that had been loaded with the insecticide malathion, the report said.

The U.S. command in Baghdad says no further progress has been made tracking the group since the Duelfer report was issued last October.

"The most alarming aspect of the al-Abud network is how quickly and effectively the group was able to mobilize key resources and tap relevant expertise to develop a program for weaponizing CW agents," the report said.

It said that with time the insurgents might have mastered weapons-making, with "devastating" consequences for U.S. forces.

The Duelfer account also said various sources reported insurgents were trying to produce chemical weapons elsewhere in Iraq.

In November, U.S. and Iraqi forces retaking the city of Fallujah reported apparent evidence of that: an insurgent "chemical lab" where they found the poisonous industrial compound hydrogen cyanide and a book of instructions for making potential chemical weapons.

Weeks earlier, in mid-October, Jordanian authorities said they had foiled planned chemical attacks by suicide bombers on Jordanian government targets. They said the plot was conceived by alleged terrorist leader Abu-Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian fugitive in Iraq. Nine alleged accomplices are on trial in Amman.

The prosecution claims the explosions would have created "poison clouds" and killed thousands. The compounds reported seized were mostly ingredients for explosives, however, not chemical weapons, although the list includes "pesticides," possibly a weak substitute for more effective chemical agents.

The Duelfer report warned that chemical weapons-makers from the old Iraqi regime might help insurgents make more sophisticated agents. The U.S. government has been planning to keep Iraqi weapons scientists occupied with nonmilitary projects, but that program thus far involves only 125 of them, of an estimated 500 targeted.

Some outside experts suggest the likelihood and impact of insurgent-brewed weapons may be overstated.

Not only are chemical weapons difficult to make, but "they are notoriously difficult to use," said John Eldridge, editor of Janes Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Defence.

"They use rocket launchers," this British expert said of the insurgents, "and trying to put a chemical warhead into a rocket is pretty difficult."

British researcher Richard Guthrie, of Sweden's Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, also cited the difficulty of working with the deadly nerve agent sarin, which is colorless and odorless, requiring advanced equipment to know when it is leaking.

Neither saw much tactical need for the insurgents to go to such lengths, but Guthrie saw a possible psychological edge.

"A lot of high-level attention is paid to chemical and biological terrorist issues," he said. "If you're an insurgent group planning priorities and tactics, and the signal is sent that this is what people are scared of, you put more effort into doing that."

PC Update 4/15/05

Hey Folks!

I'll get right to it, I've made some small adjustments to the site. I ditched the webrings in the footer and a few of the decorative buttons as I felt like they were just not pleasant to look at and they weren't exactly helping my build up traffic either. Instead, I've added a Newsmax.com store and Newsmax News link plus an Amazon tip button that says with wry humor, "Brother can you spare a dime". Give generously, I want to quit my job ; )

There's a new poll up. The results of the last poll had Condi slightly ahead of Hillary. I hope the race ends up being between the two of them instead of say Kerry again or Gore or a ham sandwich VS Frist, Jed Bush, McCain, Gingrich, a toaster oven or whatever. Two women would be infinitely more interesting than any of those folks. The new poll is on UN nominee John "Unipolar Moment" Bolton. Check it out, vote early and vote often.

I've also added a bunch of new links including but not limited to those I mentioned in a previous post. Some others are the New Oklahoma Democrat, Dav from Toirtap, The National Exam and Booker Rising. Jay from Stop the ACLU is even on the link list twice ::::shrugs::::

What I'm most proud to introduce is Mark Radulich's Book Reviews on Pop and Politics.com. I've been doing freelance book reviews for that site since December of '04 and I will be updating that section each time I post a new review with a link. Check out what I've been reading and if you have something you think I should take a look at I'm up for any suggestions. If you send me book you've written I'll be more than happy to review it.

I'm also excited to be a staff book reviewer for Mind and Media. This month (at some point) I'll be reviewing Total Truth and that will be posted right here on PC.BS.com. In the meantime, if you are interested in that book you can click the link to the top right.

Every weekend from Friday to Sunday night is Caregivercredit.org weekends. I post an article, usually sent to me by my friend Diane Pagen from said organization, every weekend as a means to contribute what I can to social activism. The latest installment of Caregivercredit.org is below this update.

Lastly, in addition to posting here, as you might have seen from the last few posts, I've also been contributing to the Blogger News Network (link has been added as well). It's a great site and a heck of an opporotunity. I'm pretty excited about it and the site is growing by leaps and bounds. We've even been picked up as a Google News site. Even better than us being picked up is the fact that BNN stories have started hitting the Google News front page. Hotsy totsy indeed.

Anyway, to those who have been coming back to my site without having to be dragged here by Blog Explosion, you have my gratitude. To those who comment here frequently, I appreciate the time and the exchanges.

I'll be back on Monday, have a good weekend!

New welfare system not computing: Help is slowing to a crawl for many in Sacramento, Placer.

{The following is article by Cameron Jahn that was sent to me by Diane Pagen from Caregivercredit.org. It's an interesting article. Social work tends to operate in the dark ages as far as technology is concerned but here is an example of a county that tried to get itself updated and hit some major stumbling blocks along the way...the best laid plans of Mice and Men and all that jazz I suppose.}

Officials in Sacramento and Placer counties expected some problems when they agreed to be the first of an 18-county consortium to launch a $744 million computer system for their welfare departments.

But they didn't expect this:

* People in Sacramento County are waiting longer for their benefit checks - weeks instead of days in some cases - as employees get up to speed.

* Sacramento County officials are teaching their employees to circumvent the new computer system's rules in order to speed benefits to clients.

* Placer County has issued benefit checks for February and March with few delays, but employees are still working through paperwork errors in 5,000 old cases. Sacramento County employees are manually double-checking 79,000 cases for data errors that can cause overpayments.

* In both counties, workers have suffered health problems during the change in computer systems. A Sacramento County trainer died from a heart attack during a training session, and an employee was wheeled out on a stretcher after suffering a panic attack during Placer County's January launch, according to union and county officials. At least four other employees working with the new system have gone out on stress leave, two each in Placer and Sacramento counties, officials say.

Jane Rasmussen, Sacramento County's director of human assistance, expected the conversion of the two county's 170,000 cases into the new system to be difficult, but she disputes union claims that the new computer system is causing widespread ailments.

"Staff has worked really, really hard to learn the system, but there's just a huge learning curve," Rasmussen said. "They're frustrated at how long it is taking them to do their job, and that's really to be expected."

Placer County's human services director, Cindy Woodyard, said some initial hiccups are being worked out.

"I think we're getting a little faster, but certainly in the first couple of months there were a few bumps," she said.

To comply with a 1995 state law, all counties must automate their welfare computer systems to make eligibility standards the same statewide. The old system has been used since the 1970s.

Using mainly state and federal funds, Sacramento, Placer and 16 other counties bought CalWIN to reduce paperwork, speed up services and automate welfare systems for 40 percent of the state's caseload. Sacramento and Placer counties spent a total of $675,000 in local money. (The rest of the state's counties will use various systems, including CalWIN.)

Officials in the two counties have pleaded for patience while workers struggle to learn the new system, but client advocates and representatives of United Public Employees Local 1 contend the counties have failed to train workers sufficiently or provide enough extra staff for the launch.

Employees in both counties were given at least three weeks of classroom instruction and online training, county officials said.

"When banks change computer systems, it goes seamlessly because they train their people," said Kevin Aslanian, executive director of the California Coalition of Welfare Rights Organizations, a legal services group for recipients of public benefits. "That's the real problem, that these counties refused to expend the resources to train people properly."

Gina Wolverton did not realize it was CalWIN's first day in business when she applied for benefits at Sacramento County's Q Street welfare office March 3. Wolverton, 20 and homeless, was approved to receive $305 in food stamps and cash, but she did not receive her benefits until two weeks later due to a computer glitch - more than double the normal wait time, according to her caseworker.

"I stay pretty positive or else I couldn't do it," said Wolverton, who has been sleeping beneath an Interstate 80 underpass in east Sacramento. "But this is absolutely ridiculous."

In addition to the training issues, some employees in Sacramento County are beginning to question the CalWIN computer system itself.

"We're worried that it's coming across that workers are incompetent and slow and untrained, but it's not us, it's the system," said caseworker Stacy Hernandez. "The system won't let me get my people their benefits, and it's killing me. I have people who are hungry, and I give them money from my pocket, like, 'Here's five bucks, get something to eat.' "

Last week, Nancy Gant, bureau chief at the Q Street welfare office, arranged what she called an "act of God" to sidestep the CalWIN system to secure a $123 stipend so that a woman could buy a uniform for her new job and move toward a life without public assistance. No one could figure out how to make the system approve the money. And to complete applications faster, other employees were taught shortcuts on how to sidestep the system's strict information requirements.

State law requires emergency food stamps to be issued to the truly destitute within three days, but the county's work force is not processing those applications fast enough, and the county has given up on meeting that requirement, Gant said.

"We're just hunkering down and waiting for the lawsuit," she said.

The new system is full of holes that will be fixed on the backs of Sacramento and Placer county employees, charged James Starr, chair of the board of directors for United Public Employees Local 1, which represents 4,200 Sacramento County employees.

"I can say at this point that the system just does not work," said Starr, who is also a caseworker. "It's got more bugs than Joe's apartment."

Sacramento County workers anticipate even more problems Friday, the first day CalWIN issues benefits for its 136,000 cases.

"On April 1 we are going to have so many overpayments," Hernandez predicted.

Placer and Sacramento county officials say they hope to avoid a repeat of the problems Colorado has faced with its new $200 million welfare computer system - also built by CalWIN's vendor, Texas-based EDS - which caused benefit overpayments resulting in a lawsuit and state intervention after it was launched last year.

EDS spokesman William Ritz said the company sold a top-notch system to Sacramento, Placer and the other 16 counties.

"Your county leaders deserve a lot of credit for their vision and foresight in trying to bring a business solution to benefits eligibility," he said. "They took a risk, and I think that's good government."

The CalWIN system is designed to automatically determine how much a client is entitled to receive in benefits and to present the computer's calculations for the case worker's signature. The old system required workers to do their own math with a hand-held calculator.

The new system also asks for much more information from clients, making tasks that took minutes in the old system last hours as employees master CalWIN.

Rather than simplifying things, the system has created more work, say caseworkers like Trang Nguyen. Instead of five new applications per day, Nguyen said, she and her colleagues can process only two in the new system. Like hundreds of others, Nguyen's ongoing caseload has jumped 55 percent to 700 since September, in part because of the computer changeover.

"We're not having enough staff to handle all the people asking for aid," said Nguyen, adding that her voice-mail box is constantly full and getting back to her clients takes days. "I'm wearing three hats right now."

Anticipating a rough adjustment period, officials in Sacramento and Placer counties reduced daily workloads and brought in more than 400 volunteers from other counties to troubleshoot computer problems, help with data entry and do other clerical tasks.

But so far, it's been slow going.

January's changeover was so chaotic in Placer County that staff ditched the new computer system the first day and reverted to the old one.

New cases are slowing things down in Sacramento County as well. Early last week, county data showed that, on average, bureaus were seeing about one new client per day, down from as many as five.

After three weeks of clients enduring long waits and productivity slipping, Sacramento County officials are moving to fill at least 40 vacant positions. Those new employees could be working as soon as July. Placer County officials do not plan to hire additional staff.

"I don't have enough staff; I just don't have enough staff," said Gant, the Q Street bureau chief.

Santa Cruz and Yolo counties will start up CalWIN in May, and officials there are trying to learn from the experience of Placer and Sacramento counties. Santa Cruz officials said they plan to hire 10 part-timers for the changeover.

"I applaud Sacramento County (and Placer County), having been a pilot county, because CalWIN is huge," said Dana Johnson, Yolo County's assistant director of employment and social services.

About the writer: The Bee's Cameron Jahn can be reached at (916) 321-1038 or cjahn@sacbee.com.

Fatherland or Death!

This post is also available at Blogger News Network

"We already lived one experience," Olimpia Hung, a Venezuelan merchant said, referring to Mr. Chavez's brief ouster in an abortive 2002 coup. "It must not happen again. Fatherland or death!"

So which is it exactly, are we going to war with Iran, North Korea, Syria, China or Venezuela next? Honestly, between John Bolton confirmation and the myriad amounts of alarmist stories coming from all directions regarding the next war in time for the mid-term elections, I'm not entirely sure what it is we think we're doing.

A story out of the Globe and Mail states that: "As the citizen militias train, Venezuela is stocking up on weapons -- 100,000 AK-47s from Russia, and military ships and planes from Brazil and Spain. Mr. Chavez has vowed to organize a military reserve of more than 1.5 million people -- 6 per cent of his country's population.

Venezuelan leaders say the reserve and the arms purchases are purely defensive, but the militaristic tone coming out of Caracas is sparking concern in the United States and neighbouring Colombia.

"What in the world [is the threat] that Venezuela sees that makes them want to have all those weapons?" U.S. Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld asked last week.

The answer, according to Mr. Chavez, is an invasion by the United States, Venezuela's largest trading partner and the destination for most of its petroleum exports.

Most analysts dismiss the idea as preposterous, but Mr. Chavez, a former army paratrooper, has made the prospect a frequent theme of his speeches. The Americans "will bite the dust of defeat," he predicted in a February speech, saying he is sure the White House plans to kill him."

Probably, but not quite yet. It appears, as I mentioned above, the purpose behind nominating John Bolton to the United Nations is to begin laying the foundation for a war against Iran. Former UN Chief Weapons inspector in Iraq Scott Ritter states that, "John Bolton, who, as the former US undersecretary of state for arms control and international security for the Bush administration, is responsible for drafting the current US policy towards Iran.

In February 2004, Bolton threw down the gauntlet by stating that Iran had a 'secret nuclear weapons programme' that was unknown to the IAEA. 'There is no doubt that Iran has a secret nuclear weapons production programme', Bolton said, without providing any source to back up his assertions.

This is the same John Bolton who had in the past accused Cuba of having an offensive biological weapons programme, a claim even Bush administration hardliners had to distance themselves from.

John Bolton is the Bush official who declared the European Union's engagement with Iran 'doomed to fail'. He is the Bush administration official who led the charge to remove Muhammad al-Baradai from the IAEA.

And he is the one who, in drafting the US strategy to get the UN Security Council to impose economic sanctions against Iran, asked the Pentagon to be prepared to launch 'robust' military attacks against Iran should the UN fail to agree on sanctions."

So we see where this whole business is headed. With everything I'm reading about Mr. Bolton it certainly points to a full-scale invasion of Iran on the horizon. Some will say it's to secure peace by eliminating a state sponsor of terror and possible proliferator of nuclear arms while others will say this is only about oil and natural gas. I say it's probably a little from column A and a little from column B.

I've written in this space before that a war against Iran will most likely provoke a war with China via Taiwan and you almost assuredly can count on the Russians and the North Koreans to contribute as well. But at this time it doesn't look like we have the stamina or the resources to begin an attack on both Venezuela and Iran at the same time. Not to mention that we still have forces attempting to secure Iraq, which is still being littered with car bombs and high profile assassination attempts. Needless to say we're a bit busy.

Ms. Hung and the whole lot of Venezuelan citizens can train in a militia all they want, unless they start marching in to Colombia and barring any unforseen calamity, there will not be war in Venezuela anytime soon.