READER’S JOURNAL/SCRAPBOOK
Article
PRELUDE for a PAEDOPHILE
| 03 JUNE 2008 - SABC3 - 21H30 | ||
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Last week was Child Protection week. But in South Africa the term child protection has become a tragic contradiction in terms, particularly with regard to sexual abuse. According to Child line one in four girls and one in five boys under the age of 16 have been sexually assaulted. But that is inevitably a conservative estimate given the horrifyingly low rate of reports. The recent passing of the Amended Sexual Offences Act has succeeded in broadening the definition of rape to include penetration of any orifice, male or female. Previously, rape of males was regarded as indecent assault and carried a much lighter sentence. But the reality is that every day on the streets of Cape Town, young boys are being male rape survivors, particularly underage survivors rarely speak out. They are silenced by shame and disbelieving adults. The injustice is compounded when the victims are boys who live on the streets and the perpetrators are men who are educated, ostensibly respected members of society.
This week Special Assignment will expose a sexual predator allegedly with a predilection for underage street boys. His strategy allegedly is to drive through areas were the homeless boys congregate and lure them with promises of food, clothing or cash. Often he solicits the assistance of older male prostitutes to recruit the youngsters, allegedly taking them to his home where he allegedly plies them with drugs and shows them pornography before sexually abusing them. Alternatively he allegedly cruises the streets of Cape Town, picks them up and drives them to remote areas, abuses them and then unceremoniously dumps; them. He is a serial offender, and child activists estimate that he has abused scores of street boys – most of them between the ages of eleven and fifteen. In the past two years at least seven boys have come forward. They have made statements to the police, the details of which have been verified by security companies operating in Cape Town’s CBD. Yet for two years, little has been done to apprehend the alleged offender, possibly because police resources are increasingly limited; more disturbingly, because they are reluctant to charge an adult of stature whose accusers are after all, children of the streets.
With the assistance of committed children’s rights activists, Special Assignment has searched for and found the children, persuading them to speak openly about the trauma of being raped, allegedly by a man who treats them as cheap and disposable sex toys with utter disregard for their very humanity, let alone their rights as children.
Response
This report was horrifying. The first thing I thought after reading this was why are these boys on the streets at all? I understand that there can’t be a home for everyone, but there should at least be some kind of shelter for these boys! The U.N., the Red Cross, not to mention their own country, should provide places for them to safely stay at least. As for this pedophile, I wonder how it is that he his stature or the polices’ limited funds could keep them from capturing him. Child abuse, especially sexually, is one of the most deplorable and heinous crimes that can be committed. Are we so used to it in this day and age that we can justify not capturing the perpetrator with such feeble excuses? I think that the only viable solution is to capture this man and punish him in the strictest way the law permits.
ARTICLE
After Verbal Fire, Senate Effectively Kills Climate Change Bill
Published: June 7, 2008
WASHINGTON — Before the anticlimactic demise on Friday of legislation to combat global warming, the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada, called climate change “the most important issue facing the world today.” Senator George V. Voinovich, Republican of Ohio, a critic of the bill, nonetheless called it “the most significant piece of legislation to ever come out of the Environment and Public Works Committee.”
Doug Mills/The New York Times
Senator John W. Warner winked at Senator Joseph I. Lieberman as he was met by Senators John Kerry, left, and Barbara Boxer.
Senator Barbara Boxer, Democrat of California, said the effort to limit heat-trapping gases was “one of the greatest challenges of our generation.” Senator Barack Obama of Illinois, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, said in a statement, “The future of our planet is at stake.”
And even Senator James M. Inhofe, Republican of Oklahoma, the leading opponent of the legislation, called it “probably the largest bill ever considered by the Senate in its impact on the economy and our way of life.”
And so it was, with a chorus of Senate voices having proclaimed the urgency and importance of the issue that the Great Climate Change Debate of 2008 ended on Friday morning, after three and a half days, with a procedural vote that effectively shelved the bill until next year. A motion by Democrats to end debate and move to a final vote, requiring 60 votes to succeed, fell far short, with 48 senators in favor and 36 against.
The bill would cap the production of heat-trapping gases and force polluters to buy permits to emit carbon dioxide. Critics, including many Republican senators, said it would raise energy prices, including the cost of oil, at a time when Americans are struggling with record gasoline prices.
But there were also critics at the other end of the political spectrum who said the bill’s limits on carbon emissions were not strict enough. They said the legislation would allow some industries to prosper while forcing average Americans to pay higher energy prices.
The result left lawmakers pointing fingers at one another. Democrats said Republicans had obstructed their efforts to address a most crucial issue, while Republicans said the Democrats were never serious about passing the bill, as evidenced by their unwillingness to allow a serious and lengthy debate over amendments.
Environmental groups, meanwhile, were left struggling to read the tea leaves of yet another procedural step by the Senate, which has been called the world’s greatest deliberative body but can also be its most mercurial and maddening.
In a speech on the Senate floor on Thursday, the Republican leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, mocked the Democrats as trumpeting the magnitude of the climate change but then seeking to cut off debate and move swiftly to a final vote.
“What are they afraid of?” Mr. McConnell asked. “Why don’t they want to consider amendments to a bill addressing what they call ‘the most important issue facing the world today?” If it is the most important issue facing the world today, it certainly deserves a lot longer debate than a few days.”
Dana Perino, the White House press secretary, echoed Mr. McConnell’s remarks at her daily briefing.
The Democrats insisted that comments by Mr. McConnell and other Republicans were disingenuous because Republicans never intended to allow an open and honest debate, never intended to allow the bill to come to a final vote, never intended to support it regardless of what amendments were made, and had no intention of pressuring President Bush, who had made clear that he would not sign the bill.
“They do not want to address the most important issue of the day, so they stalled,” Mr. Reid said, noting that Republicans insisted on having the entire nearly 500-page bill read aloud on Wednesday. “They are doing everything they can to maintain the status quo.”
Some lawmakers and experts on the national debate on climate said there was merit in bringing the bill to the Senate floor for what amounted to a trial run, drawing out supporters and opponents and their particular concerns.
“We have a road map as to where our colleagues are,” said Mrs. Boxer, who was a main sponsor of the bill with Senator John W. Warner, Republican of Virginia, and Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, independent of Connecticut. “We will give the road map to the next president so he knows where our colleagues are and where are the consensus areas and where are the difficult areas.”
But even after the vote, it was hard to discern where many lawmakers stood, with 10 Democrats among the 48 senators who voted to close debate saying they would have opposed the bill had it come to a final vote.
RESPONSE
First off, I totally disagree with Harry Reid’s assessment of global warming as the most important issue facing the world today. That being said, it IS important. While it’s true that rising water levels and more unstable seasons are worrisome, I do not think that a plan to combat them should be brought about at the expense of raising energy and gas prices for already struggling people. I believe that we must first stabilize the economy, and only then can we enact reforms like these. I completely agreed that the Senate is “the world’s greatest deliberative body but [that it] can also be its most mercurial and maddening.”
ARTICLE
South Korean Truckers Strike to Protest Rising Fuel Costs
By CHOE SANG-HUN
Published: June 14, 2008
SEOUL, South Korea — Thousands of South Korean truck drivers went on strike on Friday to protest rising fuel prices, threatening to paralyze the country’s ports and challenging the already unpopular government of President Lee Myung-bak.
Across Asia, sharp increases in fuel prices continued to stoke public anger. In Malaysia and Thailand, consumers and truckers demanding bigger fuel subsidies from their governments threatened to strike, and Thai fishermen warned that they would burn their boats.
More than 5,000 truckers blocked entrances to ports and cargo terminals in South Korea, demanding that the government increase subsidies authorize higher freight charges and introduce a minimum wage.
The government warned that it would punish drivers if they tried to block nonstriking truckers from picking up cargo. The Transport Ministry confirmed on Friday that it would immediately revoke striking truckers’ annual fuel subsidy payments of about $14,500 to each trucker.
“The government intends to use whatever means to end this transportation crisis as soon as possible and minimize its impact on the national economy,” Prime Minister Han Seung-soo said.
Tension escalated around major ports as the police planned to escort nonstriking drivers through the blockades.
“If the government arrests any of the striking truckers, our member unions will immediately launch nationwide strikes,” said Lee Seok-haeng, leader of the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions, which controls unions in auto, construction and other major industries.
A two-week truckers’ strike in 2003 cost exporters 540 billion won, or $519 million at Friday’s exchange rates, Prime Minister Han said, citing figures from the Korea International Trade Association. Mr. Han predicted that the current strike would cause 128 billion won in export losses a day, or about $123 million.
The government said it would use military vehicles and increase rail service to keep the country’s factories running and ease the paralysis at the ports. But rail unions said on Friday that they would not cooperate.
With the country’s traditional negotiating season starting, unions seized on Mr. Lee’s unpopularity to improve their leverage. Mr. Lee’s administration has been shaken by protests against a decision in April to resume the import of American beef.
In Malaysia, Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, facing rising public discontent, electoral setbacks and a protest on Friday over higher fuel costs, has said he will leave office and hand over power to his deputy, Najib Razak, although he has not said when, according to Reuters.
“The people are angry,” said Safarizal Saleh, a leader of the youth wing of the Parti Islam se-Malaysia, the main Islamist party and one of the organizers of Friday’s rally, Reuters reported.
Gasoline prices in Malaysia have jumped by 41 percent this month, and diesel prices by 63 percent as crude oil costs have surged.
The Land Transport Federation of Thailand gave that country’s government until Tuesday to subsidize fuel for truckers or face the prospect of 100,000 vehicles rumbling into Bangkok, already clogged with traffic.
RESPONSE
I was really impressed by the union’s decision to protest and go on strike. It seems like the U.S. was the first country to have routine strikes and rallies, but now we’ve given it up, even though we have more problems than ever before. I was, however, surprised to learn that Korea has no current minimum wage. I would think that that’s the first thing that Union’s would demand. These days, at least one in four articles I read has something to do with Oil process, and I think it’s probably the biggest problem on a global scale. No solution is forthcoming, but I definitely think that we should start branching out into other ways of getting energy.
ARTICLE
In California, a House Divided Stands Strong
J. Emilio Flores for The New York Times
Campaign signs near the entrance to the California governor’s home in Los Angeles. The political debate is at home and in public.
Published: June 13, 2008
LOS ANGELES — It is one thing to disagree about politics with your spouse at a backyard barbecue. It is quite another to do it in front of the 38 million people of California, with apparent and abundant passion.
Of all the supporters behind the two presumptive nominees for president this year, none are quite as intriguing as Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican who has thrown his support behind Senator John McCain, and the governor’s wife, Maria Shriver, a Democrat and vocal backer of Senator Barack Obama.
The lawn of their Brentwood home has dueling campaign signs. The breakfast table has become a casual debating society. Ms. Shriver is even threatening to bring a life-size cutout of her preferred candidate into the house, something the governor has seen her do in other elections. “When one of the candidates screws up,” Mr. Schwarzenegger said of the cutouts, “the kids carry them outside.”
The four Schwarzenegger children — who range in age from 10 to 18 — have already taken sides, though only one of them, Katherine, is actually old enough to vote. She favors Mr. Obama.
Advantage, Ms. Shriver.
“I think there are great benefits to having kids grow up understanding that we do not live in a one-party system,” Ms. Shriver said. “That there are two ways at looking at an issue. To be patient, and to compromise, those are good lessons not just in politics but for life. I grew up believing there was only one way to think. There isn’t.”
It all began this winter when Mr. Schwarzenegger announced his allegiance to Mr. McCain, unsurprisingly, and then Ms. Shriver showed up — quite surprisingly — on the stage at a rally for Mr. Obama in Los Angeles proclaiming her support along with other members of the extended Kennedy family just days later.
On Super Tuesday, the governor awoke to a lawn full of Obama signs. Seeking fair and balanced landscaping, he immediately called his aides to procure an equal number of McCain signs. (Perhaps not the easiest request on the day when the Republicans were looking to deliver the state to Mr. McCain. Also not one, under the circumstances, to be farmed out to the first lady’s office.)
While voters here are long accustomed to the Republican governor and his Kennedy-family wife, the spectacle of them avidly supporting two different presidential candidates is likely to become even more pronounced to the rest of the nation as the campaign enters the general election phase, with both playing an active role.
He and she are likely speakers at each party’s convention this summer. Ms. Shriver has been mentioned as a possible chairwoman for Mr. Obama’s California effort, and is considered to be one of its most endearing assets in the state.
“Maria Shriver is a powerful advocate for Senator Obama,” said Bill Burton, a spokesman for the Obama campaign, in an e-mail message. “We’ll be thrilled to have her campaign for us whenever she can in the coming months. And we remain hopeful that Californians will side with their first lady in November, even if the governor himself does not.”
For his part, the governor, who is negotiating a tremendously difficult budget and other pieces of legislation, is expected to lend a hand to the McCain effort as Election Day draws near. He attends many fund-raisers for Mr. McCain, off the radar, and is desired by a McCain team desperate to draw in the moderate voters that Mr. Schwarzenegger has attracted.
“Arnold Schwarzenegger is a tremendous asset to the Republican party,” said Adam Mendelsohn, an adviser to the McCain campaign and the governor’s former communications director, “especially at a time where there is so much emphasis on independents and disaffected Democrats.”
Ms. Shriver has carefully managed to maintain her professional and political identities since becoming the first lady of California when Mr. Schwarzenegger won the recall election in 2003, reluctantly giving up her job in television news. “Being involved in this administration required me to stretch and to be open minded,” she said.
Like all things Arnold and Maria, the arrangement is far from conventional, but it seems to work.
“Maria called me from Palm Springs one day where she was at a horse show with our daughter and said, ‘I’ve got this thing in my mind that I want to go to U.C.L.A. for Obama, is that O.K. with you?”‘ Mr. Schwarzenegger said. “I said: ‘Do it! You have to do it!’ ”
Ms. Shriver went straight to the airport and hopped on a plane, her hair still a bit mussed from the horse show, and gave a moving speech. “I thought, if Barack Obama was a state, he’d be California,” Ms. Shriver told the roaring crowd. “Diverse. Open. Smart. Independent. Bucks tradition. Innovative. Inspirational. Dreamer. Leader.”
Mr. Schwarzenegger said he felt no compunction about her proclaiming his state for her candidate.
“People get it,” he said. “People know that she is not for Bush even though she is sitting there at the convention with me.”
Time spent around the kitchen table is sometimes enlivened by discussions on topics ranging from Mr. Obama’s pastor to the fuel tax (because nothing says, “Please stop hiding the peas under your napkin,” like a good gas tax riff) and gender issues. “The girls were for Hillary, and now they are with Obama,” the governor said. “The boys are more with McCain.”
It is a relationship that gives hope to other mixed marriages.
“Clearly we made out better as a party,” said Emily DeRose, the spokeswoman for the Arizona Democratic Party, who is newly married to a Republican supporter of Mr. McCain. “I love Maria Shriver, I read her book, and I just really admire her. Him, well, I like his movies.”
RESPONSE
I really liked this article, it was light hearted and a welcome relief from the usual presidential race articles. Reading about the governor himself having a wife who supports a democratic candidate was comforting. It showed me that not everyone is so caught up in partisan politics. I have also gained a great deal of respect for Gov. Schwarzenegger. It’s nice that he can deal with his wife supporting someone other than whom he supports, and even encourage her. IO did wonder why she supported Obama though.
ARTICLE
Banks Trimming Limits for Many on Credit Cards
By ERIC DASH
Published: June 21, 2008
The easy money that led Americans to depend on credit cards to pay their bills is starting to dry up.
After fostering the explosive growth of consumer debt in recent years, financial companies are reducing the credit limits on cards held by millions of Americans, often without warning.
Banks that issue cards like Visa and MasterCard, as well as the American Express Company, are cutting the limits for customers who have run up big debts, live in areas that have been hit hard by the housing crisis or work for themselves in troubled industries.
The reductions come as consumers, squeezed by a slack economy, a weak housing market and rising unemployment, are falling behind on monthly credit card payments in growing numbers.
Credit card lenders are also culling their accounts ahead of new rules that are intended to benefit consumers but could limit the profits on customers deemed bigger risks.
Many Americans have come to rely on credit cards to cover everyday expenses like groceries, gasoline and medical bills, in addition to big-ticket items and luxuries. While consumer spending, the nation’s economic engine, has been surprisingly resilient of late, a more sweeping reduction in credit card limits could pose serious challenges for hard-pressed consumers and, in turn, the broader economy.
Many are already feeling pinched. Pamela Pfitzer, a family therapist with a stable six-figure income, was stunned when she went to a garden center near her home outside Sacramento in early April and tried to buy about $30 worth of flowers with her American Express card. Her transaction was denied, she says, even though she insists she had rarely missed a payment and had just made one for $1,000.
After inadvertently hitting her credit limit a few months ago and then falling behind on a mortgage payment, Ms. Pfitzer said her limit was lowered by American Express to $900 from $2,300. The flowers pushed her over the new cap.
Then last month it happened again, she says, when she tried to buy office furniture with her Wells Fargo Visa card. Although she had just made a payment of about $700, Ms. Pfitzer found out that her credit limit had been lowered to $2,000 from $2,800.
“In all the years I have had credit cards, I have never had this happen before,” Ms. Pfitzer said. “Now it has happened twice in the last few months.”
Banks and mortgage companies are required by law to notify customers within three days of changing the limits on a home equity line of credit, and many have been aggressively lowering them. But credit card lenders have 30 days to notify their customers, and often do so only after taking action.
Such moves can cause a consumer’s credit score to drop, forcing the person to pay higher interest rates and making it harder to obtain new loans.
Even so, disclaimers in the fine print of credit card applications typically stipulate that the issuer can cancel or alter credit limits at any time, regardless of a customer’s payment or credit history.
Washington Mutual cut back the total credit lines available to its cardholders by nearly 10 percent in the first quarter of the year, according to an analysis of bank regulatory data. HSBC Holdings, Target and Wells Fargo each trimmed their credit card lines by about 3 percent.
Among those four lenders, that amounts to a reduction of about $15 billion in three months. Over all, the amount of available credit for the industry appears to be about flat, with the three biggest issuers — Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup — slightly increasing their overall credit lines. But even they are trying to rein in risky individual accounts.
Big banks face intense pressure on their balance sheets as they bring on billions of dollars worth of complex mortgage-related investments and other loans they are struggling to sell. Meanwhile, they are bracing for a surge in credit card losses as the job market and economy falter.
Consumers are reaching deeper into their pockets to pay for groceries and gas. Last year, as many as half of all those who took out home equity loans used the money to help pay down their credit card debt, according to J. D. Power research. But home equity is no longer an easy source of financing. Month after month, cardholders keep falling behind on their bills.
“This downturn is the perfect storm where the consumer is getting squeezed from all levels,” said Michael Taiano, a credit card industry analyst at Sandler O’Neill. He projects that credit card loss rates for lenders, now around 5.7 percent, could go as high as 10 percent in next 18 months. That would be higher than the peak levels reached after the 2001 technology bust. Banks Trimming Limits for Many on Credit Cards
Published: June 21, 2008
(Page 2 of 2)
Since borrowers typically run up their balances before they stop paying, issuers have started cutting lines of credit. Often, lenders will lower customers’ credit limits as they pay down their debt — a technique known in the industry as “chasing the balance.” This way, they are on the hook for less money if borrowers default.
“They are trying to cut their risk exposure,” said Bill Ryan, an analyst at Portales Partners. “The consumer that used to use his house as an A.T.M. is now starting to use their credit card as an A.T.M.”
American Express is reducing credit lines for customers holding subprime mortgages and small-business customers in industries tied to the real estate market. And Chase Card Services, the consumer arm of JPMorgan, is taking similar action on distressed borrowers, especially in places like California, Arizona and Florida, where home prices have declined sharply.
Washington Mutual, HSBC, Target and Wells Fargo all acknowledged they were pulling in lines of credit as part of broader strategy of reducing risk.
None of those lenders, as a matter of policy, would comment on individual customer accounts.
Cardholders in places like Orange County in California, Atlanta and Phoenix have noticed their credit lines shriveling up.
John D. Craig Jr., a college administrator who lives near Niagara Falls, N.Y., said he had regularly been paying own his balance on a rarely used card when Chase told him it was reducing his credit limit to $4,000 from $20,000. The news took him by surprise.
“For two or three years, it was, ‘We are going to give you more credit, more credit more credit,’ ” he said. “Now, in the last two or three months, it has been the exact opposite.”
Those who work in real estate-related fields say they are being pinched by the credit card lenders at a time when money is tight. In Seattle, Phillip Rodocker, a sales associate for a large residential real estate firm, said that the credit limit on his Citi Platinum Select Visa card had been reduced in April to $4,950 from $6,720 even though he says he never missed a payment and had no recent credit blemishes. A Citi spokesman, Samuel Wang, said Mr. Rodocker had made six late payments within the last year.
Leslie Sherman, the owner of Realty Executives in Las Vegas, said American Express had reduced the credit limits on several personal and business cards virtually at the same time.
“It has definitely made me spend less,” she said. But Ms. Sherman said that it had been a blow to her ego, too.
“It made me feel like I wasn’t responsible,” she said. “I know when to put my reins on and when not to. I didn’t appreciate someone thanking me for always paying my bills on time and being a good customer by dinging my credit.”
Meredith Whitney, an Oppenheimer banking analyst, said the impact of the recent regulatory proposals on lender profits could be so severe that she expected the industry to pull back $2 trillion in outstanding credit lines by 2010. That would be a 45 percent reduction in credit currently available to consumers. Risky borrowers would be squeezed the most.
Customers with stronger credit histories have probably noticed few changes. But card issuers are also becoming pickier about whom they approve.
Lenders are sending fewer offers in the mail. And borrowers already in debt, once courted by card companies, are being shunned.
Zero-balance teaser rate offers have fallen by about 15 percent over the last year, according to Mintel Comperemedia, a marketing research company.
RESPONSE
Well well well, so it’s finally happened. Took long enough, but it seems that finally, people have realized the problem with debt: It’s all based on more debt, so if this debt goes unpaid, this line of allowable debt, a.k.a. credit limit, must be lowered. That being said, lowering the credit limit for someone in good standing is not the best idea. This person then becomes disgruntled, and either moves to a different company, or spends (and therefore, pays) less. Normally I would say that these companies are being overly cautious, to the point where it will actually cause more problems than it will solve. That may well be true, but in light of what is happening to the economy, better a million small losses, than that big, final one.
ARTICLE
Louisiana’s Latest Assault on Darwin
Published: June 21, 2008
It comes as no surprise that the Louisiana State Legislature has overwhelmingly approved a bill that seeks to undercut the teaching of evolution in the public schools. The state, after all, has a sorry history as a hotbed of creationists’ efforts to inject religious views into science courses. All that stands in the way of this retrograde step is Gov. Bobby Jindal.
In the 1980s, Louisiana passed an infamous “Creationism Act” that prohibited the teaching of evolution unless it was accompanied by instruction in “creation science.” That effort to gain essentially equal time for creationism was slapped down by the United States Supreme Court as an unconstitutional endorsement of religion. State legislators, mimicking scattered efforts elsewhere, responded with a cagier, indirect approach.
The new bill doesn’t mention either creationism or its close cousin, intelligent design. It explicitly disavows any intent to promote a religious doctrine. It doesn’t try to ban Darwin from the classroom or order schools to do anything. It simply requires the state board of education, if asked by local school districts, to help create an environment that promotes “critical thinking” and “objective discussion” about not only evolution and the origins of life but also about global warming and human cloning, two other bêtes noires of the right. Teachers would be required to teach the standard textbook but could use supplementary materials to critique it.
That may seem harmless. But it would have the pernicious effect of implying that evolution is only weakly supported and that there are valid competing scientific theories when there are not. In school districts foolish enough to head down this path, the students will likely emerge with a shakier understanding of science.
As a biology major at Brown University, Mr. Jindal must know that evolution is the unchallenged central organizing principle for modern biology. As a rising star on the conservative right, mentioned as a possible running mate for John McCain, Mr. Jindal may have more than science on his mind. In a television interview, he seemed to say that local school boards should decide what is taught and that it would be wrong to teach only evolution or only intelligent design.
If Mr. Jindal has the interests of students at heart, the sensible thing is to veto this Trojan horse legislation.
RESPONSE
Wow. I understand that an editorial is an opinion, but to print one such as this, especially without an opposing viewpoint, struck me as a slap in the face to an “unbiased press”. I draw the reader’s attention to the third paragraph of the article, and Mr. Jindal’s comments. If one were presented with these alone, I do not think that it would be feasible to come up with the views that this editor has put forth. Mr. Jindal’s statement that local school boards should choose what they want to teach seems to be a very good idea. On the other hand, the editor’s claims that this bill is a “Trojan horse” that will give students a “shakier understanding of Science” is ludicrous! I was taught about evolution in fifth grade. I was then taught about intelligent design in sixth grade. This gave me a balanced knowledge, and left me free to make my own decisions. To claim that evolution is an unchallenged principle for biology is ignorant. Clearly, someone is challenging it.
ARTICLE
Class-Action Lawyer Gets 5 Years in Bribery Case
Bruce Newman/Oxford Eagle, via Associated Press
The renowned plaintiff’s lawyer Richard F. Scruggs, center, with his wife, Diane, and his lawyer, John Keker, was sentenced to the maximum five years for conspiracy to bribe a judge.
By ABHA BHATTARAI
Published: June 28, 2008
Richard F. Scruggs, whose successful battle against the tobacco industry in the 1990s made him one of the country’s best-known plaintiff’s lawyers, was sentenced on Friday to five years in prison for conspiring to bribe a judge.
Mr. Scruggs, 62, who goes by Dickie, pleaded guilty in March for his role in trying to pay Judge Henry Lackey of Mississippi a $50,000 bribe for a favorable ruling in a dispute involving a $26.5 million settlement after Hurricane Katrina.
Judge Neal D. Biggers Jr., who handed down the maximum sentence to Mr. Scruggs, called the crime “reprehensible.” Mr. Scruggs is to report to prison by noon on Aug. 4. The Mississippi federal court also fined him $250,000 and ordered him to pay for the cost of his incarceration. According to reports, Mr. Scruggs appeared nearly to faint during his sentencing.
His son, Zachary, who has also pleaded guilty in the case, will be sentenced on Wednesday.
Calls to Mr. Scruggs’s lawyer, John Keker, were not immediately returned.
Mr. Scruggs and Sidney A. Backstrom, a lawyer at Mr. Scruggs’s firm, who has also pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy, were charged last November. Mr. Backstrom was sentenced Friday to two years and four months in prison and fined $250,000.
The bribery prosecution stemmed from a lawsuit filed by John Griffin Jones, a lawyer in Jackson, Miss., against Mr. Scruggs and others, in which Mr. Jones contended he had been cheated out his share of a $26.5 million settlement in a case the two had filed against State Farm Insurance after Hurricane Katrina.
According to court documents, Mr. Scruggs, Mr. Backstrom and three other defendants in that case planned to bribe Judge Lackey, who was hearing the fee dispute. But the judge alerted federal prosecutors and then agreed to help them build a case.
Judge Lackey and another lawyer working with Mr. Scruggs, Timothy R. Balducci, discussed a bribe of $40,000. Then investigators confronted Mr. Balducci, who agreed to wear a recording device while he and Mr. Scruggs discussed the need to pay Judge Lackey an additional $10,000.
Mr. Scruggs agreed to take care of it, prosecutors said. Mr. Scruggs prepared documentation to hide the nature of the additional $10,000 payment, they said.
The case drew nationwide attention. Mr. Scruggs is well-connected to both political parties; he has made many donations, largely to Democrats, and has personal ties to Republicans. His brother-in-law is Trent Lott, the former Republican senator, and he counts among his friends Representative Gene Taylor of Mississippi, a Democrat.
Friends and colleagues called Mr. Scruggs a charming man who dressed impeccably. He is a skilled lawyer and debater, said Victor E. Schwartz, a partner at Shook, Hardy & Bacon, who has squared off against Mr. Scruggs in debates over the last 20 years.
“The sad thing here is that he didn’t need to cheat the system,” said Mr. Schwartz, who is general counsel to the American Tort Reform Association. “He was a phenomenal lawyer.”
Mr. Scruggs and his co-conspirators are the latest in a string of prominent plaintiff’s lawyers who have been found guilty of misdeeds involving their clients or their lawsuits.
Three plaintiff’s lawyers in Kentucky are being tried on charges of stealing millions of dollars from their clients in a dispute involving the fen-phen diet drug. This year, William Lerach and Melvyn Weiss, partners at Milberg Weiss, pleaded guilty to criminal conspiracy after paying kickbacks to clients to win bigger fees.
RESPONSE
This was a very disappointing article. As an aspiring lawyer, it makes it that much harder to find a reason or justification (other than pure profit) to become one. It just advances the stereotype of lawyers as heartless, self-centered, morally void jerks. Why would a rich, successful lawyer try to bribe a judge, simply to get a better cut of profits? It seems like one of the worst possible mistakes, especially involving his friends and family in this. The fact that such a crime only gets 5 years of jail time is also disappointing, since I think more time would encourage more compliance with the Cannons and ethics code of lawyers.
ARTICLE
Editorial
Lock and Load
Published: June 27, 2008
Thirty-thousand Americans are killed by guns every year — on the job, walking to school, at the shopping mall. The Supreme Court on Thursday all but ensured that even more Americans will die senselessly with its wrongheaded and dangerous ruling striking down key parts of the District of Columbia’s gun-control law.
Landmark Ruling Enshrines Right to Own Guns (June 27, 2008)
In a radical break from 70 years of Supreme Court precedent, Justice Antonin Scalia, writing for the majority, declared that the Second Amendment guarantees individuals the right to bear arms for nonmilitary uses, even though the amendment clearly links the right to service in a “militia.” The ruling will give gun-rights advocates a powerful new legal tool to try to strike down gun-control laws across the nation.
This is a decision that will cost innocent lives, cause immeasurable pain and suffering and turn America into a more dangerous country. It will also diminish our standing in the world, sending yet another message that the United States values gun rights over human life.
There already is a national glut of firearms: estimates run between 193 million and 250 million guns. The harm they do is constantly on heartbreaking display. Thirty-three dead last year in the shootings at Virginia Tech. Six killed this year at Northern Illinois University.
On Wednesday, as the court was getting ready to release its decision, a worker in a Kentucky plastics plant shot his supervisor, four co-workers and himself to death.
Cities and states have tried to stanch the killing with gun-control laws. The District of Columbia, which has one of the nation’s highest crime rates, banned the possession of nearly all handguns and required that other firearms be stored unloaded and disassembled, or bound with a trigger lock.
Overturning that law, the court’s 5-to-4 decision says that individuals have a constitutional right to keep guns in their homes for self-defense. But that’s a sharp reversal for the court: as early as 1939, it made clear that the Second Amendment only protects the right of people to carry guns for military use in a militia.
In his dissent, Justice John Paul Stevens was right when he said that the court has now established “a new constitutional right” that creates a “dramatic upheaval in the law.”
Even if there were a constitutional right to possess guns for nonmilitary uses, constitutional rights are not absolute. The First Amendment guarantees free speech, but that does not mean that laws cannot prohibit some spoken words, like threats to commit imminent violent acts. In his dissent, Justice Stephen Breyer argued soundly that whatever right gun owners have to unimpeded gun use is outweighed by the District of Columbia’s “compelling” public-safety interests.
In this month’s case recognizing the habeas corpus rights of the detainees at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, Justice Scalia wrote in dissent that the decision “will almost certainly cause more Americans to be killed.” Those words apply with far more force to his opinion in this District of Columbia case.
The gun lobby will now trumpet this ruling as an end to virtually all gun restrictions, anywhere, at all times. That must not happen. And today’s decision still provides strong basis for saying it should not.
If the ruling is held to apply to the states, and not just to the District of Columbia — which is not certain — there will still be considerable dispute about what it means for other less-sweeping gun laws. Judges may end up deciding these on a law-by-law basis.
Supporters of gun control must fight in court to ensure that registration requirements and background-check rules, and laws against bulk sales of handguns — a major source of guns used in crimes — are all upheld.
The court left room for gun-control advocates to fight back. It made clear that there were gun restrictions that it was not calling into question, including bans on gun possession by felons and the mentally ill, or in “sensitive places” like schools and government buildings.
That last part is the final indignity of the decision: when the justices go to work at the Supreme Court, guns will still be banned. When most Americans show up at their own jobs, they will not have that protection.
This audaciously harmful decision, which hands the far right a victory it has sought for decades, is a powerful reminder of why voters need to have the Supreme Court firmly in mind when they vote for the president this fall.
Senator John McCain has said he would appoint justices like Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito — both of whom supported this decision. If the court is allowed to tip even further to the far right, there will be even more damage done to the rights and the safety of Americans.
RESPONSE
Oh come on! Ok, first of all, most criminals do not go out and purchase their guns lawfully! That is why there is a black market in firearms. As for the constitutionality of this ruling, the Supreme Court has held that “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are unalienable rights of all humans.” None of these rights can be upheld without a method of protection. When law enforcement is unable to protect the citizens, they must take it upon themselves. This decision does not affect registration laws and requirements, so, for the most part, these guns will only be purchased by those who sincerely only want them for protection! And why, oh why, must EVERYTHING be about partisan politics? Notice that the editor does not attack the Supreme Court’s members based on anything but their political affiliation. Just because they are conservatives, they are portrayed as gun-loving and totally unconcerned about human life. I simply hope that most Americans are more open minded than this.
ARTICLE
In Britain, Concerns Over Oil Prices, Credit and Housing Echo Those in U.S.
By DAVID JOLLY
Published: July 5, 2008
A housing market in shambles, inflation at the highest level in years and signs that the economy is headed for, or already in, recession. Sound familiar?
The British economy, like its counterpart across the Atlantic, has fallen on hard times, and in many ways the experience appears to be mirroring that in the United States. Indeed, the run last September on a British mortgage lender, Northern Rock, was one event that helped to embed the term ''credit crisis'' firmly into the global consciousness.
''A recession is more likely than not by the end of the year,'' Peter Newland, who covers the British economy for Lehman Brothers, said Thursday, summarizing a string of dismal data that has led economists to revise their growth forecasts downward. ''Activity seems to be declining across the economy,'' he said.
The FTSE 100, the benchmark London stock index, has fallen about 19.6 percent from the high of 6,732.4 in June 2007 -- just short of the 20 percent decline that is commonly said to define a bear market. It lost 63.80 points, or 1.16 percent, to close at 5,412.8 on Friday.
Consumer confidence is the lowest since 1990, as oil prices drive toward $150 a barrel and unemployment has risen for the last four months.
In a written statement to a parliamentary committee on Wednesday, Charlie Bean, deputy governor of the central bank, called the situation ''the most challenging set of circumstances since at least the early 1990s and possibly earlier.''
The main force dragging down the British economy is the collapse of the once red-hot housing market, which enriched many British residents as long as credit flowed nearly as cheaply as in the United States.
According to Nationwide Building Society, a leading British mortgage lender, housing prices have fallen for eight consecutive months. In June, prices fell 6.3 percent from a year earlier, the biggest drop since 1992, taking a ''typical'' home down to £172,415, or about $343,000 -- a decline of more than £13,500 from the top of the market.
The British central bank said Monday that mortgage approvals in May were at the weakest level on record -- only 42,000 for all of Britain, down from 58,000 in April.
As the housing market sputters, consumers have retrenched. Shares in Marks & Spencer, the British retailer regarded as a bellwether of the domestic economy, plunged more than 25 percent in two days after it reported a sharp decline in sales. On Wednesday, Marks & Spencer said a consumer slowdown led to its biggest sales drop since 2005.
Gordon Brown, the beleaguered prime minister, sought to look on the bright side, while acknowledging that the remarkable run of prosperity over the previous decade has hit a wall.
''The task at the moment is to keep the economy moving forward,'' he said Thursday, speaking to a parliamentary committee in London. He expressed confidence that the economy was ''far more resilient than it was facing the last two oil shocks and facing some of the problems we had when there was a world downturn in the early '90s.''
But that seems little consolation. Unions are agitating for higher wages, even as inflation rose at a 3.3 percent annual rate in May, above the 3 percent upper limit of the Bank of England's comfort zone.
Despite the growing distress of British workers and businesses, economists hold out little hope of monetary policy relief. Economists surveyed this week by Reuters were unanimous in predicting that Mervyn King, the Bank of England governor, and his colleagues on the Monetary Policy Committee would hold rates unchanged at their meeting next Thursday. Only 23 of the poll of 72 economists surveyed this week forecast lower rates by year-end, down from 41 of 62 a few weeks ago.
RESPONSE
This was really alarming. It suggests that the resection we’re having isn’t just national, it’s global. While high oil process and food costs are global, I dint realize that a downturn in the real-estate market was as well. It’s nice to know that everyone is trying to work on it, but I think the best solution is to make a global committee dedicated to solving these problems. This article also raised the question of why no one saw this coming. Aren’t there auditors, surveyors, reviewers, whose job it is to tell us about things like this?
ARTICLE
Helmsley Left Dogs Billions in Her Will
Published: July 2, 2008
Sure, the hotelier and real estate magnate Leona Helmsley left $12 million in her will to her dog, Trouble. But that, it turns out, is nothing much compared with what other dogs may receive from the charitable trust of Mrs. Helmsley, who died last August.
Her instructions, specified in a two-page “mission statement,” are that the entire trust, valued at $5 billion to $8 billion and amounting to virtually all her estate, be used for the care and welfare of dogs, according to two people who have seen the document and who described it on condition of anonymity.
It is by no means clear, however, that all the money will go to dogs. Another provision of the mission statement says Mrs. Helmsley’s trustees may use their discretion in distributing the money, and some lawyers say the statement may not mean much anyway, given that its directions were not incorporated into Mrs. Helmsley’s will or the trust documents.
“The statement is an expression of her wishes that is not necessarily legally binding,” said William Josephson, a lawyer who was the chief of the Charities Bureau in the New York State attorney general’s office from 1999 to 2004.
Still, longstanding laws favor adherence to a donor’s intent, and the mission statement is the only clear expression of Mrs. Helmsley’s charitable intentions. That will make the document difficult for her trustees, as well as the probate court and state charity regulators, to ignore.
The two people who described the statement said Mrs. Helmsley signed it in 2003 to establish goals for the multibillion-dollar trust that would disburse assets after her death.
The first goal was to help indigent people, the second to provide for the care and welfare of dogs. A year later, they said, she deleted the first goal.
Howard J. Rubenstein, a spokesman for the executors of Mrs. Helmsley’s estate, said they did not want to comment on the statement because they were still working to determine the trust’s direction.
Mrs. Helmsley, the widow of Harry B. Helmsley, who built a real estate empire in Manhattan, was best known for her sharp tongue and impatience with humanity. She became a household name when she was featured in glossy advertisements for the Helmsley hotels. “It’s the only palace in the world where the queen stands guard,” advertisements for the Helmsley Palace proclaimed.
But for many Americans, she later became a symbol of unbridled arrogance and belief in entitlement, particularly after she was convicted in 1989 of $1.2 million in federal income tax evasion, for which she was sent to prison. She was the subject of a 1990 television film, “Leona Helmsley: The Queen of Mean,” with Suzanne Pleshette in the title role, and at least three books.
When she died last year at 87, she left all but a few million dollars of her vast estate to what will become one of the nation’s dozen largest foundations when the probate process is finished. She had $2.3 billion in liquid assets when she died, according to the probate petition, and the disposal of her real estate holdings is expected to produce an additional $3 billion to $6 billion.
Even if the resulting total is at the low end of the estimate — $5 billion or so — the trust will be worth almost 10 times the combined assets of all 7,381 animal-related nonprofit groups reporting to the Internal Revenue Service in 2005.
The five executors of her will — Mrs. Helmsley’s brother, Alvin Rosenthal; two of her grandsons, Walter and David Panzirer; her lawyer, Sandor Frankel; and her longtime friend John Codey — have been preoccupied with disposing of the real estate.
They are also the trustees of the Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust and, according to the two people who discussed the mission statement, have fretted about the public outcry that disclosure of its terms might incite.
They have reason for concern: News last year that the biggest named beneficiary in Mrs. Helmsley’s will was Trouble, her Maltese, led to death threats against the dog, which now requires security costing $100,000 a year. But they also cannot sit on the liquid assets much longer without raising questions from the attorney general’s office, which oversees the use of charitable assets in New York State.
The trustees recently hired a philanthropic advisory service to help them figure out a way to remain true to Mrs. Helmsley’s intentions while at the same time pursuing broader charitable goals with her foundation.
Judge Renee R. Roth of Surrogate’s Court in Manhattan will also play a role. She has already demonstrated a willingness to be flexible, cutting the size of Trouble’s trust fund to $2 million, from the $12 million prescribed in Mrs. Helmsley’s will, and ordering that the difference be added to the pending charitable trust.
Judge Roth also agreed to a settlement between the trustees and two of Mrs. Helmsley’s grandchildren who were explicitly left out of her will. The agreement gave those grandchildren a combined $6 million.
There are many ways the trustees could spend the Helmsley money on dogs. National groups like the Humane Society of the United States and the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals have programs dedicated to dogs, and many smaller local groups rescue abandoned and abused dogs.
Or the trustees could use the trust’s money to finance veterinary schools or research on canine diseases.
Her goal of helping dogs was not Mrs. Helmsley’s only posthumous quirk. In her will, she ordered that her tomb, in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Sleepy Hollow, N.Y., be “acid-washed or steam-cleaned” once a year.
She also made two grandchildren’s combined $10 million inheritance contingent on their visiting their father’s grave, requiring that a registration book be placed in the mausoleum to prove that they had shown up.
RESPONSE
First off, I will say that I love dogs. I also find Mrs. Helsley very entertaining, and have found her so since watching the above-mentioned movie. That being said, leaving her dog twelve million dollars and cutting out indigent people from her will seems to have gone a bit too far. While I tend to get annoyed by humanity, I would definitely try to help the unluckier parts of it, rather than needlessly giving an animal money it does not need, seeing as how it will be given the best care possible anyway! I just wondered, what caused her to become so disenchanted with humanity, especially the two grandsons she cut from the will?
ARTICLE
Immigrants Find Solace After Storm of Arrests
Published: July 12, 2008
POSTVILLE, Iowa — Back in 2002, before all the trouble, the Rev. Paul Ouderkirk retired from St. Bridget’s Roman Catholic Church here, his last station in 43 years of ministry. He built a home 35 miles away in a town along the Mississippi, and he indulged a passion for family history, tracing his lineage to an ancestor who had arrived in New Amsterdam with the Dutch East India Company.
The Rev. Paul Ouderkirk at his home in Garnavillo, Iowa, came out of retirement to help members of his congregation.
Once a month or so, Father Ouderkirk drove back to St. Bridget’s to officiate at a wedding or baptize a baby. He savored those rituals, proof that the Hispanic immigrants who had arrived over the past decade to work in Postville’s kosher-meat plant were setting down roots. Some had bought homes. Their children had graduated from high school, even been selected for the National Honor Society.
Then came the morning of May 12, when both satisfaction and retirement ended for the 75-year-old priest. Federal immigration agents raided the Agriprocessors factory, arresting nearly 400 workers, most of them men, for being in the United States illegally. Within minutes of the raid, with surveillance helicopters buzzing above the leafy streets, the wives and children of Mexican and Guatemalan families began trickling into St. Bridget’s Church, the safest place they knew.
It was about that time, with several dozen cowering people inside the church, when Sister Mary McCauley, the pastor administrator at St. Bridget’s, found out that Father Ouderkirk was attending a ceremony for diocesan priests nearly two hours away in Dubuque. Unable to reach him directly, she left a simple, urgent message: “We need to see a collar here.”
By the time Father Ouderkirk extricated himself and reached Postville in the evening, nearly 400 families, some of them not even Catholic, filled the rotunda and social hall of St. Bridget’s. They occupied every pew, every aisle, every folding chair, every inch of floor. Children clutched mothers. One girl shook uncontrollably.
A few volunteers from the old Postville, descendants of the Irish and Norwegian immigrants who settled here more than a century ago, set out food. Others took turns standing watch at the church door, as if the sight of an Anglo might somehow dissuade the feared Migra, as the immigrants call Immigration and Customs Enforcement, from invading their sanctuary.
Already, members of the church staff and a Spanish teacher from a nearby college were tallying the names of the detained workers. Father Ouderkirk conducted his own version of a census in this predominantly Hispanic parish. Gone were all but two members of the choir he had assembled over the years. Gone were all but one of the eight altar servers. Gone were the husbands from the weddings he had performed, and gone were the fathers of the children he had baptized.
As for the mothers, many of them also worked at Agriprocessors and had been arrested. In a putative show of compassion, federal authorities released them after putting an electronic homing device on each woman’s ankle to monitor her whereabouts. These mothers were, in the new lexicon of Postville, “las personas con brazalete,” the people with a bracelet.
During his earlier tenure at parishes in North Texas and Marshalltown, Iowa, Father Ouderkirk had experienced immigration raids twice before, but never on this scale. By the second day, he had moved back into his bedroom in the rectory.
“It’s like God saying, ‘I gave you a little practice,’ because this is the worst,” Father Ouderkirk said in an interview late last month at St. Bridget’s. “This has happened after 10 years of stable living. These people were in school. They were achieving. It has ripped the heart out of the community and out of the parish. Probably every child I baptized has been affected. To see them stunned is beyond belief.”
The only redemptive thing that can be said, perhaps, is that in the crisis at Postville — with nearly 400 immigrants imprisoned and facing deportation, with 40 mothers under house arrest awaiting their own court dates, with families that had two working parents now forced to survive on handouts from a food pantry — the beacon of the Roman Catholic Church to immigrants has rarely shone more brilliantly.
“I came to the church because I feel safe there, I feel secure,” said Irma López, the mother of a 2-year-old daughter, who was arrested along with her husband, Marcelo, after they had worked at Agriprocessors for six years. “I feel protected. I feel at peace. I feel comforted.”
RESPONSE
This article was interesting. I don’t believe in granting amnesty to illegal immigration, but I know how horrible the normal immigration procedures are. I am glad that there was someone for the families to turn to. I don’t think the way that the “Migra” operates is right either. The only solution is to reform legal immigration, but meanwhile, the flow of illegal immigrants must be stemmed. Whenever there’s a problem, it seems like religion is the first thing people turn to. Aside from instilling morals, THIS is the main function of religion.
ARTICLE
Pursuit of Sudan’s Leader Incites Debate
Published: July 12, 2008
UNITED NATIONS — The International Criminal Court’s pursuit of Sudan’s president set off fierce debate at the United Nations on Friday, with the Sudanese ambassador accusing the court of trying to destabilize his country and Secretary General Ban Ki-moon expressing concern about the safety of United Nations personnel in the African nation.
Luis Moreno-Ocampo, the chief prosecutor at the court, is expected to announce on Monday that he is seeking an arrest warrant for President Omar Hassan al-Bashir of Sudan in connection with the widespread killing of civilians in the Darfur region since 2003. The United Nations estimates that the conflict has left 300,000 people dead and 2.7 million displaced, and some diplomats worry that the Sudanese will retaliate against the prosecutor’s move by evicting the relief agencies that the civilians depend on to survive.
In anticipation of Monday’s announcement, United Nations officials and diplomats said, tense meetings were held throughout the day, with China, Russia and the African Union arguing that the indictment should not proceed, and the United States and Europe countering that the judicial process had to be allowed to work independently.
China was outspoken in its opposition, with its ambassador, Wang Guangya, announcing that he had significant concerns.
“I don’t see any positive scenario,” he told reporters, saying the prosecutor’s request for an arrest warrant would jeopardize efforts to negotiate peace, strengthen peacekeeping operations and supply the humanitarian needs of the civilian population. “If we want to achieve peace there we have to have cooperation from all the political parties in Sudan.”
Concerns about the fallout were focused on two levels — any immediate, short-term attempt by the Sudanese government or others to take out their anger on United Nations staff members in the country, and the longer-term consequences for negotiating a peace with the country’s fractious rebel movements.
On the first issue, Mr. Ban held a meeting with the ambassadors of the five permanent members of the Security Council to express his concern about the safety of all the United Nations personnel in the country. Workers there have been told to prepare themselves for the possible ramifications of the prosecutor’s announcement, United Nations officials said.
Seven international peacekeepers were killed and 22 were wounded in an attack on Tuesday. In a briefing to the Security Council, Jean-Marie Guéhenno , the departing under secretary general for peacekeeping operations, said the attacks came at a particularly vulnerable time for the operations in Darfur, as the peacekeeping forces have been trying to build up their units and get convoys across Sudan.
RESPONSE
The justice system cannot be applied in differentially. Just because the president may not have lived up to the most stringent human rights laws, does not make it ok to destabilize an entire country at such a crucial time. I believe completely in the law system, but I also believe in prosecutorial discretion, and Luis Moreno-Acampo is not exercising it! Not only does the International Court not have any power in Sudan, it is going headfirst against the wishes of a big part of the U.N.! This case can always be tried AFTER the situation in Sudan is resolved.
ARTICLE
Black Marks for the Red Cross
Published: July 19, 2008
One thing Americans do not want to hear when they are injured or facing surgery is that blood from the American Red Cross may actually harm them. So it was unnerving, to put it mildly, to learn that the Red Cross, which collects and distributes some 43 percent of blood given to patients in this country, has failed to follow quality-control measures ordered by a federal court 15 years ago.
The organization’s sloppy procedures and its lethargy in investigating possible harm have put untold numbers of Americans at risk. These failures have been identified in reports and investigations by the Food and Drug Administration, which regulates the safety of the American blood supply, and summarized in The Times on Thursday by Stephanie Strom.
The F.D.A. found shortcomings in the way the Red Cross screens donors for possible exposure to infectious diseases, failures to swab arms properly before inserting needles, failures to test for syphilis and failures to discard potentially risky blood, among other deficiencies.
There is little or no evidence that recipients of the blood have been harmed; the skimpy record doesn’t allow an assessment. Regulators say the Red Cross no longer routinely releases unsuitable blood, as it did in the late-1980s and early-1990s. Blood supplied by the Red Cross is generally considered among the safest in the world, and the organization is praised for doing a good job of testing for the AIDS virus and hepatitis B, two of the most feared infections.
What should shame the Red Cross is its repeated failure to investigate potential harm. In 2001, when a patient died of hepatitis that may have been contracted from a Red Cross blood product, the F.D.A. concluded that the organization had failed to perform a thorough investigation. All told, the Red Cross failed to investigate more than 130 cases of suspected post-transfusion hepatitis between 2000 and mid-2002.
Often the problem is bureaucratic. Just this week, the F.D.A. chided the Red Cross for distributing more than 200 blood products that the organization itself had identified as problematic but failed to intercept before distribution. Other times the failure is deliberate. A blood facility in Philadelphia, with approval from a senior national executive, decided not to recall some 600 units of blood that had been collected using improper methods.
What can be done to turn things around is not clear. The Red Cross has already reorganized its blood operations, deployed electronic monitors to improve arm swabbing and invested heavily in a centralized database that should, if it ever gets up and running, make it easier to track down flawed blood products. The organization says that under new leadership it has put in place an aggressive plan to comply fully with F.D.A. regulations.
Some critics believe the Red Cross should sell off its blood banking services and stick to disaster relief, but that might present financial difficulties. The disaster relief activities are said to be heavily subsidized by blood banking revenues, although the organization’s financial systems are so antiquated that even its own top executives do not know for sure.
At a minimum, Congress should explore ways to strengthen regulatory oversight and force the Red Cross to meet the highest safety standards.
In January, a frustrated commissioner of food and drugs warned Red Cross board members that they could face criminal charges for continued failure to bring their organization into compliance with safety mandates.
They need to get cracking.
RESPONSE
This seems a bit….ungrateful to me. The red-cross is, after all, a charitable foundation! To chastise them for not being completely on top of the blood they give people who are hurt is not prudent. We should encourage them to better monitor their blood supplies while praising them for their work. After all, beggars can’t be choosers.
ARTICLE
A Veil Closes France’s Door to Citizenship
By KATRIN BENNHOLD
Published: July 19, 2008
LA VERRIÈRE, France — When Faiza Silmi applied for French citizenship, she worried that her French was not quite good enough or that her Moroccan upbringing would pose a problem.
Fadela Amara, left, France’s urban affairs minister and a Muslim, backs a ruling to deny citizenship to a Muslim woman.
“I would never have imagined that they would turn me down because of what I choose to wear,” Ms. Silmi said, her hazel eyes looking out of the narrow slit in her niqab, an Islamic facial veil that is among three flowing layers of turquoise, blue and black that cover her body from head to toe.
But last month, France’s highest administrative court upheld a decision to deny citizenship to Ms. Silmi, 32, on the ground that her “radical” practice of Islam was incompatible with French values like equality of the sexes.
It was the first time that a French court had judged someone’s capacity to be assimilated into France based on private religious practice, taking laïcité — the country’s strict concept of secularism — from the public sphere into the home.
The case has sharpened the focus on the delicate balance between the tradition of Republican secularism and the freedom of religion guaranteed under the French Constitution, and how that balance may be shifting. Four years ago, a law banned religious clothing in public schools. Earlier this year, a court in Lille annulled a marriage on request of a Muslim husband whose wife had lied about being a virgin. (The government later demanded a review of the court decision.)
So far, citizenship has been denied on religious grounds in France only when applicants were believed to be close to fundamentalist groups.
The ruling on Ms. Silmi has received almost unequivocal support across the political spectrum, including among many Muslims. Fadela Amara, the French minister for urban affairs, called Ms. Silmi’s niqab “a prison” and a “straitjacket.”
“It is not a religious insignia but the insignia of a totalitarian political project that promotes inequality between the sexes and is totally lacking in democracy,” Ms. Amara, herself a practicing Muslim of Algerian descent, told the newspaper Le Parisien in an interview published Wednesday.
François Hollande, the leader of the opposition Socialist Party, called the ruling “a good application of the law,” while Jacques Myard, a conservative lawmaker elected in the district where Ms. Silmi lives, demanded that face-covering veils be outlawed.
In an interview at her home in a public housing complex southwest of Paris, the first she has given since her citizenship was denied, Ms. Silmi told of her shock and embarrassment when she found herself unexpectedly in the public eye. Since July 12, when Le Monde first reported the court decision, her story has been endlessly dissected on newspaper front pages and in late-night television talk shows.
“They say I am under my husband’s command and that I am a recluse,” Ms. Silmi said during an hourlong conversation in her apartment in La Verrière, a small town 30 minutes by train from Paris. At home, when no men are present, she lifts her facial veil and exposes a smiling, heart-shaped face.
“They say I wear the niqab because my husband told me so,” she said. “I want to tell them: It is my choice. I take care of my children, and I leave the house when I please. I have my own car. I do the shopping on my own. Yes, I am a practicing Muslim, I am orthodox. But is that not my right?”
Ms. Silmi declined to have her photograph taken, saying that she and her husband were uncomfortable with the idea.
Eight years ago, Ms. Silmi married Karim, a French national of Moroccan descent, and moved to France with him. Their four children, three boys and a girl, ages 2 to 7, were born in France. In 2004, Ms. Silmi applied for French citizenship, she said, “because I wanted to have the same nationality as my husband and my children.” But her request was denied a year later because of “insufficient assimilation” into France.
RESPONSE
This is why people say that the western world is hypocritical. We claim to want freedom of religion for all, but then we deny people citizenship for following their religion. Why should what Ms. Silmi wants to wear affect her “assimilation”? If she knows the culture and speaks the language, she should be able to gain citizenship. As for her clothes being a symbol of inequality between the sexes, if she doesn’t think they are who is the government to tell her that they are?! This article disgusted me; the government should stay out of religion!
ARTICLE
In Bratz Case, a Request for a Mistrial
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: July 26, 2008
A lawyer for the maker of Bratz dolls said on Friday that he had sought a mistrial because of an ethnic slur made by a juror who has been dismissed from the copyright infringement case brought by Mattel.
The juror made the remark about the chief executive of the company that makes Bratz, MGA Entertainment, during jury deliberations in the first phase of the federal trial in Riverside, Calif., said the lawyer, Thomas Nolan.
That phase ended on July 18, when jurors found that the designer of Bratz characters had conceived the idea for the dolls while working for Mattel.
The jury was considering possible damages during a separate proceeding that began on Wednesday when the judge halted the case.
Mr. Nolan said the juror, a woman, was dismissed after another member of the panel had accused her of making inappropriate comments about the ethnic background of MGA’s chief executive, Isaac Larian. He is Iranian.
Mattel, based in El Segundo, Calif., said in a statement that the development was “very unfortunate.”
“This trial, however, has been, and will continue to be, about Mr. Larian’s and MGA’s wrongful behavior. Nothing changes that,” the statement said.
The jury ruled previously that MGA, based in Van Nuys, Calif., and Mr. Larian were liable for converting Mattel property for their own use and intentionally interfering with the contractual duties owed by the designer to Mattel.
The judge set a hearing for Aug. 4 to consider arguments to “determine whether or not the trial should proceed,” Nolan said.
“Today showed the best and the worst of the American system. One juror had a hidden bias, and another juror who took a solemn oath to be impartial had the courage to live up to that commitment,” Mr. Nolan said.
Mattel, the maker of Barbie dolls, filed the lawsuit against MGA, which began marketing the hugely popular Bratz line of dolls in 2001.
RESPONSE
I was glad to learn of the second juror’s commitment to fairness, but the entire premise of the law suit seemed a bit silly to me. Why should it matter whose idea it was originally, they’re all going to be similar! I know intellectual property is now important, but it’s a waste of time and money to fight over something like this. More importantly, it’s another example of corruption in our justice system.
ARTICLE
A Stay of Execution for the Wolves
Published: July 26, 2008
A federal judge in Missoula, Mont., has given Rocky Mountain gray wolves a well-deserved reprieve. In February, the federal Fish and Wildlife Service had effectively sentenced hundreds of wolves to death by lifting the protections provided by the Endangered Species Act. Since then, because of far weaker state protections in Wyoming, Montana and Idaho, more than 100 wolves out of a total population of 1,500 have been killed. As many as 500 more were doomed to die in state-authorized hunts this fall.
Judge Donald Molloy issued a preliminary injunction last week restoring federal protections. That ends the slaughter, at least for now. And while the case is far from settled, the dozen conservation groups that brought the suit are hopeful that his injunction will survive further court tests and that the Fish and Wildlife Service will be forced to provide a better plan to protect the wolves.
The centerpiece of Judge Molloy’s decision was his finding that the Fish and Wildlife Service had failed to meet its own criteria for removing the wolf from the endangered species list. Before stripping the wolves of federal protection, the agency was required to show that wolf subpopulations across the area were interbreeding — a genetic necessity for healthy, sustainable numbers. The judge found that the agency had offered no such evidence.
Judge Molloy also found that this fall’s hunts could irreparably damage the species. He seemed particularly annoyed at the agency’s failure to explain why it had “flip-flopped” on Wyoming’s plan, which allows unregulated hunting on most state lands. The agency had previously rejected it as insufficiently protective.
All three states have weak plans — not one has made a firm, enforceable commitment to maintain viable wolf populations — but Wyoming’s is the worst. Under its management plan, the wolf is treated as a predator — liable to be shot on sight — in parts of the state and as a trophy game animal in the rest.
This deep-set hostility has only a little to do with ranching. It is really driven by the competition between human hunters and wolves for the same game animals: elk and deer. And underneath it all is a false myth — the wolf as a kind of ferocious coward and an indiscriminate killer — that says less about the true nature of wolves than it does about human fear.
RESPONSE
I really liked this article, probably because I agreed with it. The wolf is arguably the most misunderstood animal there is. Humans have always been afraid of wolves and jealous of them as well. I don’t think they should ever be stripped of protection, because hunters and others around them simply can’t tolerate an animal that can doo with its body what it takes two armed humans twice as long to do.
ARTICLE
McCain camp compares Obama to Spears, Hilton
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
John McCain's presidential campaign on Wednesday released a withering television ad comparing Barack Obama to Britney Spears and Paris Hilton, suggesting the Democratic contender is little more than a vapid but widely recognized media concoction.
Obama's campaign quickly responded with a commercial of its own, dismissing McCain's complaints as "baloney" and "baseless."
McCain's ad, titled "Celeb" and set to air in 11 battleground states, intercuts images of Obama on his trip to Europe last week with video of twenty-something pop stars Spears and Hilton — both better known for their childish off-screen antics.
"He's the biggest celebrity in the world, but is he ready to lead?" the voiceover asks, noting the Illinois senator's opposition to offshore oil drilling and suggesting he would raise taxes if elected.
It was the latest effort by the GOP hopeful to cast Obama as a lightweight with little experience in leadership or governing. It also was risky for McCain's campaign to both acknowledge Obama's worldwide fame and depict it as a weakness rather than a strength.
Campaigning in Missouri, Obama said the ad was the latest example of McCain's negativity — a theme his campaign has tried to stress lately.
"He doesn't seem to have anything positive to say about me, does he?" Obama said. "You need to ask John McCain what he's for, not just what he's against."
Obama also said the link to Hilton shows Republicans are leaving no stone unturned in their attempts to tarnish him.
"I've never even met the woman," he said.
Hilton's spokesman Jason Moore also commented, saying "Miss Hilton was neither asked, nor did she give permission, for the use of her likeness in the ad, and has no further comment."
The Obama campaign ad, released hours after McCain's, shows images of the Arizona senator with President Bush and accuses McCain of practicing "the politics of the past." The campaign said it could air as soon as Thursday.
It was the second Obama ad in as many days responding to negative spots by McCain. But it was unclear how broadly the campaign intended to run it. The campaign typically identifies states where its ads air, but on Wednesday only said this ad would appear "in some markets."
Kathleen Hall Jamieson, a communications professor at the University of Pennsylvania, said McCain's comparison of Obama to Spears and Hilton likely would not persuade many voters.
"The typical viewer will fail to see the analogy," she said. "Voters believe Sen. Obama is a celebrity, but not in the same sense as Britney Spears and Paris Hilton. So when you are asking, 'What are they doing in the ad?,' it distracts attention from the message of the ad."
McCain did not mention the ad at a town-hall meeting in Colorado, but reiterated many of his complaints about Obama.
"The beauty of his words have attracted many people, especially among the young to his campaign," McCain told workers at Wagner Equipment, which rents and sells heavy farm machinery. "My concern with Sen. Obama is with issues big and small. What he says and what he does are often two different things."
RESPONSE
Obama is like Spears and Hilton? Really? Come on! I mean, I understand that he is popular and likeable, but comparing him to the witless wonders is ludicrous. Why can’t T.V. ads be about issues, or morals or even personal choices? Random insults, especially baseless ones, don’t help anyone, and are in fact harmful to the candidate who aired them. The saddest part of this is that the McCain campaign received a donation of $4800, the largest possible amount a family can contribute, from Paris Hilton’s family! Seems like a lack of gratitude, and more importantly, a crude attack to me.
ARTICLE
New Film Tests Crudity’s Limits
By MICHAEL CIEPLY
Published: August 2, 2008
LOS ANGELES — Ben Stiller slurps gore from a human head. Robert Downey Jr. wears blackface throughout. Both milk an extended gag about Hollywood’s weakness for what they impolitely call retards.
And the film was not cheap.
“Tropic Thunder,” an R-rated movie-industry spoof set to open on Aug. 13, is shaping up as an unusual parting gift to Paramount Pictures from Steven Spielberg, David Geffen and Stacey Snider. The three are expected to leave Paramount shortly over dissatisfaction with its handling of their DreamWorks unit, which the studio bought in 2005.
The movie clearly has hit potential. Directed by Mr. Stiller, it has an ensemble cast also including Jack Black, Matthew McConaughey, Steve Coogan and Nick Nolte, not to mention Tom Cruise, in a raucous cameo as a vulgar studio chief.
But Paramount executives also face the delicate task of selling what may be the raunchiest comedy yet in a summer that has seen more than its share. (Next is the much cheaper “Pineapple Express,” a stoner adventure Sony Pictures Entertainment is releasing on Wednesday, with Seth Rogen and James Franco in the lead roles.)
If they fall short, a production budget of about $90 million and tens of millions of dollars in marketing money are at risk. A soft performance would also compound the embarrassment of “The Love Guru,” the Mike Myers raunchfest that flopped when Paramount released it in June.
But if the studio does well, the DreamWorks team — which handed Paramount hits last year with “Norbit” and “Transformers” — gets a boost, even while firming up a pending deal for independent financing from Reliance Big Entertainment of India.
The next step in this corporate melodrama is likely to be an agreement on basic terms between the DreamWorks principals and Reliance Big in the next week or two, to be followed by some weeks of detailed negotiation. A distribution arrangement with a studio other than Paramount is likely to follow by early fall.
Of “Tropic Thunder,” Ms. Snider, chief executive of the DreamWorks unit, said in a phone interview this week: “I’m proud of the movie. It is hysterically funny. I do think it’s got its heart in the right place.”
Ms. Snider acknowledged the risks inherent in the film. It is the first from DreamWorks, she said, to use a so-called red band trailer, which attempts to limit access to online viewers 17 or older. (Visitors to tropicthunder.com can view it only after clicking on “Restricted” and entering name, ZIP code and birth date.)
But the film’s humor, she said, comes at the expense of its own heroes, a corps of knucklehead actors, rather than of the handicapped or anyone else. “The star-studdedness of it, and the absolute playability of it, trumps it all,” Ms. Snider said.
Paramount executives declined through a spokeswoman, Patricia S. Rockenwagner, to discuss “Tropic Thunder” or their political tussle with the DreamWorks principals. The sides have been at odds over the apportionment of credit and management authority ever since Paramount bought DreamWorks for $1.6 billion two and a half years ago. The DreamWorks acquisition helped Brad Grey make a fast start when he took the top job at Paramount after a career as producer and manager. But the executives’ demands for operating freedom and public recognition created headaches.
Even if Mr. Geffen, Mr. Spielberg and Ms. Snider leave Paramount, the studio will continue to own the dozens of development projects it acquired with DreamWorks.
The studio has already been working with the three on “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen,” a sequel set for distribution next June. Another of at least 13 DreamWorks movies still to come from Paramount, scheduled for November release, is “The Soloist,” an Oscar-season drama about a schizophrenic musician, with Mr. Downey and Jamie Foxx.
Still, “Tropic Thunder” is virtually certain to be the group’s last film before they become publicly associated with a new studio — and for Paramount, it means a tricky exercise in getting the most out of a movie that in some ways tests its genre’s limits.
One of this summer’s lessons is that the audience laps up crudity, but only to a point. The PG-13-rated “You Don’t Mess With the Zohan,” with its penis jokes; the R-rated “Step Brothers,” which laid out Will Ferrell’s scrotum on a drum; and, of course, “The Love Guru,” another PG-13 movie whose plot turned partly on penis length, are all likely to end the season without having broken the $100 million mark. ( In general, rude comedies have also generally performed less well than other sorts of movies overseas.)
When R-rated comedies have broken that barrier lately, they have usually had a strong female presence. “Sex and the City,” rated R, topped $150 million at the box office this summer with four women in the lead roles; even last year’s “Superbad,” which took in $121 million, had boys chasing girls. In 2005 “Wedding Crashers,” an R-rated blockbuster, took in $209 million, thanks in no small part to a romance-driven plot line that made it a date movie.
Among the less romantic R-rated comedies in recent years, “Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan” took in about $129 million in 2006, but “Semi-Pro,” with Mr. Ferrell in the lead, barely scratched its way to $33 million earlier this year.
“Tropic Thunder” has about as much feminine presence as “Platoon.” That combat classic, Mr. Stiller recently told The Los Angeles Daily News, helped inspire him to make a satire when its director, Oliver Stone, dismissed him at a casting meeting for the movie with the words “You’re cute.”
“Tropic Thunder” follows actors who get tangled up in real warfare with a paramilitary drug gang while working out their anxieties and insecurities on a “Platoon”-like movie shoot. Along the way they dabble in some humor that is exceptionally rude, especially for DreamWorks. The company has been known for upscale movies like “Dreamgirls” and Mr. Spielberg’s “Munich,” though it has occasionally dabbled in R-rated comedy.
Its most recent such entry was “The Heartbreak Kid,” a box office flop last year that starred Mr. Stiller and was directed by Bobby and Peter Farrelly. Much earlier it had a midsize hit with “Old School,” starring Mr. Ferrell, Vince Vaughn and Luke Wilson, which took in about $75 million at the box office in 2003.
Ms. Snider said she hoped “Tropic Thunder” would do more than $30 million in opening-weekend business, then go on to perform as well as “Borat.” Her optimism was bolstered, she said, by positive reaction, especially to the film’s stars, from women and older viewers at more than 250 screenings intended to generate word of mouth around the country.
The presumed core audience for “Tropic Thunder” — young, male, strong of stomach — is not likely to be put off by its harsher moments. But online ticket sales have so far not matched the extraordinary anticipation that greeted “Sex and the City,” “Iron Man” or “The Dark Knight.”
Whether Mr. Stiller’s movie-within-a-movie subplot about his character’s would-be Oscar turn as the developmentally handicapped title character of “Simple Jack” incites a backlash remains to be seen. A mock promotional Web site for “Simple Jack,” simplejackmovie.com — which features Mr. Stiller cavorting as a bucktoothed, kindhearted dolt — has drawn a wary response from some.
On Friday the Web site Patriciaebauer.com, which compiles news and commentary related to disability issues, highlighted a “Simple Jack” promotional image that carries the slogan “Once Upon a Time There Was a Retard.” In an accompanying post, Patricia E. Bauer, the veteran journalist who runs the site, invited debate over the film’s approach, and especially its use of what many call “the R-word.”
Reached in Vancouver, British Columbia, where he has been working on “Night at the Museum 2: Battle of the Smithsonian,” Mr. Stiller suggested that the movie would speak for itself.
“It’s hard for me to tell people how to react,” he said. “The whole point of the movie is about actors, and the length actors will go to advance their careers.”
RESPONSE
This article confirms what I have noticed on my own, when going to movies. Filmmakers are resorting to cruder and more vulgar forms of humor to try to get a laugh. It seems like everyone is trying to just get shock value, instead of actually making smart, original, funny, situations. While it’s true that people will watch these movies just to see how far-fetched they are, I think it’s taken something away from the real allure of movies. The solution is to think of new ideas, maybe even new genres, and not just rush into making movies for the profit. Until that happens though, I think that movie-goers should show their disdain for the path Hollywood has chosen to take, by not going to these movies.
ARTICLES
Goodbye, Passwords. You Aren’t a Good Defense.
Photo Illustration by Tony Cenicola/The New York Times
By RANDALL STROSS
Published: August 9, 2008
THE best password is a long, nonsensical string of letters and numbers and punctuation marks, a combination never put together before. Some admirable people actually do memorize random strings of characters for their passwords — and replace them with other random strings every couple of months.
Then there’s the rest of us, selecting the short, the familiar and the easiest to remember. And holding onto it forever.
I once felt ashamed about failing to follow best practices for password selection — but no more. Computer security experts say that choosing hard-to-guess passwords ultimately brings little security protection. Passwords won’t keep us safe from identity theft, no matter how clever we are in choosing them.
That would be the case even if we had done a better job of listening to instructions. Surveys show that we’ve remained stubbornly fond of perennial favorites like “password,” “123456” and “LetMeIn.” The underlying problem, however, isn’t their simplicity. It’s the log-on procedure itself, in which we land on a Web page, which may or may not be what it says it is, and type in a string of characters to authenticate our identity (or have our password manager insert the expected string on our behalf).
This procedure — which now seems perfectly natural because we’ve been trained to repeat it so much — is a bad idea, one that no security expert whom I reached would defend.
Password-based log-ons are susceptible to being compromised in any number of ways. Consider a single threat, that posed by phishers who trick us into clicking to a site designed to mimic a legitimate one in order to harvest our log-on information. Once we’ve been suckered at one site and our password purloined, it can be tried at other sites.
The solution urged by the experts is to abandon passwords — and to move to a fundamentally different model, one in which humans play little or no part in logging on. Instead, machines have a cryptographically encoded conversation to establish both parties’ authenticity, using digital keys that we, as users, have no need to see.
In short, we need a log-on system that relies on cryptography, not mnemonics.
As users, we would replace passwords with so-called information cards, icons on our screen that we select with a click to log on to a Web site. The click starts a handshake between machines that relies on hard-to-crack cryptographic code. The necessary software for creating information cards is on only about 20 percent of PCs, though that’s up from 10 percent a year ago. Windows Vista machines are equipped by default, but Windows XP, Mac and Linux machines require downloads.
And that’s only half the battle: Web site hosts must also be persuaded to adopt information-card technology for sign-ons.
We won’t make much progress on information cards in the near future, however, because of wasted energy and attention devoted to a large distraction, the OpenID initiative. OpenID promotes “Single Sign-On”: with it, logging on to one OpenID Web site with one password will grant entrance during that session to all Web sites that accept OpenID credentials.
OpenID offers, at best, a little convenience, and ignores the security vulnerability inherent in the process of typing a password into someone else’s Web site. Nevertheless, every few months another brand-name company announces that it has become the newest OpenID signatory. Representatives of Google, I.B.M., Microsoft and Yahoo are on OpenID’s guiding board of corporations. Last month, when MySpace announced that it would support the standard, the nonprofit foundation
OpenID.net boasted that the number of “OpenID enabled users” had passed 500 million and that “it’s clear the momentum is only just starting to pick up.”
Support for OpenID is conspicuously limited, however. Each of the big powers supposedly backing OpenID is glad to create an OpenID identity for visitors, which can be used at its site, but it isn’t willing to rely upon the OpenID credentials issued by others. You can’t use Microsoft-issued OpenID at Yahoo, nor Yahoo’s at Microsoft.
Why not? Because the companies see the many ways that the password-based log-on process, handled elsewhere, could be compromised. They do not want to take on the liability for mischief originating at someone else’s site.
When I asked Scott Kveton, chairman of the OpenID Foundation’s community board, about criticism of OpenID, he said candidly, “Passwords, we know, are totally broken.” He said new security options, such as software that works with OpenID that installs within the browser, are being offered. When it comes to security, he said, "there is no silver bullet, and there never will be.”
Kim Cameron, Microsoft’s chief architect of identity, is an enthusiastic advocate of information cards, which are not only vastly more secure than a password-based security system, but are also customizable, permitting users to limit what information is released to particular sites. “I don’t like Single Sign-On,” Mr. Cameron said. “I don’t believe in Single Sign-On.”
Microsoft and Google are among the six founding companies of the Information Card Foundation, formed to promote adoption of the card technology. The presence of PayPal, which is owned by eBay, in the group is the most significant: PayPal, with its direct access to our checking accounts, will naturally be inclined to be conservative. If it becomes convinced that these cards are more secure than passwords, we should listen.
BUT perhaps information cards in certain situations are convenient to a fault, permitting anyone who happens by a PC that is momentarily unattended in an office setting to click quickly through a sign-on at a Web site holding sensitive information. This need not pose a problem, however.
“Users on shared systems can easily set up a simple PIN code to protect any card from use by other users,” Mr. Cameron said.
The PIN doesn’t return us to the Web password mess: it never leaves our machine and can’t be seen by phishers.
Unlearning the habit of typing a password into a box on a Web page will take a long while, but it’s needed for our own protection. Logging on to a site should entail a cryptographic conversation between machines, saving us from inadvertently giving away the keys.
No more relying on our old companion “LetMeIn.”
RESPONSE
I wonder why we have become so used to protecting ourselves, instead of going after hackers and phishers. Wouldn’t that be an easier way to protect ourselves? I liked the ideas of this article, that we should rely on the computers communicating rather than enter our own passwords online. The less information goes on the internet, the safer we’ll be. Ts true that passwords tend to be really easy to guess, so maybe a card with a pin would be better. The military is already using this technology; it’s only a matter of getting it to the public.
ARTICLE
For Many Expatriates, Olympics Signal China’s Arrival
By ERIK ECKHOLM
Published: August 10, 2008
In April, 12 elderly civic leaders from Chinatown in New York City decided to visit the Olympic Village in Beijing to beat the crowds and see the structures that already had the world buzzing.
As they walked inside National Stadium, known as the Bird’s Nest, the travelers recalled in a recent interview, some wept — out of pride, they said, and joy and awe at the sheer scale of China’s transformation from the “sick man of Asia” they had known as children.
As mainland Chinese greeted the Beijing Olympics with exuberant pride, so, too, have Chinese-Americans, who have often been divided over how to deal with the Communists or the future of Taiwan, but who share a sense that China has taken a long-awaited place on the world stage.
“No matter whether you support or oppose the Beijing government, we see the Olympics as an achievement for all the Chinese people everywhere,” said I-Der Jeng, editor of The China Press in New York, who was born in Taiwan of mainland parents and has lived in the United States since 1975.
Joe Lam, president of L3 Advertising who moved to New York 35 years ago from Hong Kong, said he watched the opening ceremony for the Olympics twice on Friday night, the second time with his daughters — ages 18 and 22 — who he said had little overt connection to Asia.
But watching the spectacle, with its blend of China’s ancient grandeur and dazzling modern technology, “was like a religious experience for them,” he said.
Mr. Lam said he was not a fan of the Communist Party, but, like many others, he noted the history that makes these Olympics resonate so deeply: 150 years of invasions and turmoil, from the Opium Wars to the Japanese invasion, civil war and the disastrous policies of Mao, which left China far behind the West.
“Our joy is not for Communists,” Mr. Lam said. “It’s for what hosting the Olympics means to the history of the Chinese people.”
Wayne Lin, chairman of the popular Chinese-language Web site Wenxuecity.com, based in Fremont, Calif., had similar sentiments.
“The Olympics are a big milestone for Chinese around the world,” he said.
Wenxuecity.com offers news, forums and blogs to three million viewers a month, but it is blocked in China by the government. Mr. Lin said that virtually all commentators on the site, except for a few dissidents, had expressed pride about the Olympics.
The only recent event remotely as moving for Chinese living abroad or people of Chinese descent, Mr. Lin said, was the British return of Hong Kong to the mainland Chinese government in 1997.
That pride is often more muted, of course, among some younger Chinese-Americans, who may be three generations removed from the homeland and who do not so viscerally feel lingering bitterness about the past.
And emotions are more complicated for human rights activists and for supporters of an independent Taiwan.
“While I’m glad that China has this opportunity to expose itself to the world, if the government simply uses this to justify everything they do, then it won’t be good for openness and debate,” said Xiao Qiang, former director of Human Rights in China and now an adjunct professor of journalism at the University of California, Berkeley.
One of the Chinatown travelers who visited China in April, Alan Lau, 74, moved to New York in 1966 and parlayed profits from a restaurant into a major real estate business. He said he remembered clearly the heartbreak he felt as a child, in Fujian Province and then Hong Kong, when China was poor, divided and occupied by Japan. He has visited the mainland in recent decades, but still, he said, when he entered the huge, ultra-modern Olympic stadium, “the sense of change was just overwhelming.”
Another group member, Suey Foo Jen, 77, a longtime editor of The China Press in New York, said he was moved to think that “Chinese athletes would be competing in the Olympics for the first time in our own land and our own stadium.”
Several Chinese-American leaders also said they thought that the respect China gained from the Olympics would improve the status of Chinese here.
Helen Zia, a human rights advocate, author and former executive editor of Ms. magazine, said she surprised herself and many friends when she agreed to carry the Olympic torch in what turned out to be a contentious leg in San Francisco.
She did so in part, she said, because she believes that engagement with the West is helping to liberalize China. But she added: “All those years of China’s humiliation carried over to America, where Chinese kids grew up being taunted and bullied on the playground. Now when we see the home country shown in a positive light, we hope Americans will understand better where Chinese-Americans come from.”
Welly Yang, 35, is a Taiwanese-American entertainer and producer in Los Angeles whose family has long roots in Taiwan. He said that he supported greater independence from China.
“People like me feel ambivalence about the Olympics,” he said. “You’re proud that your ancestral family is rising, but the nation you live in is denied a voice,” he said, noting that Taiwan competes under a negotiated name of China-Taipei and that the Taiwan flag may not be raised in medal ceremonies.
Yuan Chik-lung, 76, who moved to New York in 1958 and rose from dishwasher to restaurant owner, was one of the April travelers who found his eyes tearing up inside the Beijing stadium.
“I’ve lived longer in the United States, but my motherland is still China,” he said, expressing the sentiments of many older immigrants. “I’m so happy that the Olympics will open the eyes of the world to China, and open the eyes of the Chinese people to the world.”
RESPONSE
I am a die-hard fan of the Olympics, and I really don’t think that politics should not be involved. While people may have problems with China’s human rights violations, this shouldn’t be the avenue to discuss them! If the athletes, who have rivalries that date back to before I was born, can put them aside and enjoy the Olympics, can’t we all try to just enjoy them? I think that the ancient Greeks had a good idea, when they put aside wars and the like during the Olympics. I can only hope we learn to do the same in time.
