New Hampshire Health News Digest

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | US military police raid Iraqi detention centre to stop abuse of prisoners : "American military police yesterday raided a building belonging to the Iraqi ministry of the interior where prisoners were allegedly being physically abused by Iraqi interrogators. The raid appeared to be a violation of the country's new sovereignty, leading to angry scenes inside the ministry between Iraqi policemen and US soldiers. The military police, who had been told of abuse, seized an area known as the Guesthouse just outside the ministry's main building. They disarmed the Iraqi policemen and at one stage threatened to set free prisoners whose handcuffs they removed, according to Iraqi officials. The arrival of a second group of US military police and a more senior officer led to an argument between the two groups of military policemen over who had command authority for the raid. Iraqi ministry of interior officials admitted that around ...

Space Elevator: Momentum Building Leading experts are meeting this week to take a longing look at the idea of a space elevator. The idea is a stretch, no doubt, with plenty of work to do before travelers have push-button, top floor access to space. For one, what’s needed, advocates explain, is a super-tough ribbon that does an about face in thinking. It hangs from the ground and falls into the sky -- thanks to the Earth’s spin and centripetal force. Anchored in space a ribbon 62,000 miles (100,000 kilometers) long would be made of carbon nanotubes. A "climber" would haul cargo, as well as passenger modules up and down the length of ribbon. Those are the basics. Of course, money is a key lubricant in this high-wire balancing act of technology. At the third annual international conference on the space elevator being held in Washington, D.C., scientists and engineers are tackling hurdles that must be overcome for the concept to, quite literally, get off the ground.

US military lowers profile in Iraq | csmonitor.com In wake of the June 28 handover, the military is moving convoys at night and scaling back its offensive operations. MOSUL, IRAQ – With its 15-month occupation now history, the 138,000-strong US military force in Iraq is attempting to sharply lower its profile, scaling back offensive operations and narrowing target lists while encouraging Iraq's fledgling forces to take the lead. Top US commanders have acted immediately to minimize the visibility of their forces. In a very public statement that Iraqis are now in charge, they have ordered US Army convoys as well as low-flying helicopters to move at night whenever possible. And symbolically, in a break with the occupation, the military "coalition" became "multinational forces" upon the June 28 transfer of power. The thrust of US military activity will now be threefold, commanders say: to target terrorist networks, protect and consolidate US forces, and...

Telegraph | News | Hurry up with extra troops, pleads Karzai : "President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan urged Nato leaders yesterday to "please hurry" and bolster troop numbers in his country, saying elections planned for September were in peril. "The Afghan people need that security today, not tomorrow. Come sooner than September and provide Afghan men and women with the chance to vote without fear," he said. His appeal came a day after Nato agreed to boost its troop numbers from 6,500 to about 10,000 to improve security during the ballot, which has already been postponed once because of Taliban and al-Qa'eda violence. But the offer of help was hedged. A large part of the increase is a standby force based outside Afghanistan. The permanent increase is likely to be only a few hundred soldiers sent as "reconstruction teams" in provincial cities as the International Security and Assistance Force (Isaf) moves beyond Kabul. An Afgha...

Telegraph | News | Attack Iran, US chief ordered British : "Attack Iran, US chief ordered British America's military commander in Iraq ordered British troops to prepare a full-scale ground offensive against Iranian forces that had crossed the border and grabbed disputed territory, a senior officer has disclosed. An attack would almost certainly have provoked open conflict with Iran. But the British chose instead to resolve the matter through diplomatic channels. Lt Gen Ricardo Sanchez 'If we had attacked the Iranian positions, all hell would have broken loose,' a defence source said yesterday. 'We would have had the Iranians to our front and the Iraqi insurgents picking us off at the rear.' The incident was disclosed by a senior British officer at a conference in London last week and is reported in today's edition of Defence Analysis. The identity of the officer is not given. 'Some Iranian border and observation posts were re-po...

FT.com Home UK : "The British government has said repeatedly it stands by intelligence it gathered and used in its controversial September 2002 dossier on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programmes. It still claims that Iraq had sought uranium from Niger. But the US intelligence community, officials and politicians, are publicly sceptical, and the public differences between the two allies on the issue have obscured the evidence that lies behind the UK claim. Until now, the only evidence of Iraq's alleged attempts to buy uranium from Niger had turned out to be a forgery. In October 2002, documents were handed to the US embassy in Rome that appeared to be correspondence between Niger and Iraqi officials. When the US State Department later passed the documents to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN nuclear watchdog, they were found to be fake. US officials have subsequently distanced themselves from the entire notion that Iraq was seeking buy ura...

OpinionJournal - Extra THE ROE EFFECT The Empty Cradle Will Rock How abortion is costing the Democrats voters--literally. More than 40 million legal abortions have been performed and documented in the 30 years since the U.S. Supreme Court declared abortion legal. The debate remains focused on the legality and morality of abortion. What's largely ignored is a factual analysis of the political consequences of 40 million abortions....... These numbers will not change. They are based on individual choices made--aggregated nationally--as long as 30 years ago. Look inside these numbers at where the political impact is felt most. Do Democrats realize that millions of Missing Voters--due to the abortion policies they advocate--gave George W. Bush the margin of victory in 2000? The number of abortions accumulate in size and political impact as the years roll along. Like an avalanche that picks up speed, mass, and power as it thunders down a mountain, the number of Missing V...

ThisisLondon - 'Gaping hole' lets hackers into Windows Computer users have been warned to avoid using Internet Explorer until a gaping hole in the browser's security is fixed by Microsoft. The loophole, created by hackers, lets criminals take control of a PC. The threat of infection is high because a code to exploit the attack has been placed on many popular websites.

The Australian: Shi'ites denounce al-Qa'ida terror [June 28, 2004] : "KEY Iraqi anti-US leaders have expressed unease at the mounting insurgency in the country and denounced as infidels al-Qa'ida's top leaders. The country's leading Shi'ite, Ali al-Sistani condemned the wave of attacks orchestrated by Jordanian terrorist Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi that has claimed the lives of 100 Iraqis a day. In Karbala, a representative of Grand Ayatollah Sistani on Friday denounced the terror attacks and slammed Al-Qa'ida's top leaders. 'Zarqawi, Zawahiri and bin Laden are filthy infidels who nurture malignance against Imam Ali and his sons,' he said. The militia of radical Shi'ite cleric Moqtada Sadr sought to prove it served the national interest as it laid down its weapons and backed the country's interim government in the run-up to Iraqi self-rule on Wednesday. 'There will not be a transfer of power to the Iraqi aut...

Headline news from Sky News - Witness the event IRAQ POWER HANDOVER 'TODAY' : " The handover of power in Iraq is being brought forward to today. A formal announcement will be made later today, Tony Blair said. The informal announcement was made by Iraq's foreign minister Hoshyar Zebari. The handover of power to an interim Iraqi government was supposed to take place on June 30. Mr Zebari said the deteriorating security situation in the country was one of the reasons why the date had been brought forward. 'We will challenge these elements in Iraq, the anti-democratic elements, by even bringing the handover of sovereignty before June 30 as a sign we are ready for it,' he said. Iraqi leaders hope the handover will stem attacks He added: 'We have made some very good progress in terms of the new security council (in Iraq) and the return of sovereignty to the Iraqi people...

Movie Goer Assaulted at Fahrenheit 9/11 Showing : "-- The highly anticipated film, Fahrenheit 9/11, came with more than just controversy at one Las Vegas movie theatre. Moviegoer, Richard Streeter, was one of the many who made his way to a theatre to see what the hype was about. After viewing the film, he was greeted outside the theatre by members of the Las Vegas MoveOn.org. The group was handing out leaflets on the importance of the film. Streeter voiced his view on the movie, 'I made the comment, apples and oranges -- Kerry, Bush -- one's no better than the other. You really ain't got much of a choice. This guy comes up to me and says, 'Oh yeah?' ' Streeter was then spat on by the same man. He attempted to call police to report the incident when he was told not to, 'A guy standing next to him said why don't you drop it. I said, 'No, I'm calling the police. I'm exercising my right as a citizen, I've been assaulted.' ...

The Wave of the Future : "You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life. Albert Camus"

NewsMax.com: Inside Cover Story Moore: Americans are 'The Dumbest People on the Planet' : "Americans currently flocking to see Michael Moore's movie 'Farenheit 9/11' might be surprised to learn how little respect the Democratic Party's leading propaganda-meister has for them. ''They are possibly the dumbest people on the planet,' Moore told Britain's Mirror newspaper recently, referring to his fellow citizens as a whole. And that's not all Moore had to say about his brother Yanks across the pond. ''We Americans suffer from an enforced ignorance. We don't know about anything that's happening outside our country. Our stupidity is embarrassing.'' Turns out, when the Democratic Party's all-but-official filmmaker is speaking at home, he has nice things to say about at least some of his fellow citizens. But according to New York Times columnist David Brooks, when Moore travels abroad it's not just...

Why Is Religion Natural? (Skeptical Inquirer Mar 2003) Pascal Boyer : "Is religious belief a mere leap into irrationality as many skeptics assume? Psychology suggests that there may be more to belief than the suspension of reason. Religious beliefs and practices are found in all human groups and go back to the very beginnings of human culture. What makes religion so 'natural'? A common temptation is to search for the origin of religion in general human urges, for instance in people's wish to escape misfortune or mortality or their desire to understand the universe. However, these accounts are often based on incorrect views about religion (see table 1) and the psychological urges are often merely postulated. Recent findings in psychology, anthropology, and neuroscience offer a more empirical approach, focused on the mental machinery activated in acquiring and representing religious concepts.[1]"

w w w . p r o s p e c t - m a g a z i n e . c o . u k --- Saddam the romancier : " It may be time to assess Saddam's place in the genre of 'dic-lit' In an isolated prison cell, an ageing, mustachioed gentleman sits writing at a small canteen table. Recent months have seen a stark change in his fortunes. Gone are the Gucci suits and French hair dye. Gone is the entourage of supporters. The writer has very little outside contact now, save the occasional visits from the Red Cross and his interrogators. He has no idea if the novel he is working on, an epic allegorical tale of passion and revenge, will ever be published. Provisionally entitled The Great Awakening, his fifth novel will emerge into a very different critical climate from that which greeted the others. In his home country his works were acclaimed bestsellers with sales into the millions. One was made into a 20-part television series. It had recently been announced that his books were to be s...

Andrew C. McCarthy on New York Times & Iraq & al Qaeda on National Review Online Times Games The newspaper of record withholds Iraq/Qaeda connection evidence. A week ago, the New York Times reported, in a screaming page-one headline, that the 9/11 Commission had found "No Qaeda-Iraq Tie." Today, in a remarkable story that positively oozes with consciousness of guilt, the Times confesses not only that there is documentary evidence of at least one tie but that the Times has had the document in question for several weeks. That is, the Times was well aware of this information at the very time of last week's reporting, during which, on June 17, it declaimed from its editorial perch that the lack of a connection between Saddam Hussein's regime and Osama bin Laden's terror network meant President Bush owed the nation an apology. Today, the Times concedes that the Defense Intelligence Agency is in possession of a document showing that, in the mid-1990s, t...

Iraqis Back New Leaders, Poll Says (washingtonpost.com) : "A large majority of Iraqis say they have confidence in the new interim government of Prime Minister Ayad Allawi that is set to assume political power on Wednesday, according to a poll commissioned by U.S. officials in Iraq. The results are a significant victory for the United States and the United Nations. Together they negotiated with squabbling Iraqi factions in an attempt to cobble together a viable government that balanced disparate ethnic and religious groups. * 68 percent of Iraqis have confidence in their new leaders * 73 percent of Iraqis polled approved of Allawi to lead the new government, 84 percent approved of President Ghazi Yawar and almost two-thirds backed the new Cabinet. * Four out of every five Iraqis expected that the new government will “make things better” for Iraq after the handover, with 10 percent expecting the situation to remain the same and 7 percent anticipating a decli...

BBC NEWS | Technology | Web browser flaw prompts warning : Microsoft has issued advice about the loophole Users are being told to avoid using Internet Explorer until Microsoft patches a serious security hole in it. The loophole is being exploited to open a backdoor on a PC that could let criminals take control of a machine. The threat of infection is so high because the code created to exploit the loophole has somehow been placed on many popular websites. Experts say the list of compromised sites involves banks, auction and price comparison firms and is growing fast. Serious problem The net watchdog, the US Computer Emergency Reponse Center (Cert), and the net security monitor, the Internet Storm Center, have both issued warnings about the combined threat of compromised websites and browser loophole. Cert said: 'Users should be aware that any website, even those that may be trusted by the user, may be affected by this activity and thus contain potentially mal...

DefenseLINK News: Iraqi Official to American Press: Report More Good Iraq's deputy prime minister implored the American press to provide more balanced coverage of operations in Iraq. Barham Salih, a prominent leader from Kurdish northern Iraq, made his plea June 19 to American reporters traveling in Iraq with Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz. "I hope you from the American press will be able to tell people back home … that (through) this mission you are giving an entire nation an opportunity to be rid of their challenges," he said. "These soldiers are helping renovate schools and so on, and very, very little of that is reported," Salih continued. "We have to be grateful to those young men and women who have come from afar, sacrificing their lives to defend our security and our freedom." He said context is important, and many American papers don't put things in the proper context. For instance, he said, "Many of the op-ed ...

The New York Times > International > Europe > Intelligence Reports: Putin Says U.S. Was Alerted to Possible Attacks by Iraq MOSCOW, June 18 — President Vladimir V. Putin said Friday that Russia gave intelligence reports to the Bush administration suggesting that Saddam Hussein's government was preparing terrorist attacks in the United States or against American targets overseas. But officials at the State Department expressed surprise, saying they knew of no such information from Russia, Reuters reported. Mr. Putin said Russia's intelligence services received and passed along the information after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and before the American-led invasion of Iraq began in March 2003. He did not give details of the nature of the intelligence or the type of attacks reportedly being prepared. Mr. Putin added, however, that Russia had no information that anyone in Iraq carried out the plans for attacks. And he emphasized that the intelligence did not ch...

The New York Times > Washington > The Intelligence: Iraqis, Seeking Foes of Saudis, Contacted bin Laden, File Says : "Contacts between Iraqi intelligence agents and Osama bin Laden when he was in Sudan in the mid-1990's were part of a broad effort by Baghdad to work with organizations opposing the Saudi ruling family, according to a newly disclosed document obtained by the Americans in Iraq. American officials described the document as an internal report by the Iraqi intelligence service detailing efforts to seek cooperation with several Saudi opposition groups, including Mr. bin Laden's organization, before Al Qaeda had become a full-fledged terrorist organization. He was based in Sudan from 1992 to 1996, when that country forced him to leave and he took refuge in Afghanistan. The document states that Iraq agreed to rebroadcast anti-Saudi propaganda, and that a request from Mr. bin Laden to begin joint operations against foreign forces in Saudi Arabia went una...

Clinton first linked al Qaeda to Saddam - The Washington Times: Nation/Politics - June 25, 2004 : "The Clinton administration talked about firm evidence linking Saddam Hussein's regime to Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network years before President Bush made the same statements....... In fact, during President Clinton's eight years in office, there were at least two official pronouncements of an alarming alliance between Baghdad and al Qaeda. One came from William S. Cohen, Mr. Clinton's defense secretary. He cited an al Qaeda-Baghdad link to justify the bombing of a pharmaceutical plant in Sudan. Mr. Bush cited the linkage, in part, to justify invading Iraq and ousting Saddam. He said he could not take the risk of Iraq's weapons falling into bin Laden's hands. The other pronouncement is contained in a Justice Department indictment on Nov. 4, 1998, charging bin Laden with murder in the bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa. The indict...

OpinionJournal - Extra : "Just Like Stalingrad If Bush is another Hitler, what words are left to describe Hitler? According to Sidney Blumenthal, a onetime adviser to president Bill Clinton who now writes a column for Britain's Guardian newspaper, President Bush today runs 'what is in effect a gulag,' stretching 'from prisons in Afghanistan to Iraq, from Guantanamo to secret CIA prisons around the world.' Mr. Blumenthal says 'there has been nothing like this system since the fall of the Soviet Union.' In another column, Mr. Blumenthal compares the April death toll for American soldiers in Iraq to the Eastern Front in the Second World War. Mr. Bush's 'splendid little war,' he writes, 'has entered a Stalingrad-like phase of urban siege and house-to-house combat.' The factual bases for these claims are, first, that the U.S. holds some 10,000 'enemy combatants' prisoner; and second, that 122 U.S. soldiers were kille...

New York Post Online Edition: postopinion AFTER terrorists beheaded Korean hostage Kim Sun-il, The New York Times kept the photo showing the horror of his final moments off yesterday's front page. Instead, the Times' front page bizarrely describes Kim as "sitting or kneeling quietly" as he waited to die — in reality the photo, back on Page A-11, shows Kim with his mouth open wide in terror, and the video shows him shaking with fear. It's just the latest instance of how the press often hesitates to show the true savagery of America's enemies in the War on Terror, whether al Qaeda or Saddam Hussein's thugs, precisely because the images are so awful. Last week, The Post revealed that reporters were ignoring a gruesome video of torture by Saddam's thugs while obsessing over prisoner mistreatment by a small group of U.S. troops at Abu Ghraib jail where the photos are less upsetting. Calls from readers prompted the American Enterprise Institute to...

Local10.com - News - Air Force Testing Robot Vehicles To Protect Bases, Forward Units : "The vehicles being tested cost from $200,000 to $500,000. The most expensive is the Jeep-size, four-wheeled Mobile Detection and Response System. MDARS also has drawn interest from other services and is expected to go into production next year, said Walter Waltz, chief of robotic research for the Air Force Research Laboratory at Tyndall. MDARS is equipped with radar, television cameras and infrared to detect people, vehicles and other objects. It carries a breadbox-sized, tracked mini-robot called Matilda that can be launched to search under vehicles, inside buildings and other relatively small places. Scout is similar to MDARS but fashioned from an off-the-shelf, four-wheeled all-terrain vehicle, giving it added versility because a human can ride it like a normal ATV when not being used as a robot. It also can carry a small tracked robot called Pacbot. MDARS and Scout can be e...

Chrenkoff : "Good news from Iraq, Part 4 Welcome to the fourth instalment of 'Good news from Iraq'. If you want to check out the previous parts, you can find the links on the top of the side-bar. Overall, the news from Iraq hasn't been too bad lately, with the transition to sovereignty well under way and decrease in fighting. However, we still hear a lot more about terrorism, prisoner abuse saga, sabotage, unvafourable opinion polls, and then some more about terrorism. Read this commentary first, on how 'Media Bias Keeps 'Good' Iraq News From U.S. Public.' Then read on. IRAQI SOCIETY: The preparations for the democratic transition are on the way: 'Iraqi officials organizing elections as the U.S.-led occupation hands over power have turned to Mexico, a country with its own history of cleaning up a bad electoral system. Authorities from Mexico and five other countries are sharing their experiences with nine members of the newly appointe...

Army unit claims victory over sheik - The Washington Times: Nation/Politics - June 23, 2004 : "The Army's powerful 1st Armored Division is proclaiming victory over Sheik Muqtada al-Sadr's marauding militia that just a month ago seemed on the verge of conquering southern Iraq. The Germany-based division defeated the militia with a mix of American firepower and money paid to informants. Officers today say 'Operation Iron Saber' will go down in military history books as one of the most important battles in post-Saddam Hussein Iraq. 'I've got to think this was a watershed operation in terms of how to do things as part of a counterinsurgency,' said Brig. Gen. Mark Hertling, a West Point graduate and one of two 1st Armored assistant division commanders, in an interview last week as he moved around southern Iraq. 'We happened to design a campaign that did very well against this militia.' "

Iraqi schools seen improving - The Washington Times: World - June 24, 2004 : "U.S. administrators have made great strides in rebuilding the Iraqi educational system, but still face hurdles, many of their own making, a senior coalition official said in Washington yesterday. 'There is a growing independence of the universities,' said John Agresto , the senior adviser for higher education and scientific research with the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) in Baghdad. 'Despite the fears of religious and political coercion, I think you find incredible openness and dialogue,' Mr. Agresto added during a discussion hosted by the American Enterprise Institute. 'I think higher education is absolutely going in the right direction,' he said. Iraq now has 20 functioning universities and 43 technical institutes and colleges. These are mainly public and overall experienced a 50 percent increase in freshman enrollment last year. Policy at ...

My Way - News Rebel Attacks in Five Iraq Cities Kill 75 : "BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Insurgents killed 75 people on Thursday in a wave of attacks across Iraq aimed at sabotaging the handover to Iraqi rule in six days' time. Guerrillas struck in Baquba, Falluja, Ramadi, Mosul and Baghdad, wounding more than 250 people in an intensification of a bloody campaign by Iraqi rebels and foreign militants. Three U.S. soldiers were killed."

FrontPage magazine.com :: The Sacred Muslim Practice of Beheading by Andrew G. Bostom According to Muhammad’s sacralized biography by Ibn Ishaq, Muhammad himself sanctioned the massacre of the Qurayza, a vanquished Jewish tribe. He appointed an "arbiter" who soon rendered this concise verdict: the men were to be put to death, the women and children sold into slavery, the spoils to be divided among the Muslims. Muhammad ratified this judgment stating that it was a decree of God pronounced from above the Seven Heavens. Thus some 600 to 900 men from the Qurayza were lead on Muhammad’s order to the Market of Medina. Trenches were dug and the men were beheaded, and their decapitated corpses buried in the trenches while Muhammad watched in attendance. Women and children were sold into slavery, a number of them being distributed as gifts among Muhammad’s companions, and Muhammad chose one of the Qurayza women (Rayhana) for himself. The Qurayza’s property and other possessions (i...

FOXNews.com - U.S. & World - Iraqi PM Threatened in Purported Zarqawi Tape A man purporting to be Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi has threatened to kill the new prime minister of Iraq. A recording purportedly made by the apparent mastermind of bombings and beheadings of civilian contractors in Iraq vowed to assassinate Iyad Allawi and fight the Americans “until Islamic rule is back on Earth.” An official with Allawi’s office dismissed the threat, saying it would not derail the June 30 transfer of sovereignty from the U.S.-led coalition to the interim Iraqi government.

OpinionJournal - Featured Article WHEN EMPIRES WANE The End of Power Without American hegemony the world would likely return to the dark ages. We tend to assume that power, like nature, abhors a vacuum. In the history of world politics, it seems, someone is always bidding for hegemony. Today it is the United States; a century ago it was Britain. Before that, it was the French, the Spaniards and so on. The 19th-century German historian Leopold von Ranke, doyen of the study of statecraft, portrayed modern European history as an incessant struggle for mastery, in which a balance of power was possible only through recurrent conflict. Power, in other words, is not a natural monopoly; the struggle for mastery is both perennial and universal. The "unipolarity" identified by commentators following the Soviet collapse cannot last much longer, for the simple reason that history hates a hyperpower. Sooner or later, challengers will arise, and back we must go to a multipolar, mul...

Al Qaeda Link To Iraq May Be Confusion Over Names (washingtonpost.com) : "Al Qaeda Link To Iraq May Be Confusion Over Names An allegation that a high-ranking al Qaeda member was an officer in Saddam Hussein's private militia may have resulted from confusion over Iraqi names, a senior administration official said yesterday. Former Navy secretary John Lehman, a Republican member of the commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, said Sunday that documents found in Iraq 'indicate that there is at least one officer of Saddam's Fedayeen, a lieutenant colonel, who was a very prominent member of al Qaeda.' Although he said the identity 'still has to be confirmed,' Lehman introduced the information on NBC's 'Meet the Press' to counter a commission staff report that said there were contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda but no 'collaborative relationship.' Yesterday, the senior administration official said Lehman had probably ...

The New York Times > Magazine > The Way We Live Now: Against Happiness : "THE WAY WE LIVE NOW Against Happiness Sad people are nice. Angry people are nasty. And, oddly enough, happy people tend to be nasty, too. Such (allowing for a little journalistic caricature) were the findings reported in last month's issue of Psychological Science. Researchers found that angry people are more likely to make negative evaluations when judging members of other social groups. That, perhaps, will not come as a great surprise. But the same seems to be true of happy people, the researchers noted. The happier your mood, the more liable you are to make bigoted judgments -- like deciding that someone is guilty of a crime simply because he's a member of a minority group. Why? Nobody's sure. One interesting hypothesis, though, is that happy people have an ''everything is fine'' attitude that reduces the motivation for analytical thought. So they fall back on ster...

The Atlantic | July/August 2004 | The Kids Are All Right | Carson Books The Kids Are All Right Teens aren't as warped as some of the books about them In no other culture does secondary education evoke the enchantment and trauma that high school does for Americans. As the single collective experience that most of us in this diffuse society are likeliest to share, it's also our handiest analogy for virtually every social realm we encounter as adults, no matter how exalted. Showbiz? High school with money, People and Entertainment Weekly tell us. Politics? High school with power—and man, could Grover Norquist use a wedgie. For all I know, the people in today's military call it high school with guns—which, after Columbine, I realize may sound redundant. The basic difference is that our fellow developed countries treat secondary school as the beginning of responsibility. If little Jean-Pierre's fate is to be a mechanic, the stench of cooked goose is mingling with th...

WorldTribune.com U.S. threatens to abandon Saudis and their oil The United States has sent a tough message to Saudi Arabia that did not rule out abandoning the kingdom's oil sector. U.S. officials said the Bush administration has warned that Americans would not stay in Saudi Arabia unless the kingdom takes significant steps to protect them. The officials said the warning came in wake of the Al Qaida beheading of Lockheed Martin engineer Paul Johnson on June 18. Fewer than 30,000 Americans live in Saudi Arabia, with many of them working in the defense and oil sectors. More than 5,000 Americans were said to have left the kingdom over the last year and many more were said to planning to leave for the summer. Affordable Health Insurance — Special Offer "It could have an effect [on the Saudi oil industry]," State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said. "Saudi authorities, as commendable as their overall effort is, have not yet been able to stop the terror...

MSNBC - Grim Numbers The poll results, which have not been released publicly but were obtained by NEWSWEEK, indicate that the April publication of photos depicting the abuse of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison accelerated a long-term decline in support for the U.S. occupation. Of the Iraqis surveyed, 71 percent said they had been surprised by the Abu Ghraib revelations. Most, however, said they now believe the abuses were widespread. Fifty-four percent agreed with the statement that “all Americans behave this way,” and 61 percent said they believed no one would be punished for the abuses. A CPA spokesman said Tuesday that he had not yet examined the numbers. Taken from May 14 to May 23, the survey also shows a sharp rise in the popularity of radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, with 81 percent saying they had either a better or much better or better opinion of him than they did three months earlier. Sadr’s Al Mahdi Army has been engaged in a bloody standoff with U.S. force...

US Supreme Court: If police ask, you must give your name | csmonitor.com The high court rules 5 to 4 that officers can arrest people who won't reveal their identity. WASHINGTON – US citizens do not enjoy a constitutional right to refuse to reveal their identity when requested by police. In what may become a major boost to US law enforcement and antiterrorism efforts, the US Supreme Court Monday upheld a Nevada law that makes it a criminal offense for anyone suspected of wrongdoing to refuse to identify himself to police. Civil libertarians see the decision as a significant setback. And it remains unclear to what extent it may open the door to the issuing of national identification cards or widespread identity operations keyed to terrorist profiling at bus terminals, train stations, sports stadiums, and on city streets. "It's a green light to explore the bounds of how much personal information can be demanded on pain of arrest," says Timothy Lynch of the Ca...

CNN.com - Al Qaeda militants say they were helped by Saudi forces RIYADH, Saudi Arabia (CNN) -- Islamic militants who abducted and beheaded American engineer Paul Johnson say sympathetic Saudi security forces aided their kidnapping operation with police uniforms and vehicles -- an allegation a top Saudi official denied. Saudi authorities continued their search Sunday night for the men behind the kidnapping, storming several buildings in the neighborhood where cell leader Abdel Aziz al-Muqrin was killed after Johnson's death. It was not immediately clear whether anyone had been taken into custody as a result of the raid. In a lengthy narrative about the kidnapping that was posted Sunday on the Islamist Web site Voice of Jihad, Johnson's kidnappers said they stopped his car at a fake checkpoint, transferred him to another car and took him to another location. But Adel al-Jubeir, the foreign policy adviser to Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah, told CNN the claim fell ...

My Way News Plane Soars Out of Earth's Atmosphere : MOJAVE, Calif. (AP) - A rocket plane soared above Earth's atmosphere Monday in the first privately financed manned spaceflight, then glided back to Earth for an unpowered landing. SpaceShipOne pilot Mike Melvill was aiming to fly 62 miles above the Earth's surface. The exact altitude reached was not immediately confirmed by radar. The ship touched down at Mojave Airport to applause and cheers at 8:15 a.m. PDT, about 90 minutes after it was carried aloft slung under the belly of the jet-powered White Knight. The mission announcer said the mission had been successful. 'Beautiful sight, Mike,' mission control said to Melvill as the gliding spaceship slowly circled toward its landing. Later, standing on the tarmac beside the ship, Melvill said seeing the Earth from outside the atmosphere was 'almost a religious experience.' 'You can see the curvature of the Earth,' he said. '...

The New York Times > Opinion > Op-Ed Columnist: The Zelikow Report By WILLIAM SAFIRE: A RUNAWAY STAFF HIJACKS THE 9/11 COMMISSION... WASHINGTON — "Panel Finds No Qaeda-Iraq Tie" went the Times headline. "Al Qaeda-Hussein Link Is Dismissed" front-paged The Washington Post. The A.P. led with the thrilling words "Bluntly contradicting the Bush Administration, the commission. . . ." This understandably caused my editorial-page colleagues to draw the conclusion that "there was never any evidence of a link between Iraq and Al Qaeda. . . ." All wrong. The basis for the hoo-ha was not a judgment of the panel of commissioners appointed to investigate the 9/11 attacks. As reporters noted below the headlines, it was an interim report of the commission's runaway staff, headed by the ex-N.S.C. aide Philip Zelikow. After Vice President Dick Cheney's outraged objection, the staff's sweeping conclusion was soon disavowed by both commissi...

My Way News Iran Confiscates Three British Boats : "TEHRAN, Iran (AP) - Iran said Monday it had confiscated three British naval vessels and arrested eight armed crew members. The Royal Navy acknowledged it had lost contact with three small patrol boats on a routine mission in the waterway between Iraq and Iran. British officials did not confirm the boats were captured or the crewmembers detained. 'I can confirm that three small Royal Navy patrol boats and eight crew have been out of communication since the early hours of this morning,' said a British military spokesman in the southern Iraqi city of Basra on condition of anonymity. 'It is not unusual for the Royal Navy to be patrolling the Shatt-al-Arab' waterway. Iranian-British relations have been strained in recent days, since London helped draft a resolution at the International Atomic Energy Agency's board of governors meeting last week in Vienna that rebuked Iran for past cover-ups involving...

United Press International: 9/11 panel: New evidence on Iraq-Al-Qaida : "The commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks has received new information indicating that a senior officer in an elite unit of the security services of deposed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein may have been a member of al-Qaida involved in the planning of the suicide hijackings, panel members said Sunday. John F. Lehman, a Reagan-era GOP defense official told NBC's 'Meet the Press' that documents captured in Iraq 'indicate that there is at least one officer of Saddam's Fedayeen, a lieutenant colonel, who was a very prominent member of al Qaida.' The Fedayeen were a special unit of volunteers given basic training in irregular warfare. The lieutenant colonel, Ahmed Hikmat Shakir, has the same name as an Iraqi thought to have attended a planning meeting for the Sept. 11 attacks in January 2000, in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The meeting was also attended by two of th...