some good news about the india deal

India Atomic Import Exemption Stalls
at Nuclear Supplier Group
Jonathan Tirone, Bloomberg, Aug. 22, 2008

A group of nuclear powers, set up 34 years ago to prevent countries from copying India’s route to the atomic bomb, delayed a decision on opening trade with New Delhi’s government as part of a US-sponsored agreement. The 45-member Nuclear Suppliers Group adjourned its second day of meetings today in Vienna at around 4 p.m. local time. The group needs to vote unanimously to lift the ban on the trade of nuclear fuels and technology, imposed after India tested its first nuclear weapon in 1974. “Participating governments exchanged views in a constructive manner and agreed to meet again in the near future to continue their deliberations,” the group said in a statement on its Web site. The Suppliers Group, currently chaired by Germany, didn’t say when it will meet again. “We’re pleased with the results and optimistic to make progress,” US Undersecretary for Arms Control John Rood said to reporters after the meeting broke up. “Many delegates” spoke about their support and reservations surrounding the deal, he said. The US-Indian agreement would break 34 years of nuclear trade restrictions on India, allowing the world’s second-most populous nation to satisfy rising energy demands through the purchase of atomic reactor technology.

India used technology from nuclear reactors imported from Canada and the US in the 1950s and 1960s to build its nuclear arsenal, according to the Washington-based Arms Control Association. The country possesses around 100 warheads. Discussions on ending the restrictions have been complicated because India and the US submitted a draft exemption to the Suppliers Group that is weaker than a December 2006 law passed by the US Congress permitting the deal. India wants the option of testing more nuclear weapons. While the US legislation would revoke the agreement if testing restarted, the proposal to the Suppliers Group wouldn’t. “It’s a very sneaky way of the administration running rings around the Congress,” Paul Ingram, London-based co-director of the British American Security Information Council, said today in a telephone interview. “The US would either have to keep their restrictions and lose contracts to the French and Russians, or repeal the accord in favor of weaker legislation.” Some US Congressional members are urging the Nuclear Suppliers Group to reject the current proposal and add conditions to make it more compatible with US law.

“The Bush administration delivered to the NSG a draft rule-change for India that undermines the entire international framework for limiting the spread of nuclear weapons,” Representative Edward Markey, Democratic co-chairman of the House Bipartisan Task Force on Nonproliferation, said yesterday in an e-mail. “The NSG should reject this ill-considered, unwise and unproductive plan.” House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Howard Berman, a California Democrat, in an Aug. 5 letter to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice similarly urged the administration not to support a Suppliers Group waiver that didn’t include a nuclear test ban. Proponents of the accord argue that it will allow Indian utility companies, which are straining to supply power to industry, homes and farms, to buy equipment, fuel and reactors. Westinghouse Electric Co., General Electric Co., Hitachi Ltd., Areva SA and Rosatom Corp. have been short-listed by India’s Nuclear Power Corp., which may let them bid to supply reactors after an accord, Business Line reported.

pepe escobar : full spectrum dominance

Welcome to the New Cold War

WASHINGTON – August 21 – Whatever happened to the fight against Al Qaeda and radical Islam? That’s old news. Welcome to the new New Cold War. Exit “evil” Iran and a phantom Al Qaeda enter the remixed Evil Empire, Russia – a superpower complete with nuclear weapons.

In Feb 1990. Bush senior and his Secretary of State James Baker promised Mikhail Gorbachev that NATO would not move eastward. When Clinton started to push NATO eastward Gorbachev said ‘the issues is not just whether Czechs. Hungarians and Poles join NATO. The problem is more serious: the rejection of the strategy for a new common European system”.

6 Warsaw Pact nations and 3 former Soviet republics are now part of NATO. Bush, Cheney and McCain all badly want Ukraine and Georgia as part of NATO.

Zbigniew Brzezinski, a neoliberal hawk, lured the Russians into Afghanistan in 1979 and would have liked Georgia to be the new Afghanistan. He published a doctrine, “The Grand Chessboard” in 1997 where he portrays Eurasia as the ultimate prize. To control Eurasia one has to control the Eurasian Balkans where Georgia is located.

On Camp Obama, Ambassador Richard Holbrooke was peddling false information, “The Russians were funding and arming Ossetian separatists…The Russians deliberately provoked this and timed it for the Olympics”. In fact the Georgians timed it for the Olympics. At this time, the US and Poland signed an agreement to deploy US ‘interceptor missiles’ in Poland.

Vladimir Putin states that a unipolar world with one sovereign is unacceptable. So is this a war of empires? Yes it is. Russia has been a supra-ethnic empire for centuries. This isn’t about Georgia and South Ossetia. This is about the US pushing NATO and missile defense right up to Russia’s border, a supreme threat to its national security.

Will the US renounce Brzezinski’s control over Eurasia, which is the blueprint for the ‘war on terror’? Not likely. Whoever wins, McCain or Obama, it is clear that the US establishment still wants a full spectrum dominance.

disinfo corner

Israel is particularly concerned Russia could deliver anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles to Syria, which could end up in the hands of Lebanon’s Syrian-backed Hezbollah militia whose political rhetoric centres on the destruction of the Jewish state. – AFP!!

morons’r’us opens new branch

from Ron Kampeas, JTA

Religious leaders – among them at least seven rabbis – are expected to play an unprecedented role at this year’s Democratic convention in Denver. The convention is kicking off with a multifaith gathering on Sunday that will include Scripture readings from Jewish, Christian, Muslim and Buddhist lay and cloth leaders, and the week’s proceedings will be studded with “faith panels.” The religious tenor is the culimination of the Democratic National Committee’s “Faith in Action” committee, which is sponsoring Sunday’s interfaith gathering. Matt Dorf, a consultant to the party and several prominent Jewish organizations, was a leading force behind the committee. The Third Way, a group that has tried to build bridges between evangelical Christians and political liberals, also will be involved. The Third Way has the backing of two prominent Jewish lawmakers, U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and U.S. Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.). The most prominent rabbinical participant at the Democratic convention will be Rabbi David Saperstein, director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, who will deliver the invocation on Aug. 28, when Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) accepts the nomination before a crowd of at least 70,000 at Denver’s Invesco Stadium. Other Jewish clergyman slated to participated include Rabbis Tzvi Hersh Weinreb, the executive vice president of the Orthodox Union, who will deliver the keynote address at the interfaith event; Jack Moline, a Conservative rabbi from Alexandria, Va., who chairs the Interfaith Alliance, a coalition of faith groups that advocate for church-state separation; Amy Schwartzman, a Reform rabbi from Falls Church, Va.; Marc Schneier, an Orthodox rabbi from New York and a co-founder of the Foundation for Ethnic Understanding; Steve Foster, a Reform rabbi in Denver; and Steve Gutow, a Reconstructionist rabbi who directs the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, a Jewish organizational public policy umbrella group. The religious leaders are not endorsing anyone and have said they would welcome spots at the Republican convention.

meet the barackracy

Denver 2008: Boosters, Power Brokers and Money Men
The Behind the Scenes Players
Forward, Aug 21, 2008

On his path to the Democratic convention, Barack Obama had a complicated push-and-pull relationship with the Jewish community. When he was an upstart politician in Chicago, local Jews were some of his earliest supporters, and Obama likes to tell Jewish audiences that in some of his early races, he was criticized for being too close to Jews. Obama came into this race with a Jewish chief campaign strategist, David Axelrod, but in the Democratic primaries, much of the Jewish political establishment lined up behind opponent Hillary Clinton. The Jewish power brokers who backed him struggled to reassure voters that Obama would be good for Israel and that he could be trusted. Now that Obama is preparing to accept the nomination in Denver, his Jewish backers go into the convention with their stock on the rise. Here’s a closer look at the Jewish conventioneers who helped Obama reach the stage at Invesco Field.

Alan Solomont – The Early Hekhsher

Democratic megadonor Alan Solomont will spend the week of the convention meeting with Jewish Democrats, conferring with Obama’s national finance committee, hosting a lunch for Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick and casting his delegate ballot to officially nominate Obama. The bustle of conventions is nothing new for Solomont. He has played a prominent role in each of the past five Democratic presidential campaigns, and he was a national finance chair for the Democratic National Committee in the late 1990s under Bill Clinton. In early 2007, prominent Jewish donors had already begun to line up behind presumptive favorite Hillary Clinton, and Solomont was expected to do the same, but he broke ranks. “It was clear this election was going to be about change,” Solomont told the Forward. “People were ready to turn the page, for a new approach to politics. I felt as though Senator Obama spoke to that longing in ways no other candidate did.” Solomont signed on to the Obama campaign in January 2007, sending shockwaves through the Democratic Party. He was one of the first established Democratic fundraisers to back Obama outside the senator’s home state of Illinois, and it gave the fledgling campaign instant gravitas. “It was huge,” said Steven Grossman, a longtime Democratic fundraiser and a backer of Hillary Clinton’s primary bid. “I think it gave Senator Obama great credibility early on in the community of heavyweight fundraisers and political activists.” So startling was the news, according to a party insider, that it sent the Clinton campaign scrambling to roll out its own fundraising team ahead of schedule. Solomont took charge of fundraising for Obama in the northeast and was pivotal in helping Obama raise enough money in the early part of the race to prove he was viable. When Obama and Solomont first met in 2005, Obama pointed out that they shared a common background in community organizing: Solomont worked for several years in Lowell, Mass., before going into the nursing home business, where he made a fortune. Solomont has also been a backer of a number of Jewish causes, including the J Street Project, a dovish Israel-focused lobbying group and political action committee that launched in June.

Robert Wexler – Jewish Surrogate #1

On the evening of August 27, Robert Wexler will address the Democratic National Convention for the first time — a sign of the new stature he has gained as one of Barack Obama’s earliest and most vocal supporters. Fittingly, he’ll be addressing national security and foreign policy, topics he has spoken about many times as he has tried to win Obama the support of the Jewish community. Wexler, a Democratic congressman from Florida, signed on to the Obama campaign in March 2007, making him one of the first congressmen, and one of the first Jewish politicians of national stature, to endorse Obama. “Hillary got the top three tiers of people, in terms of staff and members of Congress and surrogates,” one Democratic party insider said. “Edwards got the fourth tier. Barack got the fifth tier, with a couple notable exceptions. Wexler was that exception.” Wexler gave Obama instant bona fides in the Jewish community. Wexler represents the 19th district in South Florida, one of the most heavily Jewish congressional districts in the country, and he is respected as a pro-Israel voice in Congress. In fact, Wexler says, one of the issues that won him over was Obama’s stance on Israel. “I was convinced then, and I’m even more convinced now, that Senator Obama’s staunch support for Israel, and his compelling case to directly engage in diplomacy with Iran for the purpose of thwarting Iran’s nuclear ambition and stopping their financial support for terror, was the most pro-Israel position that a presidential candidate could take,” Wexler told the Forward. Not everybody shared Wexler’s confidence. The 47-year-old congressman became Obama’s most prominent Jewish surrogate, crisscrossing the country and speaking to audiences in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Georgia and Iowa. Wexler helped shepherd Obama through a much-publicized tour that he made of South Florida — including one event at the synagogue where Wexler had gotten married — to reassure Jewish voters. Wexler says he got his political education in the district, going from couch to couch in the local condominiums and drinking in the advice of a group of elderly Jewish ex-New Yorkers who schooled him in the ways of the world. But now Wexler’s stumping for Obama has taken him from the sofas of Boca Raton to the national stage in Denver.

Penny Pritzker – The Chicago Booster

Few people at the convention will be busier than Penny Pritzker, Obama’s national finance chair and the mastermind behind his record-breaking campaign. Pritzker grew up in one of Chicago’s wealthiest and most prominent Jewish families — owners of the Hyatt hotel chain, founders of the most prestigious prize in architecture and major donors to civic, Jewish and political causes. At her dinner table, she told the Forward, there were two main topics of conversation, “business and politics.” And she recalls watching her mother and Nancy Pelosi stuff envelopes in the family living room. Pritzker met Obama in the late 1990s, when his brother-in-law coached her son in basketball. She quickly became a member of Obama’s tight-knit circle of supporters from Chicago, many of whom were Jewish. Abner Mikva, himself a friend and adviser to Obama, said that the support of Pritzker and James Crown, another Chicago Jewish scion, helped establish Obama in the Chicago Jewish community. “It’s not just money — it’s the fact that they’re both involved in Jewish charities and pro-Israel activities,” Mikva told the Forward. “They’re a seal of good housekeeping as far as Chicago Jews are concerned with Barack’s bona fides.” Pritzker backed Obama in his 2004 Senate campaign, but she did not have a national reputation as a fundraiser when Obama tapped her in 2006 to chair his finance committee. In fact, she was not even a party line Democrat, having donated $2,000 to George W. Bush in 2003, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Still, she took on the job, drawing on her own experience running her family’s businesses to help craft a fundraising machine that has skillfully combined traditional big-money donors with large-scale, Internet-focused fundraising from small donors.

Abner Mikva – The Chicago Vet

Abner Mikva has not been a major part of this year’s campaign, but Barack Obama might not have made it this far without him. During Obama’s early days in Chicago, Mikva schooled him in the rough ways of Chicago politics and introduced him to a number of the supporters — many of them Jewish — who would become part of Obama’s Chicago base. “I tried to help him whenever I could,” Mikva said. “When he was running for Congress, and later on for the Senate, I would help organize fundraisers for him on the North Shore, which had been my congressional district, and along the lakefront in Chicago…. A lot of people who came to those were Jewish.” Mikva grew up in Milwaukee in a household that was Jewish politically, if not religiously. “It’s a part of the Yiddishkheit we grew up with to be a liberal,” Mikva told the Forward. After he moved to Chicago, Mikva put down his political roots in the Chicago Jewish community. During his first campaign for state senate in Hyde Park — later Obama’s neighborhood — his punning motto was “Mikva Means Clean Government.” Later, after Mikva became a federal judge in Washington, he tried to hire Obama as a law clerk, but Obama turned him down. When Mikva returned to Chicago, the two became friends. Mikva took Obama under his wing, instructing him on how to speak and whom to know, and introduced Obama to his old base. “I was fascinated from the first time I saw him with Jewish constituents at how easily they got along with him, how much they liked him and were drawn to him, and how well he answered questions, particularly on Israel,” Mikva said. “He did better than I used to do.”

Dan Shapiro – The Middle East Hand

Dan Shapiro will come into Denver with a new job. In the week before the convention, Shapiro was hired to join the Obama campaign as a senior adviser and the outreach coordinator to the Jewish community. He had already been volunteering full time for the campaign for well over a year, advising on Middle East and Jewish community issues. The decision to give Shapiro a formal job in the campaign headquarters is part of an effort to increase outreach to many subgroups of voters and to pay special attention to Jewish voters, who are considered part of the backbone of any Democratic campaign. Obama now has a staff of three, headed by Shapiro, that deals with Jewish outreach. The McCain campaign, in contrast, does not have any staff members assigned to work only with Jewish voters. “The Obama campaign is reaching out aggressively to the Jewish community through the creation of Jewish Community Leadership Councils in cities around the country, and Dan joins National Jewish Vote Director Eric Lynn to augment and expand this outreach effort,” an August 19 statement issued by the campaign read. While Shapiro served on the National Security Council during the Clinton administration, most of his political career was spent working on Capitol Hill. He was deputy chief of staff for Senator Bill Nelson and worked on the staffs of Senator Dianne Feinstein and Rep. Lee Hamilton, who once chaired the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Shapiro is known to hold moderate views on Middle East issues and is a strong supporter of the Israeli-Arab peace process. At the same time, Shapiro has made clear his opposition to having ties with members of the Hamas movement, which now controls Gaza. For the past year, Shapiro maintained contact with Jewish groups in Washington and met with representatives of most Jewish organizations. He took part in all of Obama’s meetings with Jewish groups and joined the candidate’s recent trip to Israel and the Middle East.

Eric Lynn – The Campaign’s Jewish Face

Though the Obama campaign recently hired Dan Shapiro to run its Jewish outreach operation, Eric Lynn will be the campaign’s familiar face for most Jewish activists at the convention. Lynn joined the Obama campaign in July 2007 and has since been in charge of ties between the candidate and the Jewish community. He will remain in place as the campaign’s No. 2 Jewish staffer, with the title of “Jewish vote director.” Lynn’s ties to Obama, however, extend back to before the candidate had even run for national office. The two first met in 1999, in their hometown of Chicago. At the time, Lynn was the director of a local pro-Israel PAC and Obama was an Illinois state senator who was waging a long-shot campaign for Congress. Though Obama wasn’t well known, Lynn was impressed. “I immediately saw he was the kind of person you’d like to see as the president of the U.S.” Lynn told the Forward in a June interview. Since then, Lynn has worked for a number of politicians in Washington. He served on the staff of former Florida congressman Peter Deutsch, where he was involved in Middle East issues and Jewish affairs. In 2004, he filled a similar position in the John Kerry campaign under Jay Footlik. In 2007, Lynn formally joined the Obama campaign and was quickly faced with the need to deal with the rash of anti-Obama e-mails circulating among Jewish voters. Obama’s Jewish community staffers also double as Middle East advisers, and as such, Lynn is among those who discuss regional policy issues with the candidate. Lynn spent a year in Israel, studying at the Hebrew University and working for a Jerusalem high-tech company. “His knowledge of the Middle East is incredible,” Lynn said of Obama. Now Lynn’s work has brought him back to Chicago, where he has helped establish Obama support groups in areas that have large Jewish populations.

georgia – state of play

Defying the Whole World // Moscow ventures
to escalate the conflict with the West
Mikhail Zygar, Kommersant, Aug. 22, 2008

Yesterday Russia demonstrated that it is not going to compromise in its current confrontation with the West. NATO got a notification from the Russian Defense Ministry about complete termination of military cooperation with the alliance, and Russian military detained France’s Ambassador to Georgia at the entrance to Gori. Finally, the congresses of the Abkhaz and Ossetian people called on Russia to recognize the breakaway republics’ independence, and Russian Foreign Minister hinted that this appeal has been taken into account in Moscow. On Monday both chambers of the Russian parliament may take corresponding decisions. All day long the Russian authorities demonstrated that they are not going to defuse the tensions in the confrontation with the USA and the West in general, and that Moscow is not afraid of whatever sanctions. On the contrary, Russia responded to all the threats by following its line of escalating the conflict, that is reacting to the criticism related to the situation in Georgia as well as the USA and Poland’s signing the agreement for interceptors deployment.

Yesterday Russian Foreign Office Chief Sergey Lavrov censured NATO in connection with the latest meeting of the alliance’s Foreign Ministers, whose final statement reads, “We have determined that we cannot continue with business as usual.” “Russia’s help is critical to the alliance,” the Minister stated. “After the NATO meeting, where a document regarding the relations with Russia was adopted, the alliance’s representatives contacted the Russian party persuading us not to terminate the cooperation in Afghanistan.” Basing on this position, Sergey Lavrov issued an ultimatum to the North-Atlantic alliance suggesting that it should make a choice between Georgia and Russia, “If these priorities lead to complete support of Saakashvili’s bankrupt regime, and if breaking the relations with Russia is the price they are ready to pay – let it be.” Yesterday the Foreign Offices of Norway, Estonia and Latvia reported receiving the notifications from the Russian Defense Ministry saying that Moscow terminates military cooperation with NATO. Later NATO spokesperson Carmen Romero confirmed this information.

Sergey Lavrov reiterated that it is Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili who delivered a blow to his country’s territorial integrity. “We are not trying to stage it (the recognition of South Ossetia and Abkhazia by other states – Kommersant),” Sergey Lavrov argued. “We show respect for the members of the world community, and it’s not inherent in our political culture to organize staged demarches.” In fact it means that Russia is ready to recognize the breakaway republics alone. It appears even more probable taking account of the fact that the parliaments of both South Ossetia and Abkhazia adopted appeals to the Russian President about recognizing their independence on Wednesday. Yesterday the resolutions were sanctioned by the congresses of the Ossetian and Abkhaz peoples. Given that President Medvedev has stated on several occasions that Moscow will support whatever decisions of Sukhumi and Tskhinvali, it can mean that Russia is ready to recognize both republics. The State Duma and the Federation Council have scheduled emergency meetings for Monday, where they’ll consider the recognition. Sources with the Union of Russia and Belarus Office informed Kommersant that now different scenarios of Russia’s patronage of the two republics are studied. One of them envisages including Abkhazia and South Ossetia in the Union of Russia and Belarus. But to do it, it’s necessary that Minsk should recognize Sukhumi and Tskhinvali.

Sergey Lavrov also stated that Russia complies with the peace plan worked out by France’s President Nicolas Sarkozy. It need be reminded that, according to the document, Russia is to pull out its troops to South Ossetia being able to patrol temporarily in a strip of up to 6.2 miles, or 10 kilometers, outside. French and German diplomats, who’re trying to advocate Russia in the West, reported yesterday that Moscow promised to accomplish the withdrawal of its troops by Friday midnight. Yesterday the Russian party demonstrated that it doesn’t appreciate France and Germany’s intercession that much. French Ambassador to Georgia Eric Fournier was detained by Russian peace-keepers at the entrance to Gori. AFP reports that they prevented the diplomat from entering Gori during three hours. Giving his commentary regarding the matter, Deputy Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation Colonel General Anatoly Nogovitsyn said that it was the Ambassador’s fault because he should have informed the Russian military about his visit in advance. Mr Nogovitsyn added that OSCE Chairman and Finnish Foreign Affairs Minister Alexander Stubb avoided such an incident yesterday because he had notified the Russian military of his visit to Gori in advance.

For all that, Russia has certain claims to the OSCE as well. Mr Nogovitsyn stated yesterday that the staff of the OSCE field mission had been warned of Georgia’s plans to invade Tskhinvali, but hadn’t told Russia’s peacekeepers about it. The accusation was denied by the organization’s spokesperson Mikhail Yevstafyev, “Neither the OSCE headquarters nor the OSCE mission Georgia had any information about the parties’ determination to use force. The OSCE mission in Tskhinvali functioned till we had to evacuate the staff, which was on August 8.” With its new demarche, Russia shows that it is not going to win over the governments and organizations which haven’t criticised it yet. Apparently, the USA has to respond with something. It has three days to do it – on Monday The State Duma and the Federation Council convene their sessions.

meah shearim taliban showdown

Jerusalem Police against chastity squad
Neta Sela, Ynet, Aug 22, 2008

The ultra-Orthodox neighborhood of Meah Shearim in Jerusalem was shaken up last week following the arrest of three residents suspected of being active in the haredi community’s chastity squad. Demonstrations in protest of the arrest were held in the neighborhood’s Shabbat Square every evening in the past week, and on Thursday, protestors clashed with police forces and even flipped over a police car on Yoel Street. The first person arrested three weeks ago was Elhanan Buzaglo, who was indicted of attacking a woman suspected of improper ties with married men in the capital’s Maalot Dafna neighborhood. According to the indictment, Buzaglo received $2,000 in return for his involvement in the attack. Following his arrest, two additional suspects were detained last week. One of them is Shmuel Weisfish, who was allegedly involved in the torching of a store selling MP4 players against a ruling of the Ultra-Orthodox community’s court of justice. On Wednesday, the police arrested Binyamin Meirovich, a Jerusalem resident suspected of being one of the chastity squad’s leaders, and the person responsible for the organization’s operations. The police were expected to ask the court to extend his remand on Friday.

The protests against the three men’s arrest were intensified Monday after the court decided to leave Weisfish in custody for seven additional days. The demonstrators directed their anger at a store on the Shabbat Square accused of selling “non-kosher” MP4 players. On Wednesday evening, a group of yeshiva students demonstrated opposite another store in Meah Shearim, demanding that it stop selling “impure films.” The haredi community accused the police of “deciding to destroy the chastity squad,” according to a prominent community member, who said that the “modesty guard” had nothing to do with the violent incidents. “The chastity squad members are doing the work the police should have done. Instead of thanking us for putting things in order, they are acting against us and trying to destroy the guard,” he added.

Jerusalem Police Spokesman Shmulik Ben Ruby said in response that “following a strenuous investigation conducted over the past weeks, three haredi men suspected of hooliganism, attacks and vandalism were arrested and brought before the court for a remand hearing. The court extended their remand, and the police plan to recommend that they be charged with severe violations and belonging to an illegal organization harassing some of the haredi community members whose conduct is not to the liking of the chastity squad thugs.”

The indictment filed against Buzaglo unrolls the details of the severe incident. “On June 1, 2008, at around 10:45 pm, the defendant arrived with six other people at the complainant’s home, armed with a bat and tear gas. The defendant and the others shoved the complainant, dropped her to the floor, beat her, slammed her head against the floor and kicked all parts of her body. The defendant or one of the others sat on her head in a bid to prevent her from seeing what was going on and to prevent her from resisting. The defendant and the others also tied a piece of cloth to the complainant’s mouth and warned her that should she open her eyes they would spray tear gas into them. The defendant or one of the others interrogated the complainant on her relations with men and asked for those men’s details. The assailants took two cell phones from the complainant in order to check the names of those who called her. At the end of the incident, the defendant or one of the others told the complainant that she must leave her apartment, otherwise ‘this will only be the beginning,’ and that if she remained there she would be murdered.”

Following the incident, the complainant suffered from serious injuries in all parts of her body and was in need of medical care. According to the indictment, the complainant stated that the threats against her did not cease after the severe incident she described and that had she received continuous threatening phone calls throughout the following week. A month later, she found a threatening letter in her mailbox and decided to leave her apartment, although her leasing contract would only expire in about a year.

Buzaglo was arrested after the police found his fingerprints in the complainant’s apartment, although he denied the accusations and the complainant said she didn’t know him and had never seen him before. Judge Nava Ben Or was convinced that Buzaglo was not ideologically affiliated with the chastity squads, but ruled that he appeared to be “a rented fist”. “A man who is allegedly willing to take part in the cruel beating of a young and helpless woman, ‘suspected’ of socializing with married men, and all this solely for money, is a dangerous, conscienceless person with no inhibitions. His activity in the framework of such an organization makes his dangerousness seven times worse,” the judge added. The judge explained her decision to leave Buzaglo in custody, saying that the court had a duty to protect the defendant, that there was fear the defendant would attempt to disrupt the investigation and that he was convicted of violent offenses in the past, including blackmail. Buzaglo’s lawyer, Attorney Ariel Atari told Ynet that he would appeal the court’s decision.

what americans have instead of politics

The FundamentaList, No. 47
Sarah Posner, American Prospect, Aug 22, 2008

1. Rick Warren: America’s Pastor or the GOP’s?

When I talk to evangelicals about who the most prominent leaders in the post-Moral Majority/Christian Coalition era are, Rick Warren is often the first name that rolls off their tongues. Warren, after supporting George W. Bush for president in 2004, has since refashioned himself as a global crusader for the poor and the sick, rather than a culture warrior fixated on gay marriage and abortion. Even evangelicals who claim to be progressive (and Obama) have assisted in marketing Warren as a new kind of evangelical who has ditched the culture-war vitriol in favor of helping the downtrodden. But although Warren knows how to tone down the rhetoric, he maintains a deeply conservative, biblically literalist worldview, is firmly opposed to reproductive rights, gay rights, and evolution, and views Jesus as the only way to a “purpose-driven life.”

Just four years ago, Warren made clear to his followers that the Democratic candidate, John Kerry, was unacceptable due to his position on the “non-negotiable” issues “for those of us who accept the Bible as God’s Word and know that God has a unique, sovereign purpose for every life.” In reminding his followers of the imperative to vote, Warren wrote that “President Bush and Senator Kerry have VERY different opinions about the type of people who should become Supreme Court Justices. They could not have more opposite views about these matters. Either man will shape the court in very different ways.” The five key issues were abortion, “homosexual marriage,” embryonic stem-cell research, human cloning, and euthanasia.

On Saturday, the religious right turned Warren’s forum, particularly his questions on abortion, when life begins, and the definition of marriage, into a rallying cry for McCain. Charisma publisher Stephen Strang awarded McCain a “gold medal.” Other leadership figures, including the High Impact Leadership Coalition’s Harry Jackson, American Values’ Gary Bauer, Faith2Action’s Janet Folger, and Focus on the Family’s Tom Minnery, stepped up to declare that McCain had finally sealed the deal with conservative evangelicals — even though recent polls showed that evangelicals already supported him at about the same level they backed Bush in the 2000 election and approaching his share in the 2004 campaign. (A Pew poll had McCain’s share at 68 percent and a Time poll had it at 70 percent; Bush got 68 percent of the evangelical vote in 2000 and 78 percent in 2004).

Warren gave McCain exactly what he’d been looking for: the blessing of the leadership that just last week was freaking out that he might pick a pro-choice running mate.

2. Abortion Still Trumps Expansive Agenda, But Could that Help Obama?

In an interview with Beliefnet after the forum, Warren himself emphasized just how pivotal abortion remains even for evangelicals who say they want a broader agenda. Although some evangelical leaders, like the Rev. Jim Wallis and the Rev. Joel Hunter, have praised the Democratic Party because they believe abortion-reduction language was included in the platform at their behest, Warren questioned whether most evangelicals were moved by the language, and noted evangelicals’ suspicion about Democratic motives: “Well, for a person who thinks that abortion is taking a life, I’m sure that’s not going to be very satisfactory to most of those people. And to put it in right at the last minute at the end of a campaign, there was some question about that: Why are they doing this?”

But could it turn out that McCain’s answers on abortion that so thrilled the religious right will finally highlight for misguided pro-choice voters that McCain is, as Sarah Blustain’s recent piece lays out, a pro-life zealot? As Blustain and others have reported, up to half of McCain’s support from women comes from those who are pro-choice, and 70 percent of those women are unaware of his clear anti-choice record. So even if Obama didn’t win any evangelical hearts that he hadn’t already captured before Saturday, pro-choice women mistakenly supporting McCain might just have been persuaded.

3. Religious Right Promoting Lies About Obama’s Abortion Record.

The religious right has stepped up its campaign to portray Obama as an infanticidal liar. Fueled by the National Right to Life Committee (NRLC), the Obama-is-a-lying-baby-killer story line is also promoted by anti-choice darling Jill Stanek, who has commemorated Griswold v. Connecticut by naming its anniversary day “The Pill Kills Day” and believes that the Chinese eat sweet-and-sour fetuses.

The substance of the charge, if you can call it that, is that when Obama served in the Illinois Senate, he voted against the Born Alive Infant Protection Act, which would have required life-saving efforts for infants born alive during late-term abortion procedures (an extremely rare occurrence), because he believed the bill would have undermined Roe v. Wade, and that he would have supported a similar federal bill had he been in the Senate, because it did protect Roe . The religious right has long lambasted Obama as a baby-killer for the vote, but now the NRLC claims to have discovered documents from a 2003 Illinois Senate committee hearing, chaired by Obama, in which the committee voted down a bill that tracked the federal language. The NRLC now says those committee documents are the proof that Obama is a liar — and that he was intent on blocking the legislation that would have saved babies’ lives.

David Brody of the Christian Broadcasting Network asked Obama about the NRLC discovery over the weekend, and Obama said that the NRLC was lying and that he opposed the bill because he believed it undermined Roe and because other laws already protected infants. And a campaign spokesperson reiterated to The New York Sun that Obama and his fellow lawmakers had concerns that the bill, even as written, would undermine Roe.

In a normal world, this would be unremarkable: Obama hypothetically would have supported the federal bill, but he thought that the bill before him undermined Roe and that the infants were otherwise protected, so he voted against it. But in conservative media-land, he’s a liar and a fraud and this is a story as monumental as, say, supporting a war that has killed over 4,000 American soldiers and untold numbers of Iraqi civilians.

4. The Call Rallies “End-Times Warriors” On The Mall.

Lou Engle, whose organization, The Call, hosted the prayer rally on the National Mall on Saturday, is a major figure in a fundamentalist prayer movement, focused on praying and fasting around the clock to bring about the end times and the return of Jesus Christ. “I am an end-times warrior!” was one of the central mantras of the 12-hour event.

Unlike John Hagee’s end-times warriors, Engle’s troops don’t need a war for Jesus to come back. Instead, they believe that by praying and maintaining what they say is a biblical standard of “purity,” they will create God’s kingdom on Earth, a prerequisite for Jesus’ return. Engle and other speakers singled out different groups — Jews, Muslims, African Americans, Asian Americans, Native Americans — to come to Jesus (or, for the Jews, Yeshuah). The crowd, which organizers estimated at 50,000, was diverse and fervent, entirely buying Engle’s claim that abortion represents America’s broken covenant with God for which the nation must collectively repent, in order to establish God’s kingdom and pave the way for Jesus’ return.

Next stop for The Call: San Diego, to organize voters for Proposition 8, the gay-marriage ban on the California ballot in November, “to raise up a voice against the encroaching tide of impurity.”

5. Tony Perkins Has A Dream For America: Marry Jesus.

Engle warned that the whole nation needs to return “into covenant with Jesus.” God, he went on, “will not share you with any other lover,” but “we’ve been adulterers” to God because America hasn’t been committed to “foundational truths” laid out in the Bible. Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council then took the stage and told of a dream he had about “a covenantal relationship between a man and a wife that was broken,” an allegory for America’s broken covenant with God. To hear the normally buttoned-up Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council talk about a prophetic dream was really pretty extraordinary and signaled how religious-right political apparatchiks value Engle’s influence over his followers.

“We have broken our covenant with God, and if we want our courts to get it right, you and I must get it right by returning to covenant with Almighty God,” Perkins shouted while people knelt, prayed, and cheered. “Are you ready to return to a covenantal relationship with God where there is no other God over America but Jesus Christ?”

russia not ready to dump u.s. bonds

Russia to Hold the Line On Freddie, Fannie Debt
Moscow Times, 21 August 2008

Russia is not planning to raise its exposure to debt issued by troubled U.S. agencies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, but will not cut it rapidly, Deputy Finance Minister Dmitry Pankin said Wednesday. “At the moment we are not planning to increase our holdings. We are also not planning a sharp exit, because this is decent paper and it is bringing us decent earnings,” Pankin told a news conference. The agencies’ shares later plummeted for a fourth straight day in New York trading, as investors increasingly feared that the stocks would drop to zero if the U.S. government effectively moved to nationalize the companies with a state-sponsored bailout, AP reported. Fannie Mae lost 18 percent to $4.94, while Freddie Mac tumbled 19 percent to $3.37, as of 12:25 p.m., Bloomberg reported. On Tuesday, Freddie Mac had little trouble selling $3 billion of debt, seemingly passing an important test of the U.S. housing finance company’s ability to raise funds. It said global central banks had bought around one-third of the issue. On Tuesday, Pankin’s boss, Alexei Kudrin, said Russia had continued buying the debt of the U.S. agencies this year, but not in sufficient quantities to replace all of the maturing paper.

At the start of the year, Russia held $100 billion — or over one-sixth of its gold and forex reserves — in Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Federal Home Loan Banks. The holdings have since been reduced by around 40 percent, the Central Bank has said. The holdings have met hostility from some Russian media and the public, who are wary of risky investments. This hostility has intensified as political tensions have grown between Russia and the West, including the United States, over the military conflict between Russia and Georgia. Russian officials have tried to allay public concerns by stressing that they have actually made money on their investments in U.S. agency debt.

Pankin said Russia’s oil stabilization funds had around 3.6 percent of their over $160 billion invested in Freddie and Fannie and had earned $72 million on that holding between Jan. 30 and Aug. 19 this year. The oil funds are part of the gold and forex reserves, and thus its U.S. agency holdings are part of Russia’s total investment in them. Pankin later told Vesti-24 state television that even a recapitalization of the agencies by the U.S. Treasury would not be a big problem for Russia. “This [potential move] will be a big event for the U.S. financial markets. … But as far as our investments are concerned I believe the changes will be minimal,” he said.

oblique, or what

Charles Winters, Gay Socialite, Aug 21, 2008

Evidently John McCain isn’t the only thing old and out-of-date associated with his campaign. His protectors are even behind in the times.

On Thursday, two of McCain’s campaign headquarters were evacuated and staff were hospitalized after receiving a threatening letter lined with a white powder.

Sending powdered envelopes is soooo 2001! Get with the times people!

The letters were sent to McCain campaign headquarters in Colorado and New Hampshire.

Seriously though, is this person crazy? I don’t like McCain or Obama, but I don’t want either of them (or their staffs) to be killed!

Actually, the Secret Service traced the letter to a Colorado jail inmate who has a history of sending threatening mail, and initial tests of the envelope and its contents turned up negative for hazardous materials.

The McCain campaign hasn’t said what the threats said,