24/06/07, Neil MacFarquhar, Iran Cracks Down on Dissent, Parading Examples in Streets

Iran is in the throes of one of its most ferocious crackdowns on dissent in years, with the government focusing on labor leaders, universities, the press, women’s rights advocates, a former nuclear negotiator and Iranian-Americans, three of whom have been in prison for more than six weeks.

The shift is occurring against the backdrop of an economy so stressed that although Iran is the world’s second-largest oil exporter, it is on the verge of rationing gasoline. At the same time, the nuclear standoff with the West threatens to bring new sanctions.

The hard-line administration of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, analysts say, faces rising pressure for failing to deliver on promises of greater prosperity from soaring oil revenue. It has been using American support for a change in government as well as a possible military attack as a pretext to hound his opposition and its sympathizers.

Some analysts describe it as a “cultural revolution,” an attempt to roll back the clock to the time of the 1979 revolution, when the newly formed Islamic Republic combined religious zeal and anti-imperialist rhetoric to try to assert itself as a regional leader.

Equally noteworthy is how little has been permitted to be discussed in the Iranian news media. Instead, attention has been strategically focused on Mr. Ahmadinejad’s political enemies, like the former president, Mohammad Khatami, and the controversy over whether he violated Islamic morals by deliberately shaking hands with an unfamiliar woman after he gave a speech in Rome.

Mr. Khatami, the lost hope of Iran’s reform movement, felt compelled to rebut the accusation because such a handshake is religiously suspect, but contended that the crowd seeking to congratulate him for his speech was so tumultuous that he could not distinguish between the hands of men and women. Naturally a video clip emerged, showing the cleric in his typical gregarious style bounding over to the first woman who addressed him on the orderly sidewalk, shaking her hand and chatting amicably.

The dispute over the handshake occurred during a particularly fierce round of the factional fighting that has hamstrung the country since the 1979 revolution. Far more harsh examples abound.

Young men wearing T-shirts deemed too tight or haircuts seen as too Western have been paraded bleeding through Tehran’s streets by uniformed police officers who force them to suck on plastic jerrycans, a toilet item Iranians use to wash their bottoms. In case anyone misses the point, it is the official news agency Fars distributing the pictures of what it calls “riffraff.” Far bloodier photographs are circulating on blogs and on the Internet.

The country’s police chief boasted that 150,000 people — a number far larger than usual — were detained in the annual spring sweep against any clothing considered not Islamic. More than 30 women’s rights advocates were arrested in one day in March, according to Human Rights Watch, five of whom have since been sentenced to prison terms of up to four years. They were charged with endangering national security for organizing an Internet campaign to collect more than a million signatures supporting the removal of all laws that discriminate against women.

Eight student leaders at Tehran’s Amir Kabir University, the site of one of the few public protests against Mr. Ahmadinejad, disappeared into Evin Prison starting in early May. Student newspapers had published articles suggesting that no humans were infallible, including the Prophet Muhammad and Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

The National Security Council sent a stern three-page warning to all the country’s newspaper editors detailing banned topics, including the rise in gasoline prices or other economic woes like possible new international sanctions, negotiations with the United States over the future of Iraq, civil society movements and the Iranian-American arrests.

The entire campaign is “a strong message by Ahmadinejad’s government, security and intelligence forces that they are in control of the domestic situation,” said Hadi Ghaemi, an Iran analyst for Human Rights Watch. “But it’s really a sign of weakness and insecurity.”

At least three prominent nongovernment organizations that pushed for broader legal rights or civil society have been shuttered outright, while hundreds more have been forced underground. A recent article on the Baztab Web site said that about 8,000 nongovernment organizations were in jeopardy, forced to prove their innocence, basically because the government suspects all of them of being potential conduits for some $75 million the United States has earmarked to promote a change in government.

Professors have been warned against attending overseas conferences or having any contact with foreign governments, lest they be recruited as spies. The Iranian-Americans are all being detained basically on the grounds that they were either recruiting or somehow abetting an American attempt to achieve a “velvet revolution” in Iran.

Analysts trace the broadening crackdown to a March speech by Ayatollah Khamenei, whose pronouncements carry the weight of law. He warned that no one should damage national unity when the West was waging psychological war on Iran. The country has been under fire, particularly from the United States, which accuses it of trying to develop nuclear weapons and fomenting violence in Iraq.

President Ahmadinejad and other senior officials have dismissed all the criticism as carping. The president blames the previous administration for inflation or calls it media exaggeration, while Tehran’s chief prosecutor, Said Mortazavi, said Iranians who oppose the Islamic Republic look for an excuse to criticize it.

After a meeting of senior police and judiciary officials in Tehran on June 19 to review what was described as “the public security drive,” the Iranian Labor News Agency quoted Mr. Mortazavi as saying that if the state did not protect public security, then “louts” and criminals “would be safe in society.

The three Iranian-Americans are being held in the notorious Section 209 of Evin Prison, the wing controlled by the Intelligence Ministry, and have been denied visits by their lawyers or relatives. Iran recognizes only their Iranian nationality and has dismissed any diplomatic efforts to intervene. A rally to demand their release is set for Wednesday outside the United Nations.

The three are Haleh Esfandiari, the director of the Middle East program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars; Kian Tajbakhsh, an urban planning consultant with the Open Society Institute; and Ali Shakeri, of the Center for Citizen Peacebuilding at the University of California, Irvine. A fourth, Parnaz Azima, a journalist who works for Radio Farda, an American-financed station based in Europe, has been barred from leaving the country.

“People don’t want to come to conferences, they don’t even want to talk on the phone,” said Abbas Milani, the director of the Iranian studies program at Stanford University. “The regime has created an atmosphere of absolute terror.”

To the political crackdown, Mr. Ahmadinejad adds a messianic fervor, Mr. Milani noted, telling students in Qom this month that the Muslim savior would soon return.

The appeal of such a message may be limited, however. Iran’s sophisticated middle class wants to be connected to the world, and grumbles that the country’s only friends are Syria, Belarus, Venezuela and Cuba. But it might play well with Mr. Ahmadinejad’s main constituency.

“They are the poor, the rural,” said Vali Nasr of the Council on Foreign Relations. “They don’t travel abroad, they don’t go to conferences. He is trying to undermine the social and political position of his rivals in order to consolidate his own people.”

Most ascribe Mr. Ahmadinejad’s motives to blocking what could become a formidable alliance between the camps of Mr. Khatami and Hashemi Rafsanjani, both former presidents. Parliamentary elections are scheduled for early next year, and the next presidential vote in 2009.

“Having to face a single pragmatic conservative and reform block is extremely threatening,” Mr. Nasr said, hence the intimidation of all possible supporters.

Not that everyone has been intimidated. More than 50 leading economists published a harshly worded, open letter to the president saying his policies were bringing economic ruin. High unemployment persists, there has been little foreign investment and inflation is galloping, with gasoline alone jumping 25 percent this spring.

Gasoline rationing is expected within a month, with consumers so anxious about it, reported the Web site Ruz, financed by the Dutch government, that skirmishes broke out in long lines at some pumps on June 17.

Iran can prove a difficult country to separate into black and white. Amid all the recent oppression, for example, last week the public stoning of a couple — the punishment for adultery — was called off. Women’s rights advocates had been agitating against it.

Also, two recent movies touched off controversy as too racy. One depicted an extramarital affair, and the hero of the second was an abortion doctor who drank and gambled, and yet was so beloved of the patients he had seduced that they sent him bouquets on his wedding night.

In an attempt to deflect criticism that its standards had grown loose, the Ministry of Islamic Guidance, which vets all books, movies and gallery exhibits, issued a statement noting that both scripts had been approved under the former administration of Mr. Khatami.

22/06/07, Diana Jean Schemo, It’s Anger, Not Nostalgia, at This Antioch Reunion

YELLOW SPRINGS, Ohio — The messages have been flying through alumni chat rooms, sometimes 10 a minute, ever since Antioch University announced that it was closing, at least for now, the undergraduate college that once seemed the very symbol of the 1960s.

[photo] Dan Schumacher, an Antioch alumnus from Bowling Green, Ohio, questioned university trustees about the decision to close the undergraduate college in 2008 because of low enrollment and financial woes.

[photo] Steven Lawry, president of Antioch, said in an interview that it had in recent years bred political narrowness and a culture of resentment.

Sue the rascals, one urged. Another said, Secede.

So perhaps it was inevitable that on Friday at their reunion here Antioch’s alumni, once the youths trained to smash the system, stayed faithful to their tradition, baring their claws at a run-in with university trustees who had voted to close their college because of low enrollment and a financial crisis.

As John Feinberg, class of ’70, president of the alumni board, put it: “We’re not plain vanilla. Ben & Jerry could have named a new flavor for us.”

True, early plans for a tent city fizzled, and no paint splattered the walls at the meeting with the trustees. But the alumni, fired up by last week’s surprise announcement of the closing, flocked to this rural campus. The university says it expects more than 400 to show up this weekend.

Friday’s gathering, the first chance for trustees to tell alumni directly about their surprise decision to close the 155-year-old college, combined political grilling with encounter session for a caustic mix.

Trustees — holding back tears, their voices quavering — used questions as springboards to express their sadness and anguish over the closing. But impatient alumni demanded answers. “We came here from all across the United States at our own expense,” shouted one from the back rows. “We want answers!”

Another shouted: “Less talk! More questions!”

Trustees insisted they had no other choice, given the college’s falling enrollment and dire finances, than to shut it and perhaps reinvent it four years down the road. A new curriculum program, intended to save money and shrink the faculty by abolishing majors and developing areas of concentration instead, projected that 190 new students would enter Antioch last September; instead 63 showed up. This year the college had 125 acceptances for September, but it was still not enough. The school is to be shut in July 2008.

“We have the same love and passion for Antioch that you have,” said Arthur J. Zucker, chairman of the university board of trustees. “Something dramatic had to be done.”

Part of the alumni frustration stemmed from how the decision came about, which seemed to many a repudiation of Antioch’s tradition of weekly “community government” meetings where students, faculty members and administration officials discuss a range of issues. As Richard Daily, class of ’68, a lawyer and alumni board member, said in an interview, “Antioch is one of those institutions where nothing happens by diktat — except its closure.”

True to their training in community organizing, alumni created a breakaway fund to raise money for Antioch College, which university officials are hoping to reinvent and reopen in 2012. Aiming to raise $40 million in two years, the alumni board plans to leverage the money to guarantee them a voice in shaping Antioch’s future, Mr. Daily said.

“The Antioch Emancipation Fund,” as Cary Nelson, class of ’67, president of the American Association of University Professors, described it.

The faculty, too, is threatening legal action to stop the closing.

In its heyday in the 1960s, Antioch was a center of hippie culture on campus, with more than 2,000 students enrolled. “Antioch was always at the head, with the beatniks, the antiwar movement, civil rights,” said Barrie Grenell, who attended in the 1960s. “And now we’re in the forefront of disintegrating colleges.”

In its glory days, it attracted students who wanted to change the world, through war protests or work in communities. But Steven Lawry, Antioch’s president, said in an interview that more recently, the college became a magnet for students who felt marginalized, and so bred a political narrowness and culture of resentment. By way of example, he cited students getting “called out” for wearing Nikes, seen as an emblem of globalization.

“It became less about intellectual rigor, than a political and social experience,” he said. “The boot camp of the revolution became the model.”

“We were offering,” he added, “a political re-education” instead of a liberal education.

And that model, he added, is sharply at odds with what most students are looking for these days. He said there had also been huge failures in management going back decades, like not seeking bequests from alumni. But he added that the college had also deteriorated and lacked clarity about its strengths. And it lacked its own board of trustees, instead reporting to a board that covers the college and five satellite campuses in four states for graduate and continuing education students.

With enrollment down to 400 and the college struggling for every student, though, alumni insist that the death of the Antioch they knew does not represent some larger social change among the country’s youth, just the fruit of years of neglect and poor management.

Heading into what for many may be their final class reunion here, several alumni said they left the meeting unconvinced that the closing was inevitable.

Trustees acknowledged that they should have made a last-ditch emergency appeal for donations from alumni, and consulted with faculty members and alumni before taking such a drastic step.

Tim Noble, class of ’02, the grandson of a past Antioch president, asked trustees why, given their failures, alumni should trust them now with the institution’s future.

One by one, trustees took to the lectern, offering to step down , until one, Sharon Merriman, class of ’55, rejected the criticism, saying Antioch’s woes were long in the making. “We make a great shooting gallery,” she said, “but we didn’t create these problems all by ourselves, and we can’t solve them all by ourselves.”

Capitulation or What?

21/06/07, Irwin Cotler, Why single out Israel?, Source.
25/01/07, Henryk M. Broder, The West and Islam, Source.


21/06/07, Irwin Cotler, Why single out Israel?, (Back).

Prof. Irwin Cotler is a Member of Parliament and the former minister of justice and attorney-general of Canada. He is a board member of UN Watch.

GENEVA — The United Nations Human Rights Council concluded its year-long session last week by singling out one member state — Israel — for permanent indictment on the council agenda.

This discriminatory treatment is not only prejudicial to Israel; it is a breach of the UN charter's foundational principle of the equality "of nations, large and small." It concluded a week — and year — of unprecedented discriminatory conduct.

The week began with Archbishop Desmond Tutu reporting to the council on the high-level fact-finding mission to investigate "the Israeli willful killing of Palestinian civilians" in Beit Hanoun, Gaza, last November. He received a standing ovation, an extraordinary reaction by a body that frowns on applause.

I suspect the appreciation was for the man as much as anything else, because the mandate that authorized the mission was a sham. It made a mockery of the council's own founding principles and procedures. It was a mission that should never have been.

Accordingly, when I addressed the council that same morning, I made public for the first time that I had been invited by the council president to join the mission last November, but declined to do so.

I explained to the council that one might have thought I would welcome the opportunity to serve under a UN human-rights mandate. Canada is a country that has regarded the UN as an organizing idiom of its foreign policy, a country that has made a substantial contribution to the development of UN law and the cause of human rights. My colleague and mentor at McGill Law School, John Humphrey, was founding director of the UN division on human rights and the principal draftsman of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Regrettably, though, I could not accept the mandate because its terms of reference made a mockery of Kofi Annan's vision for the new council and its founding principles of universality, equality and fairness.

First, as a law professor and international lawyer, I could not accept a mandate to hear only one side of a dispute. The terms of reference deliberately ignored the Palestinian rocket attacks on the Israeli city of Sderot that preceded Israel's actions, and which continued even as we met.

The entrance to the McGill University Faculty of Law, where I am a professor, is engraved with the words audi artarem (hear both sides). How could one participate in a mandate that violated this bedrock principle of the rule of law — that denied a member state the right to a fair hearing and fundamental due process?

Second, the mandate violated the presumption of innocence. The resolution establishing this fact-finding mission began by condemning "the Israeli willful killing of Palestinian civilians." The 19 Palestinian dead were a tragedy. But how could one participate in a fact-finding mission where the facts and the verdict were determined in advance — a kind of Alice in Wonderland inquiry where the conviction was secured and the sentence passed even before the proceeding began?

It is not surprising, therefore, that the council members who most consistently support the human-rights mechanisms of this body, including Canada, all refused to support this mandate.

Regrettably, this discriminatory and one-sided approach has become not the exception but the norm. Council sessions of the past year reflected not only the same contempt for the rule of law, but the systematic singling-out of a member state for selective and discriminatory treatment, while granting the major violators exculpatory immunity.

Examples abound:

– There have been nine resolutions condemning one member state only (Israel) but none of any of the other 191 members of the international community, including, for example, no condemnation of the genocide in Darfur, or of the public and direct incitement to genocide and massive human-rights violations in President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's Iran.

– The continuing exclusion of one member state (Israel) from membership in any of the five regional groups that govern the council, thereby denying a member state the fundamental rights of due process and equitable standing.

– The council's discourse, as exemplified in the session just ended, as an endless drumbeat of indictment and incitement against Israel, again contrary to the council's founding principles and procedures.

Indeed, in a world where human rights have emerged as the new secular religion of our time, Israel, portrayed as a meta-rights violator, emerges as the new anti-Christ of the international arena.

And as if this were not enough, the council has now institutionalized forever the Alice in Wonderland condemnatory process and the corresponding drumbeats of indictment. It has institutionalized the condemnation of Israel as a standing item on the council agenda and institutionalized the mandate of the special investigator on "Israeli violations of the principles and bases of international law" in the Palestinian territories — its only indefinite, open-ended and one-sided investigative mandate.

The tragedy in all of this is not only that it fuels the ongoing delegitimization, if not the demonization, of a member state of the United Nations, casting Israel as the collective, targeted Jew among the nations. Or that it provides succour and assistance to those, such as Mr. Ahmadinejad, who envision "a world without Israel," as well as those who target Israel alone as the object of boycotts and sanctions.

Rather, the tragedy is that all of this takes place under the protective cover of the UN, with the presumed imprimatur of international law, and the halo banner of human rights.

It is not only one state that is under assault. The bell is tolling for the UN Human Rights Council itself. It is time to sound the alarm and return the council to its founding principles and ideals.


25/01/07, Henryk M. Broder, The West and Islam, (Back).

Part 1: "Hurray! We're Capitulating!"

The prevailing feeling among Muslims is that they are being abused by the West. What should we do about it? We might as well surrender. After all, we're already on our way.

This essay is an excerpt of Henryk M. Broder's book "Hurra, Wir Kapitulieren," ("Hurray! We're Capitulating") published by Wolf Jobst Siedler Verlag in 2006. The book spent a number of weeks atop the DER SPIEGEL bestseller list.

Ten years ago, in the spring of 1996, the world still seemed more or less okay. The towers of the World Trade Center dominated the Manhattan skyline, the American president had an affair with an intern, the Helmut Kohl era was coming to an end in Germany, and intellectuals killed time by debating over whether Francis Fukuyama was right in claiming that we have reached the "end of history" and whether capitalism had truly triumphed or socialism had merely lost the first round. In those days few were aware of the fine distinction between Islam and Islamism.

One had to look very closely to recognize the first signs of a brewing crisis. In Berlin, the Rote Grütze theater group was performing an enlightening piece called "Who Said Anything About Love?" To advertise the play, posters depicting a young man and a young woman, naked and full of innocence, were handed out in schools.

The schools had no qualms about displaying the posters, until a school official from Berlin's Tiergarten district requested a permit from the city's education authority. The agency turned down the request, arguing that the poster could hurt "the feelings of non-Christian pupils." The education authority was acting preventively and with what amounted to exaggerated concern for a cultural minority that had yet to be integrated into permissive German society. No Muslim pupils had complained about hurt feelings, nor had their parents expressed concerns about immoral harassment.

That was 10 years ago. Today everything has changed, except the resolve not to hurt the feelings of Muslims. The issue today no longer revolves around a group of Berlin pupils with an "immigration background," but around 1.3 billion Muslims worldwide -- many of whom are thin-skinned and unpredictable. At issue is freedom of opinion, one of the central tenets of the Enlightenment and democracy. And whether respect, consideration and tolerance are the right approach to dealing with cultures that, for their part, behave without respect, consideration or tolerance when it comes to anything they view as decadent, provocative and unworthy -- from women in short skirts to cartoons they deem provocative without even having seen them.

The controversy over the 12 Muhammad cartoons that were published in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten in September 2005 and led to worldwide protests and unrest among Muslims was merely a taste of what is to come, a dress rehearsal for the kinds of disputes Europe can expect to face in the future if it does not rethink its current policy of appeasement. As was the case in the 1930s, when Czechoslovakia was sacrificed in the interest of peace under the Munich Agreement -- a move that ultimately did nothing to prevent World War II -- Europeans today also believe that an adversary, seemingly invincible due to a preference for death over life, can be mollified by good behavior, concessions and submission. All the Europeans can hope to gain in this asymmetric conflict is a temporary reprieve, a honeymoon period that could last 10, 20, or maybe even 50 years. Anyone on death row breathes a sigh of relief when his execution is postponed to some indefinite time in the future.

The uproar over the Muhammad cartoons was symptomatic precisely because what triggered it was so insignificant. The drawings themselves were unbelievably harmless.

Freedom of expression in conformity with Shariah

It took two weeks for "spontaneous" protests to begin. On Oct. 14, 2005, 3,000 Muslims staged a demonstration on Copenhagen's town hall square after Friday prayers. In a letter to Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen, ambassadors from 11 Islamic countries demanded that he take the "necessary steps" to avert an abuse of Islam. Rasmussen responded that it was not his responsibility to discipline journalists, and he refused to schedule a meeting with the irate ambassadors. The Egyptian foreign minister got the Arab League and the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) involved soon after. The OIC had already made clear what it wanted in its "Declaration of Human Rights in Islam" in 1990: "All have the right to freely express their opinions in a manner that does not run counter to Shariah law." In essence, what the OIC wanted was to compel Western nations to bring their form of freedom of expression into conformity with Shariah law.

Then a delegation of Danish Muslims traveled to the Muslim world, carrying a folder with the 12 cartoons from Jyllands-Posten, as well as of three significantly more provocative drawings in their luggage. The three drawings portrayed the Prophet as a pedophile devil, with pigs' ears and having sex with a dog. Where the bonus material came from and how it found its way into the documentation remains unclear to this day. But clearly someone was interested in generating the appropriate reaction. Newspapers in Arab countries promptly wrote that the Danish media had portrayed Muhammad as a pig, the original 12 cartoons magically turned into 120 drawings, and the Danish government was accused of being behind the whole thing.

European Union foreign ministers met in Brussels on Jan. 30, 2006 to discuss the crisis. Some believed that Denmark had missed its chance to resolve the conflict on its own. The foreign minister of Luxembourg wasn't just speaking for his own country when he said that the entire affair was "more a Danish than a European problem." The Austrian foreign minister went even further when she said: "statements and actions that degrade a religion in an offensive way should be clearly condemned." Even the Americans abandoned their Danish allies. During the course of a single day, three State Department spokesmen used adjectives like "unacceptable," "offensive" and "objectionable." Muslims got the message.

A year ago on Feb. 3, 2006, a "Day of Anger" was proclaimed. Across the Muslim world, the Muhammad cartoons were the focus of Friday prayers. Millions of Muslims who couldn't even locate Denmark on a map demonstrated against these insults to the Prophet, incited by their imams. The embassies of Denmark and Norway were set on fire in Damascus, the Danish embassy was torched in Beirut, firebombs were hurled at the Danish consulate in Tehran, and Danish and Norwegian flags were burned in Nigeria and Algeria.


Part 2: Part II: Cowardice, fear and an overriding concern about the trade balance

In the past, an attack on an embassy would have been reason enough to go to war. But this time the affected countries did their utmost to "de-escalate." The victims were repentant and begged the perpetrators for forgiveness. Indeed, the West was intent on not doing anything that could possibly give offense and cause these fanatical Muslims to become even angrier.

Objectively speaking, the cartoon controversy was a tempest in a teacup. But subjectively it was a show of strength and, in the context of the "clash of civilizations," a dress rehearsal for the real thing. The Muslims demonstrated how quickly and effectively they can mobilize the masses, and the free West showed that it has nothing to counter the offensive -- nothing but fear, cowardice and an overriding concern about the balance of trade. Now the Islamists know that they are dealing with a paper tiger whose roar is nothing but a tape recording.

As different as the West's reactions to the Muslim protests were, what they had in common were origins in feelings of powerlessness and helplessness. Critical souls who only yesterday agreed with Marx that religion is the opium of the masses suddenly insisted that religious sensibilities must be taken into account, especially when accompanied by violence. The representatives of open societies reacted like the inhabitants of an island about to be hit by a hurricane. Powerless against the forces of nature, they stocked up on supplies, nailed doors and windows shut and hoped that the storm would soon pass. Of course, whereas such a reaction may be an appropriate response to natural disasters, such a lack of resistance merely encourages fundamentalists. It completely justifies their view of the West as weak, decadent and completely unwilling to defend itself.

Should the age of consent be 12?

Those who react to kidnappings and beheadings, to massacres of people of other faiths, and to eruptions of collective hysteria with a call for "cultural dialogue" don't deserve any better.

"The West should desist from engaging in all provocations that produce feelings of debasement and humiliation," says psychoanalyst Horst-Eberhard Richter. "We should show greater respect for the cultural identity of Muslim countries. ... For Muslims, it is important to be recognized and respected as equals." In Richter's view, what the Muslims need is "a partnership of equals."

But Richter neglects to describe what this partnership might look like. Does achieving such equality mean that we should set up separate sections for women on buses, as is the custom in Saudi Arabia? Should the marrying age for girls be reduced to 12, as is the case in Iran? And should death by stoning be our punishment for adultery, as Shariah law demands? What else could the West do to show its respect for the cultural identity of Islamic countries? Would it be sufficient to allow Horst-Eberhard Richter to decide whether, for example, a wet T-shirt contest in a German city rises to a level of criminal provocation that could cause the Muslim faithful in Hyderabad to feel debased and humiliated?

The discussion over which provocations WE should put an end to so that THEY do not feel upset inexorably leads to the realm of the absurd.

Should devout Jews be entitled to demand that non-Jews give up pork? And should they have the power to impose sanctions if their demands are not met? Can a Hindu in India run amok because the Dutch do not view cows as sacred beings? Those who believe Muslims have the right to be outraged by the Danes failing to abide by an Islamic prohibition -- especially when it's not even clear that such a prohibition even exists -- must answer such questions clearly in the affirmative. Even illiterates must then be allowed to ransack bookstores; in a world in which anyone is entitled to feel offended and humiliated, anyone can also choose which provocations he is unwilling to accept.

The comments made by German pastor Burkhard Müller on Feb. 11, 2005 on "Wort zum Sonntag," a weekly Christian program aired on the ARD public television network, demonstrate just how far we are willing to go when it comes to denying reality. "Islam is a great religion," Müller said, only minutes after the previous news program had shown scenes of burning flags, devastated embassies and holy warriors yelling "death to the infidels!" Where does it come from, this determination to disregard the facts or conveniently distort them so that they cloud our perception of reality?

A natural tendency to avoid conflict

It comes from fear. Fear may be a poor counselor, but when it comes to educating the masses, there is no more effective tool. Mao famously said: "Strike one to educate one hundred" -- an axiom that helped him solidify his power.

It is not respect for other cultures which influences behavior, but rather the awareness of just how fanatic and ruthless our adversaries are. The wilder and more brutal they appear to be, the more likely they are to attract attention and gain respect. Whether venturing into unfamiliar territory means taking a walk in a different neighborhood or visiting a foreign culture, our natural tendency is to avoid conflict.

"Nowadays acts of terrorism are not committed for their own sake, but in the name of an ideology one could call Nazi-Islamism," Romanian-American author Norman Manea told the German daily Die Welt in March 2004. The only difference, in Manea's view, is "that this ideology invokes a religion, whereas the Nazis were mythical without being religious." Manea believes that what he calls a "World War III" has already begun. "The Europeans are putting off the recognition -- as they did in the 1930s -- of the tremendous tragedy that awaits them and that has, in fact, already arrived."

This sounds like an extreme exaggeration, conjuring up visions of a Day of Judgment, of an Apocalypse Now! Of course, in 1938 hardly anyone could have imagined where the policy of appeasing the Nazis would lead. History does not repeat itself, and yet there are parallels that do not bode well. The willingness to submit to self-deception is as widespread today as it was in the years leading up to World War II.

In late June 2006, every German paper reported the sensational news that Hamas was willing to recognize Israel. But the reports were not based on a binding declaration issued by the ruling prime minister and member of Hamas, but on a document drawn up by Palestinians in Israeli jails who were seeking to re-establish "national unity" between the warring Hamas and Fatah groups. The headline on the front page of Die Welt read: "Hamas Indirectly Recognizes Israel." The Süddeutsche Zeitung wrote: "Hamas Apparently Ready to Recognize Israel." "Hamas Gives Way -- Indirect Recognition of Israel," wrote the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. The Frankfurter Rundschau rejoiced over the "Recognition of Israel in the Middle of a Crisis," which the paper's Jerusalem correspondent described as a "manifesto for a state within the 1967 borders, which can be seen as an indirect recognition of Israel." The Berliner Zeitung went a step further when it wrote "Hamas Recognizes Israel," commenting in the corresponding article on the "realization of a necessity" and that Hamas had come to terms "with Israel's existence" and would accept a "two-state solution."


Part 3: Part III: Self deception at least offers some succor

At least one of the Berliner Zeitung's assumptions wasn't entirely made up. Hamas had expressed a willingness to accept two Palestinian states, one in the territory occupied by Israel since 1967 and one on Israeli territory within the 1967 borders. But the prisoners' document did not even suggest a "recognition" of the Zionist state, no matter how "indirect." It existed solely in the minds of commentators. Fortunately various Hamas spokespeople quickly provided much-needed clarity, assuring the world that Hamas had absolutely no intention of recognizing Israel, directly or indirectly, and in fact was determined to continue its armed struggle to liberate Palestine.

The Europeans' wishful thinking stems from their need to avoid conflicts, coupled with a strong survival instinct. They may perceive reality, but they do so selectively.

The Berlin office of the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War has published a paper describing the consequences of an American nuclear strike against Iran. According to its scenario, more than 2 million people would die within the first 48 hours, and another million would suffer serious injuries. Ten million would be exposed to high levels of radiation. But one question the paper neither poses nor answers is this: What would be the consequential damage of an Iranian nuclear attack once the country is capable of producing and using a nuclear bomb?

No one wants to address this question, and for good reason: No one knows how to prevent an Iranian nuclear attack, or even how to influence the Iranians' policies. In contrast, there is a very small but real possibility that public pressure can be used to influence the American government to move in one direction or another. The proponents of peace whose protests are directed against America's plans to attack Iran and not against the mullahs' nuclear policies are well aware of this difference. They are not blind in one eye, as they are often accused of being, but instead have a clear view of everything that is happening. And they are as delighted as children discovering a surprise. "Peace Signals from Tehran," the Berliner Zeitung wrote ecstatically in early July, when Iran did not for once flatly reject one of the European Union's many proposed compromises, but instead declared that it would "give it serious consideration."

"We capitulate"

For those facing a hopeless situation and powerless to change it, self-deception offers at least some succor.

Another option is "change through ingratiation." Oskar Lafontaine, a one-time chairman of the Social Democratic Party and German chancellor candidate, sees "commonalities between leftist policies and the Islamic religion." In an interview with Neues Deutschland, he says: "Islam depends on community, which places it in opposition to extreme individualism, which threatens to fail in the West. The second similarity is that the devout Muslim is required to share his wealth with others. The leftist also wants to see the strong help the weak. Finally, the prohibition of interest still plays a role in Islam, much as it once did in Christianity. At a time when entire economies are plunging into crisis because their expectations of returns on investment have become totally absurd, there is a basis for a dialogue to be conducted between the left and the Islamic world."

Lafontaine called upon the West to exercise self-criticism ("We must constantly ask ourselves through which eyes the Muslims see us") and expressed sympathy for the "indignation" of Muslims. According to Lafontaine, "people in Muslim countries have experienced many indignities, one of the most recent being the Iraq war. What we are seeing here is resource imperialism."

In examining similarities between Islam and the European left, though, Lafontaine ignored an important point: how long he would survive without his beloved Sancerre Sauvignon Blanc if a union between leftist politics and the Islamic religion truly came about. His dialogue with the Muslim world would have to be conducted while sipping fruit juice and mineral water. "If you can't beat them, join them!"

All the events of last spring are only a foretaste of something much bigger, something still unnamed. And when it ends, those who have managed to escape will ask themselves: Why didn't we see the handwriting on the wall when there was still time? If Muslim protests against a few harmless cartoons can cause the free world to capitulate in the face of violence, how will this free world react to something that is truly relevant? It is already difficult enough to see that Israel is not merely battling a few militants, but is facing a serious threat to its very existence from Iran. All too often it is ignored that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has already taken the first step by calling for "a world without Zionism" -- a call that pro-Israel Europeans only managed to condemn with a mild, "unacceptable." How would they react if Iran were in a position to back up its threats with nuclear weapons?

In 1972, more than three decades ago, Danish lawyer and part-time politician Mogens Glistrup had an idea that brought him instant fame. To save taxes, he proposed that the Danish army be disbanded and an answering machine be set up in the defense ministry that would play the following message: "We capitulate!" Not only would it save money, Glistrup argued, but it would also save lives in an emergency. On the strength of this "program," Glistrup's Progress Party managed to become the second-most powerful political party in the Danish parliament in the 1973 elections.

Glistrup had the right idea, but he was a number of years premature. Now would be the right time to set up his answering machine.

(Back)

Bone Heads

08/06/07, Rick Salutin, Take it or they will come, Source.
18/06/07, Editorial, Imagine! Children playing in the trees, Source.
20/06/07, Joe Friesen, Free speech goes up in smoke at school, Source.
20/06/07, Martin Mittelstaedt, Scientist's endorsement of bisphenol A under review, Source.
19/06/07, Mark Hume, B.C. natives mourn missing eulachon, Source.
20/06/07, Editorial, The trouble with Canada's no-fly list, Source.


08/06/07, Rick Salutin, Take it or they will come, (Back).

On Monday, the city council of Sarnia, an Ontario border city of 80,000 with some oil refineries, voted 6-3 not to take $120,000 from the Harper government to fund a counterterrorism plan for their buses. Mayor Mike Bradley came out against the idea last Friday, calling it ludicrous. Sarnia's bridges and refineries are secured; this was just for the buses. Still, it was "tricky," he says, since no one wants to look unvigilant on terror. It was a one-day story with a bounce, maybe another half a day. But like everything, it connects to everything.

For me, it resonated because I recalled that a Sarnia native, 37-year-old Corporal Brent Poland, died in Afghanistan in April, and a Sarnia councillor had said, "I guess we've really learned the price of freedom." I wondered then what he could mean, or have thought he meant.

On Tuesday, CBC Radio's Carol Off, on As It Happens, asked the mayor if he'd have taken the money if it weren't for $40,000 that Sarnia would have had to kick in. He said no, because there was no way to "justify" it. Was that just fast footwork on his part? I don't think so. "Have you seen Bowling for Columbine?" he asked on the phone yesterday. It turns out he's the Canadian mayor in Michael Moore's film about how U.S. gun violence is rooted in a culture of fear. "Those things were linked even in 2002," when the film was made, he says. "It's the same climate of fear."

The way you fight fear, he thinks, is by striking at its real sources in people's lives, such as deprivation and inequality. You do that through social policies. Then he cites Bruce Springsteen - "no one wins unless everyone wins," as he had in the film. Springsteen is huge for him. He has served 19 years as mayor, he says, with Springsteen as "the soundtrack." When he met Toronto Mayor David Miller, he said it was like meeting a rock star. Mayor Miller asked which one, and he charitably answered, The Boss.

It's about taxes, too, he says, and using them intelligently. Last week, Quebec Premier Jean Charest voiced shock that Quebeckers massively oppose his plan to take almost $1-billion in federal money and give it back to them in tax breaks. They want it used for education and health care, instead. Only in Quebec, he moaned, as if his people are uniquely stunted. Yet, clearly for them, taxes aren't something you just want back; they're a resource to use for things you can't acquire individually - like Quebec's public, affordable child-care program, which is a role model for how to spend public money smartly. Anti-terror planning for small-town bus routes is not.

(Lethbridge Mayor Bob Tarleck, on the other hand, took the Harper bus money and told the CBC that any city that didn't do so has issued an "open invitation" to terrorists. Take It Or They Will Come. "If any terrorist is listening," he said, "I'd discourage them from coming to Lethbridge.")

But is there also a link between the death of Cpl. Poland (and of another local soldier last year in Afghanistan) and rejecting the bus money? Mayor Bradley says not. And the Poland family explicitly said they don't want his death to undermine the Canadian military mission there. So I'm the one making this link, which is, as the mayor might say, tricky.

Yet, I can't help wondering if people in Sarnia and elsewhere might start to ask whether they and their children are really paying the price of freedom, or rather of a whipped-up and ludicrous hysteria that contributes to and even creates what it fears most. We send our troops there, who mean well but seem to inevitably kill civilians and innocents, creating rage and rancour that lead to more Canadian deaths there and possibly here, too, as some think: Those Westerners will only leave us in peace if the terror reaches them at home. Was voting down the bus money an indirect (or unconscious) way to raise that delicate issue and avoid further Canadian deaths?


18/06/07, Editorial, Imagine! Children playing in the trees, (Back).

Bravely, if naively, an influential British accident-prevention group has urged people to tolerate more risk in children's play. It's brave because the prevailing wisdom is that risk needs to be stamped out at all costs for children. It's naive because the group's recommendation - that wild areas be built within parks so children can, say, climb trees, under supervision - could never happen under liability law. Not unless the trees were five feet tall and there was pea gravel or wood chips underneath.

But there is something wonderful in the idealism of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents. Despite its name, the society does not wish to prevent every single accident. "We need to ask ourselves whether it is better for a child to break a wrist falling out of a tree or to get a repetitive strain wrist injury at a young age from using a computer or video games console." That is not just a figure of speech. British statistics show that nearly 600 children went to hospital in 2005 for repetitive strain injury, usually an affliction of office workers who spend their days at keyboards. Meanwhile, there has been a sharp drop in tree-climbing and bike-riding accidents over the past several years. Isn't safety wonderful?

The problem caused by risk aversion is in a sense invisible. Parks, schoolyards and ravines once filled with children now have a few scattered souls (except during organized activities), largely because children are not allowed out on their own because of the fear of pedophiles. A British study found that 43 per cent of parents do not believe children under 14 should be set loose out of doors unsupervised. The Royal Society reminds us of what our children have lost: the opportunity for unstructured play, especially in nature.

Children need to take reasonable risks to learn and grow. But there is a tyranny afoot, a tyranny of liability lawyers and timid decision-makers and overanxious parents - a tyranny exemplified by the Toronto District School Board's panicky decision to spend $6.3-million in 2000 to scrap the allegedly dangerous playgrounds in 170 schools and replace them with dull, metal contraptions. In the madness, even the simple tire swing was ruled a life-disabling risk.

The notion that play in the wild is essential to children is so simple, yet so forgotten, that the opening words of a study on play in nature by Norwegian education expert Ingunn Fjortoft feel like a revelation. "Modern societies seem to have neglected the value of such environments for the development of children and adolescents. A generation ago, children had access to wild lands and used them for exploring, challenging and exercising the skills needed to master a challenging landscape and unforeseen situations." Today's children may have electronic devices unknown to previous generations, but they have been deprived of something beautiful and valuable.

How valuable? The Norwegian study was set at a school beside a forest. Children 5 to 7 were split into two groups: one group played in the forest, the other on a traditional playground. In the forest, the children hid among the spruce trees, climbed the deciduous trees, chased each other in the open areas, built dens and played hide and seek among the shrubs. They climbed and leapt off a steep rocky wall and in winter slid on the hills. A big rock was "the Space Ship"; a place of pine cones was "the Cone War." (They threw the cones at one another.) A prickly juniper bush became a favourite home; the whole group of 12 children would be embraced within its "rooms." The study found that the natural playscape is important to the development of children's motor skills - co-ordination, speed, agility, power and balance. A traditional playground, not so much.

Bringing the wild into the mainstream is a lovely idea, even if doomed; the wild areas would soon be as sterile as the manmade ones. But the larger message should not be lost. In trying to protect children from reasonable risk, we do them no favours.


20/06/07, Joe Friesen, Free speech goes up in smoke at school, (Back).

Saskatchewan student's marijuana research spurs lockdown and suspension

WINNIPEG — It started months ago when Kieran King's high-school class heard a presentation about the dangers of drug use.

Kieran, a 15-year-old Grade 10 student in tiny Wawota, Sask., population 600, thought the presentation lacked credibility, so he did some research on the relative health risks of alcohol, tobacco and cannabis.

When he told some of his fellow students that cannabis seemed the least hazardous of the three, he set in motion a series of events that led to a school lockdown, a threat assessment involving the RCMP, a suspension and failing grades on his exams.

"It's all a bit overwhelming," his mother, Jo Anne Euler, said. "It's just totally bizarre."

She explained that her son is a compulsive researcher who tends to go on at length about what he reads on the Internet.

One student at Wawota Parkland School didn't want to hear Kieran's thoughts about marijuana, and complained to principal Susan Wilson.

The principal then called Kieran's mother because she was concerned he was advocating drug use, Ms. Euler said.

Ms. Euler told the principal her son is an A student who doesn't go out, doesn't smoke or drink, and isn't pushing drugs on other kids.

"She said 'Well, if he talks about it again, I will be calling the police,' " Ms. Euler said. "I told Kieran that and he said 'Mom, all I'm doing is sharing the facts.' "

Kieran felt his right to free speech was being trampled, so he enlisted the help of the Saskatchewan Marijuana Party.

Together they planned a school walkout for free speech, scheduled for 11 a.m. last Tuesday, where free chocolate chip hemp seed cookies would be handed out.

But just before 11 that day, the principal announced that the school was a closed campus and that no one was allowed outside.

When several students tried to leave anyway, teachers barred the doors and ordered them back to class, Ms. Euler said. Kieran and his younger brother Lucas defied and joined a ragtag group of five protesters standing across from the school holding placards.

The principal then ordered a lockdown to ensure the safety of students. The RCMP raced to the scene, only to find a small, peaceful protest.

Kieran's mother was again called to the school and told that both her sons had been suspended for three days. Later that day, the school conducted a threat assessment on Kieran with the help of the RCMP and school division counsellors, Ms. Euler said.

"In the letter I got about the threat assessment [the principal] had documented five or six times in the last year that Kieran had talked to some kid about marijuana - not one of those times was Kieran ever talked to or was I ever talked to. Were they documented before or was it a witch hunt after the fact where they said 'Let's try to remember all the times Kieran talked about marijuana?' "

Don Rempel, director of education in the South East Cornerstone School Division, said the principal acted appropriately.

"The school had received complaints that the student was promoting the use of marijuana as an alternative to alcohol or sharing information around marijuana use," Mr. Rempel said, adding that Kieran overreacted to the principal's simple request.

Kieran is now in Shanghai where he will spend the summer learning Mandarin and working as an English tutor. He had scheduled his exams early in order to accommodate his trip, but the suspension meant he couldn't attend school to write the exams. As a result, he got a mark of zero on each paper. His marks were high enough to pass, but instead of getting 85 or 90, he'll get 55 or 60, his mother said, which could hurt his chances of a university scholarship.

She is appealing to the school board to allow Kieran to write his exams in September.


20/06/07, Martin Mittelstaedt, Scientist's endorsement of bisphenol A under review, (Back).

No more health risk than tofu, doctor says

The head of the Health Canada scientific team studying the safety of bisphenol A has been abruptly reassigned, while the department investigates claims he is too biased in favour of the chemical to objectively analyze it.

Speaking at a medical conference in the U.S. in March, Mark Richardson, manager of Health Canada's contaminated-sites division, endorsed the use of bisphenol A after he had been selected to undertake a review of the health impacts of the chemical.

He indicated at the conference that he personally didn't think bisphenol A presented a danger, extolled the virtues of its use in dentistry and dismissed possible health threats posed by exposures to the substance, comparing it to eating tofu.

The Globe and Mail raised questions about Dr. Richardson's objectivity yesterday morning with Health Canada. Shortly afterward, Health Minister Tony Clement's office asked for an investigation into Dr. Richardson's remarks and suitability to work on the review. The investigation will be conducted by the department's chief scientist, Wendy Sexsmith.

"We are aware of the concern that has been communicated to the department," Paul Glover, director-general of the department's consumer safety branch, said in explaining the action.

Bisphenol A is one of the most controversial chemicals in widespread use because it has been found to mimic the female hormone estrogen. Almost all Canadians have involuntary exposure to it because it is used in such items as hard plastic baby bottles, resins lining food cans and dental composite materials used in white-coloured fillings.

Traces of bisphenol A leach from consumer products into people. There is a growing body of scientific research using animal experiments that link exposures to health problems, such as abnormal breast tissue growth and enlarged prostates.

At the conference, Dr. Richardson dismissed these concerns, saying "yes, bisphenol A is estrogenic, it interacts with estrogen receptors, but a myriad of other things do as well, including proteins in tofu," which he said is recommended by some as a treatment for menopause. He also said bisphenol A exposures are "so low as to be totally inconsequential, in my view."

However, there have been more than a dozen studies in laboratory animals since 1999 finding adverse effects from bisphenol A at levels below Canada's current standard. One study, done in 2005, found the chemical able to change breast tissue in ways that predispose it to cancer - at a dose 1,000 times lower than Canada's limit.

Tofu, and many products from plants, contain estrogen-like chemicals and there is scientific uncertainty about their possible health effects.

The federal government is reviewing the safety of 200 potentially dangerous synthetic chemicals - including bisphenol A - that were used in the 1980s but were grandfathered from detailed safety assessments when Canada adopted its first comprehensive pollution legislation.

Bisphenol A is one of the largest volume chemicals made in the world, and any decision by Ottawa to restrict it would have major economic impacts if other countries follow. Last month, four major bisphenol A manufacturers, Dow Chemical Co., GE Plastics, Bayer MaterialScience, and Sunoco Chemicals, hired Tactix Government Consulting, a well-placed Ottawa-based lobbying firm, to help them respond to the review.

The industry disputes assertions that bisphenol A is dangerous.

Dr. Richardson is an expert on the dangers of amalgam fillings, or those containing mercury. He was a guest speaker at the conference, held in Tucson and organized by the International Academy of Oral Medicine and Toxicology, a Florida-based medical group concerned about dental material safety.

In his talk, Dr. Richardson conveyed the thinking within Health Canada on the grandfathered chemicals, saying they weren't acutely toxic because "we've been using them for a few decades and we don't seem to have a trail of dead bodies around."

However, he added that the chemicals weren't studied in depth. "I hate to say it but we're a big pool of guinea pigs with a lot of these things."

Dr. Richardson said he is convinced that dental composites using bisphenol A are safer than amalgam. He personally felt so strongly about this that he had his 15 amalgam fillings replaced with composites.


19/06/07, Mark Hume, B.C. natives mourn missing eulachon, (Back).

BELLA COOLA, B.C. — When the Nuxalk band gathers on the banks of the Bella Coola River, it is usually to celebrate the blessings of nature. But this spring, instead of singing to welcome back the salmon or casting eagle feathers on the water in thanks, tribes from the central coast of British Columbia gathered to hold a Feast of Shame and discuss a growing crisis.

At the gathering, elders from 10 B.C. bands, including the Nuxalk (pronounced new-hawk), Kitasoo, Oweekeno and Haisla, spoke with anger and sadness about the loss of a small, herring-like fish, known as eulachon, that until recently returned in such numbers they turned the river black.

In 1995, when the last big run came in, there were millions of eulachon, so many they spilled out onto the gravel bars in writhing waves. Since then, the river has been nearly empty of fish.

“Every year we wait. Every year the seals, the sea gulls, the ducks, the swans, the geese, they sit along the river waiting,” said Oweekeno Chief Frank Johnson.

There has been a coastwide collapse of eulachon over the past decade, but in few places has it been as dramatic as in the Bella Coola Valley, where the run disappeared almost overnight.

Rudolph Ryser, chair of the Center For World Indigenous Studies, a U.S.-based, non-profit research and education organization, said the loss of eulachon is culturally devastating for tribes throughout the Pacific Northwest. “It is essential to the people of this part of the world … the eulachon is essential to life.”

At the “crisis gathering,” as it was called in posters tacked up on telephone poles in Bella Coola, 400 kilometres north of Vancouver, elders told stories about the days of plenty and issued a plea for help to government. They want scientists to find out why the eulachon have gone from B.C.'s coast – and they want a fisheries restoration project to bring back the runs of small, silver fish prized for their rich oil.

Native leaders are discussing sending delegations to Victoria, Ottawa and the United Nations to draw attention to their plight. Without eulachon, they feel a culture that has survived 12,000 years is crumbling.

“It is very painful when you lose something that has been the backbone of your people,” said Percy Starr, hereditary chief of the Kitasoo band. “… It's about more than the loss of a resource. It's about the loss of a culture. The loss of eulachon is spiritual … this is the foundation of a people.”

Looking back

Spencer Siwallace is 28, a newly elected Nuxalk chief who recently returned to Bella Coola with a university degree in forestry and a fierce desire to change things. He opened the gathering, telling of sitting by the river recently and dreaming of a boy running to the water to get a bucket of eulachon for dinner.

“The river wasn't clear … it was black with eulachon. Dozens of families were scooping eulachon with their bare hands … they looked so happy, so healthy, so content.

“I opened my eyes and looked out at the barren river. There were no children catching eulachon with their bare hands, no families working together … there were no eulachon. The camps were all deserted. The stink houses and cooking boxes were collapsed and overgrown. As I sat there I realized I had been looking into the past.

“I was the boy sent down with the bucket to catch dinner,” he said, before lowering his head to sob as about 100 elders and chiefs looked on silent and grim-faced.

They took turns then, passing a microphone around the gymnasium in the community centre, trying to describe the magnitude of the damage. Gwen Pollard said she was raised on eulachon oil, which was used in bread-making and eaten daily as a dipping sauce, but now there is so little found in the village people guard it like gold.

“I have three little kids who have never seen an eulachon,” she said, questioning whether the lack of fish oil in their diet is making people sick. “If we get it back here maybe our communities, our nations will be healthy.”

“It is a real big disaster,” said Glenn Clellaman, who had just come in from fishing the Bella Coola River for spring salmon. But because of high water, and declining stocks, there were so few caught the Nuxalk could not serve salmon, the traditional main course at feasts.

Mr. Clellaman said the riverbanks had once been “filled with small, little houses. We called them stink boxes and that's where we fermented the eulachons. You look there now and … it's bare, eh. But you still see a little bit of the remains of the boxes left and now it's overgrown and dying.”

“We can no longer tolerate what we have been through,” said Ross Neasloss, Chief of Kitasoo from Klemtu, a small village on Swindle Island, north of Bella Coola. He, like many others, blamed commercial fishing for reducing not only the stocks of eulachon, but also salmon, herring, abalone and halibut.

“Our pantries are empty,” he said.

Keystone species

Anthropologists and native-rights lawyers describe eulachon as a “cultural keystone species” vital to the identity of native people.

When Alexander Mackenzie became the first European explorer to cross North America over land to the Pacific in 1793, he followed the grease trail, a native trade route used to get oil from the coast to east of the Rocky Mountains.

Early missionaries gave eulachon religious currency by noting it returned at Easter, and some native bands referred to it as “the saviour fish,” because it ended months of winter hunger.

“It is like a spring awakening,” Derek Snow, a speaker at the Feast of Shame, said of the eulachon's arrival. “Like we are sleeping all winter and we wake up … and the first thing we look at is the river.”

At the feast or gathering – so named to reflect shame on the government – one speaker recalled how everyone once ran from church to fish in their Sunday best when the eulachon arrived.

Eulachon thrived until relatively recently and then, about a decade ago, began to decline from California to Alaska.

Few rivers have had as stunning a drop as the Bella Coola, where a run of several million fish fell to an estimated 1,200. Researchers netted only 50 this year.

Megan Moody, a young Nuxalk woman working on her masters in the Fisheries Centre at the University of British Columbia, said the Bella Coola run collapsed in 1996, the same year the federal government opened a shrimp trawl fishery in Queen Charlotte Sound.

Bella Coola is on the mainland at the head of a deep fjord that leads to Queen Charlotte Sound. The shrimp trawl nets took an estimated 90 tonnes of eulachon on the central coast that year. While the shrimp fishery was later closed in Queen Charlotte Sound, it has continued in Bella Coola and Rivers Inlets.

Ms. Moody said the impact of the trawl fishery, climate change, increased predation and alterations to river hydrology, caused by logging, are all suspects in stock declines.

She said shrimp trawlers off the west coast of Vancouver Island are netting eulachon as bycatch, leading to estimates there are thousands of tonnes of juvenile fish at sea. But that doesn't square with the empty rivers. “Why are they not coming back? What's going on here? Are these estimates incorrect?” she asked.

“It's an enigma,” said Doug Hay, a retired Fisheries and Oceans Canada scientist.

The impact of the shrimp fishery isn't understood because eulachon, which have no commercial value, haven't been studied enough, said Mr. Hay, who was “shocked” to hear trawling is still allowed in inlets around Bella Coola.

Mr. Hay said his best advice for restoring eulachon runs is simple: “Make sure they have good spawning habitat … make sure they have good marine habitat and … stop killing them at sea.”

Asked what an eulachon recovery program might cost, Mr. Hay gave a rough estimate of $650,000 annually to work on B.C.'s 13 eulachon rivers.

Krista Robertson, a Victoria-based lawyer who specializes in native-rights cases, said tribes could have grounds for suing the federal government or seeking a judicial review of the shrimp trawl fishery.

“Legal action is not the answer necessarily … but being ready to litigate can get you action,” she said. “I don't think it would be hard to prove a profound native dependence on eulachon.”

Indeed, the courts may soon hear that argument. Kevin Doyle, a Victoria lawyer, said in a recent e-mail that he has been instructed by the Komoyue band on northern Vancouver Island to pursue legal action against the federal and provincial governments for the loss of eulachon from traditional diets.

Human error

During a break in the gathering, Lance Nelson and his brother, Chris, who both teach Nuxalk language and culture at the local school, walked to the banks of the Bella Coola River to beat drums and sing.

Below where they chanted, the Nelson family stink house was slowly being consumed by vegetation after nearly a decade of disuse. Inside the stooped building were old, broken nets and unused storage jars.

“The reason we don't have eulachon in our river is clearly human error,” Lance Nelson said. “The river is our mother. She feeds us … Through prayer we may get these gifts back.”

Below him the empty Bella Coola River flowed past. “We used to fish for eulachon right there,” he said. “No more.”


20/06/07, Editorial, The trouble with Canada's no-fly list, (Back).

Ottawa says there are no liberty concerns and therefore no constitutional concerns in its spanking new no-fly list of 500 to 2,000 names, which went into effect Monday.

No liberty concerns? As soon as any one of those 500 to 2,000 people shows up at an airport and tries to pick up a boarding pass, alarms will go off (in a metaphorical sense) and the RCMP and local police will rush in (in an actual sense). Of course there are liberty concerns. In the United States, people on the no-fly list who try to fly may be detained for hours. A man named Robert Johnson (one of the 12 hapless Robert Johnsons assembled by a CBS News team because a Robert Johnson is on the no-fly list) was strip-searched. Of course there are constitutional concerns.

At its most basic, the constitutional concern is this: The government of Canada is now keeping a list that it provides to private companies (the airlines) and other countries of people deemed too dangerous to fly. The people have no right to challenge their inclusion before their names are put on the list. They are not even entitled to be notified that their names are on this list. Through no fault of their own, in some cases, they may face a public humiliation at the airport. Who knows what they may face in other countries?

At first glance, the reason these individuals aren't told their names are on the list seems obvious and sensible. If they were told, they would know that the RCMP and CSIS were on to them. If they knew, they might take extra steps to evade detection.

But wait. Those deemed dangerous (are there 2,000 suspected terrorists in Canada?) can easily find out whether they're on the list. All they have to do is try to board an airplane. The no-fly list may in fact serve to alert the bad guys that they're being watched.

The answer to that problem is to keep the most dangerous people off the no-fly list. There is evidence this has happened in the United States. The 11 British suspects now facing charges in a plot to blow up U.S. airliners were not on the U.S. list, according to CBS News, though they had apparently been under surveillance for a year. The reason: The FBI and the CIA didn't want their names circulating among airport workers in other countries, in case word leaked back to the suspects. Brilliant. Except, what good is a no-fly list if the truly dangerous aren't on it?

The United States will no doubt be pleased that Canada has a no-fly list. The question is whether pleasing the U.S. is worth the price. While Ottawa hasn't revealed the exact cost, it allocated $404-million over two years in the 2006 budget to pay for "programs to enhance border security, national emergency response, a no-fly list and arming border guards." Any money put into a no-fly list is money that isn't going into RCMP and CSIS boots on the ground to track the terrorists. "Presently we are very short of personnel," a senior Mountie in charge of a national security team told a Senate committee this week. It's doubtful anyone will be accountable for the money spent on the no-fly list. It will be difficult to know whether the money is being spent to any effect at all.

Are there less intrusive, more effective means to ensure airplane safety? Police can arrest the most dangerous people on the list if they have broken or plotted to break any laws. They can track suspects and tap their phones.

In the end, people are happy if airplanes don't explode, and most would say they would pay a heavy price in dollars and in loss of liberty (especially someone else's) to keep flying safe. With the no-fly list, however, people will pay dearly for uncertain benefits.

(Back)

19/06/07, Margaret Wente, Are you feeling safer now?

As Canada's very own no-fly list goes into effect, I'm glad my name isn't Mahmoud Mohammad Issa Mohammad. For that matter, I'm also glad my name isn't Patrick Martin. That's my boss's name. Even before this latest list, he sometimes got hauled aside and had to prove his innocence. That's because there is, or was, another suspicious character named Patrick Martin. There also are, or were, suspicious Kennedys, Thompsons and Williamses.

The American no-fly list has 44,000 names on it, many of them common Anglo-Saxon ones. It includes everyone who was ever connected to the IRA and a lot of people who are dead. But it does not include the would-be terrorists who were rounded up in Britain last August, even though they'd been under surveillance for a year. That's because putting their names on the list could have tipped off the wrong people.

Thankfully, our made-in-Canada no-fly list will be much, much better than the American one, the authorities say. For example, many of the names on it will come from the RCMP, which, as we know, is among the most reliable and best-run security forces in the world. If you're on the list by mistake, you can even appeal to something called the Office of Reconsideration (although not in time to make your flight).

No doubt, our no-fly list will deter terrorists as effectively as our long-gun registry deters criminals. It will work especially well in intercepting terrorists who forgot to acquire fake IDs and are travelling under their own names, just as the long-gun registry has helped catch thousands of criminals who shoot other people with their own legally registered firearms.

Human-rights types are warning that the no-fly list will inevitably lead to racial profiling, the end of civil liberties and innocent people being deported to Gitmo. Maybe so. But, frankly, I doubt the flying public gives two beans about civil liberties. What really matters is the added hassle and humiliation of getting from A to B. Every time you think it can't get any worse, it does. By the way, are you flying with your 12-year-old? Too bad. She, too, will soon need official government ID.

Going through airport security today is like going to the theatre of the absurd. None of it makes sense, but everyone takes it seriously. Every passenger who takes off his shoes can thank Richard Reid, the bumbling shoe bomber who was thwarted in 2001. The ritual discarding of the water bottle is a tribute to the plotters from last summer who, you may recall, never got near an airport.

To them, we also owe the confiscation of our toothpaste. I know I shouldn't put the Colgate in the carry-on, but I never learn. So now, before I board, I have to buy more toothpaste and more water, to say nothing of my lunch, because they don't have food on airplanes any more. No wonder I'm so cranky.

As far as I know, there are no Margaret Wentes on the no-fly list. But my metal hips mean that I'm always pulled aside for the full pat-down. What happens when every aging boomer has a beeping artificial part is a question without an answer.

Personally, I'm looking forward to the day when they implant an ID chip and just scan us, so I don't have to dig around for my passport 15 different times. It seems to work for cats.

Sometimes I ask my sister, who's in the airport-security business, if all of these precautions make us safer now. She always laughs and tells me how easy it is to get access to a plane. Drug smugglers have no problem; they just hire airport workers who handle cargo.

But the nature of bureaucracy is to be literal and dumb. It can't imagine an event that's never happened. All it can do is make us take off our shoes and stand in yet another line. I often wonder whether flying is worth the hassle. Maybe I should start saving the environment, and just stay home.

19/06/07, Editorial, To bring openness to the Mounties

Restoring proper decision-making and accountability to the RCMP is a big job for the task force announced yesterday by Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day. The pension scandal that brought on yesterday's announcement is but one among many. Something has gone drastically wrong with the RCMP, and it remains to be seen whether the task force of senior Mounties, public-service representatives, governance and policing experts can fix the problems.

This is not a matter of simply tinkering with governance procedures. The more basic problem is an arrogance in the upper reaches of RCMP management that eroded the force's commitment to the Mounties' core values of honesty and integrity. The arrogance was encapsulated in a remark last year by Staff-Sergeant John Ward, a spokesman for the force in British Columbia. "The public doesn't have a right to know anything," he said when asked about the turtle-like pace of an investigation into a bizarre RCMP killing of a man arrested for holding an open beer in a public place.

No one had a right to know anything. The senior executive committee did not have a right to a draft of an internal audit on the pension scandal, but merely listened as commissioner Giuliano Zaccardelli (who has since resigned over the Maher Arar scandal) described what was in the audit. The cabinet did not have a right to be told that the Mounties' own mistakes led to the deportation (by the United States) of Mr. Arar, an innocent Muslim Canadian who wound up tortured in Syria. Bob Rae did not have a right to be told the real story two years ago about the lack of bomb-sniffing dogs at Montreal's Mirabel airport, as he conducted a probe into the 1985 Air India terrorist bombings.

Openness is essential to good decision-making. At a time when no one dared say a word to offend the commissioner, the RCMP helped tip the last federal election to the Conservative Party by unnecessarily making public its investigation into a security leak in the Liberal finance minister's office. It raided an Ottawa Citizen reporter's house in an attempt to intimidate her. It participated in a campaign to ruin a banker who ran afoul of the previous prime minister, Jean Chrétien.

Much will depend on the choice of a new commissioner, expected to be announced soon. While there may be independent, visionary people at the superintendent level who deserve consideration, the government should cast a wide net to make sure it finds someone capable of bringing humility and honesty back to the national police force, and of making it again worthy of the public's trust.

18/06/07, Gloria Galloway, 'Broken' RCMP will be fixed, Ottawa vows

OTTAWA — The federal government will force the RCMP to accept fundamental changes to its leadership structure, possibly including independent oversight, with the historic acknowledgment the storied national police force is broken, Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day said yesterday.

In the aftermath of last week's scathing Brown report that identified the need for a new structure at the top to prevent a return to autocratic leadership and the punishment of whistle-blowers, Mr. Day said the government was determined to have "fresh breezes blowing through."

While all but ruling out a public inquiry, citing extreme cost and length of time, the minister said confidence in the Mounties needed to be guaranteed through changes to its structure.

David Brown, the government-appointed investigator assigned to look into an RCMP pension-fund scandal, found that former RCMP commissioner Giuliano Zaccardelli was an all-powerful leader who punished whistle-blowers in the force's pension-fund scandal and dragged his feet on launching criminal investigations.


Saying the RCMP's management is "horribly broken," Mr. Brown called for a task force to find ways to revamp the force, limiting the absolute power of the commissioner and replacing its "paramilitary" command structure with real oversight by a review board.

"He's suggesting it's time to move on some areas, like changing the governance structure and getting some fresh breezes blowing through, especially the high levels of this organization," Mr. Day told CTV's Question Period. The minister is expected to release details of the changes as early as today.

A new commissioner is expected to be appointed within the next three weeks and observers believe it will be an internal candidate.

Acting Commissioner Bev Busson, who took the job after Mr. Zaccardelli's departure, agreed to stay only until the new RCMP head could be found.

Critics of the RCMP have said the Mounties need an independent civilian oversight body, similar to those monitoring the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) and the Communications Security Establishment (CSE), to review the force's duties and functions.

Mr. Day said yesterday that his government may be prepared to take that step.

"We are in the midst of that discussion. The planets are aligning themselves to what is going to be a good development in terms of oversight."

The RCMP needs a system of management and oversight that will ensure transparency and accountability, said the minister, and to guarantee "that members who have concerns, whether it is about a cover-up or something inappropriate, can come forward and it's not going to have a negative influence on their careers."

Some opposition MPs have asked for a full-scale public inquiry into the pension-fund scandal.

Auditor-General Sheila Fraser found that $3.4-million was improperly spent on non-pension items, but later repaid, and that $1.3-million was paid for services that provided little or no value, or to hire employees' relatives.

But Mr. Day seems to agree with Mr. Brown that a task force will suffice.

"There are times when full public inquests may be appropriate on gigantic issues, but these things can drag on for years, get into the multimillions of dollars," the minister said yesterday.

"And, as Mr. Brown says in his report, we know what went wrong, we know things have to be fixed, here is a pathway to follow to have things fixed in a fairly short period of time, but enough time that we can get it done."

Retired staff sergeant Ron Lewis, who played a key role in bringing the pension-fund problems to public attention, said the choice of commissioner is critical - but not as critical as putting real oversight in place.

"We also need new governance and a new cultural review to make sure that the commissioner is bound by what's presented to him," Mr. Lewis told CTV.

"I believe it's time. Most other organizations have an oversight component and I believe the RCMP needs one as well," he said.

Senate Energy Bill

19/06/07, NYT Editorial, Crunch Time on Energy, Source.
23/06/07, NYT Editorial, Signs of Energy, Source.


19/06/07, NYT Editorial, Crunch Time on Energy, (Back).

The Senate will tell us this week whether it really wants to do something about oil dependency and global warming or if it is just fooling around.

The first week of debate on an energy bill, which the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, says he is determined to finish before the Fourth of July recess, produced a few satisfying moments — mainly involving bad ideas that were made to disappear. The days ahead will be more combative.

Here are important points of contention and some thoughts about how they should be resolved in a way that moves this country toward a cleaner, more sustainable energy future:

¶ Fuel Economy. The most effective energy efficiency policy ever adopted by the federal government is the Corporate Average Fuel Economy requirement of 1975. CAFE has saved billions of barrels of oil, but it has not been improved for decades. The bill before the Senate would bring fleetwide averages from roughly 25 miles per gallon to 35 miles per gallon by 2020, hardly an impossible target. This proposal should be approved, and a weaker compromise offered by industry allies should be defeated.

¶ Renewable Electricity. A provision championed by Senator Jeff Bingaman, the leading Democratic spokesman on energy issues, would require utilities to produce 15 percent of their power from wind, solar, biomass and other clean-energy sources by 2020 — reducing demand for fossil fuels as well as greenhouse gas emissions. Senior Republicans, complaining about the one-size-fits-all approach, are threatening a filibuster. Here again, though, the requirement does not seem insanely onerous. The Senate approved a 10 percent requirement two years ago, and the House is talking about 20 percent.

¶Coal-to-Liquids. A coalition of coal interests has been lobbying furiously for subsidies to build a new generation of coal-to-liquid power plants to produce diesel fuel. This could reduce our dependence on foreign oil, although marginally and at great cost. It would also be a disaster in terms of global warming unless ways are found to capture and store the carbon dioxide emissions from the refining process. Without such safeguards, coal-to-liquid plants cannot be allowed to proceed.

¶Renewable Fuels. Biofuels offer a far cleaner and more promising approach to oil dependency than coal-to-liquids. The bill would quintuple production, chiefly ethanol from sources other than corn. This is a generally popular provision that must be amended to make sure that the rush to ethanol does not destroy valuable forest and conservation lands.

Waiting in the wings is a tax bill that will eventually be married to the energy bill. On the whole, the tax bill favors renewable and other clean energy sources over the oil, natural gas, coal and nuclear interests that received top billing in the 2005 plan. In fact, the entire energy discussion this year is more forward-looking than it has been for some time. It will be up to the leadership to keep it that way.


23/06/07, NYT Editorial, Signs of Energy, (Back).

The Senate passed an energy bill on Thursday night that could make a constructive, if modest, contribution toward reducing this country’s greenhouse gas emissions and its dependence on foreign oil. Given the resistance of industry and the troubled history of previous energy bills, that is encouraging news. But it’s still only a start.

The bill includes one hugely important breakthrough: the first substantial improvement in the nation’s automobile fuel-efficiency standards since 1975. Thanks partly to skilled management by Harry Reid, the majority leader, the measure is also relevant to the challenges at hand and largely uncluttered by special-interest amendments.

There were, of course, disappointments. A threatened Republican filibuster killed an amendment requiring the nation’s utilities to produce 15 percent of their electricity from wind and other renewable energy sources. Surrendering to the whiny protests of an industry that is already favorably taxed and awash in profits, the Republicans also blocked a $32 billion package which would have raised taxes on oil and gas companies and poured the proceeds into alternative fuels.

The bill cannot be seen as a substitute for comprehensive climate change legislation that would force all sectors of the economy to substantially reduce their emissions. Many scientists believe that the worst consequences of global warming can be avoided only if emissions are reduced by 50 percent or more by mid-century — a target that is unlikely to be reached unless the government places a stiff price on carbon that, in turn, drives major new investments in cleaner technologies.

Congress has promised to address such legislation later this year. Until then, the energy bill will have to serve as an indicator of Congressional intent, and what it indicates is a Democratic majority that is willing to move forward.

The fuel economy provision would increase the average mileage of new cars and trucks from 25 miles per gallon today to 35 miles per gallon by 2020 — a 40 percent improvement. In addition, the bill would quintuple the production of biofuels, chiefly ethanol made from sources other than corn, while seeking to minimize collateral environmental damage. It would accelerate efforts to build coal-fired power plants that are capable of capturing and storing emissions of carbon dioxide, the main global warming gas, and would mandate stronger efficiency standards for household appliances.

Thankfully, the Democrats — and in this case with some Republican help — beat back efforts by the coal producers to win approval of a truly mischievous coal-to-liquids program that could have greatly increased global warming emissions.

The action now shifts to the House, where Nancy Pelosi, the speaker, has promised a bill of equal value. This will not be easy. The coal, oil and automobile interests are not going away. Good ideas will be opposed and bad ones will resurface. Ms. Pelosi will need solidarity from the Democrats and an assist from Republican moderates. Let us hope she gets both.

(Back)

19/06/07, Verlyn Klinkenborg, Millions of Missing Birds, Vanishing in Plain Sight

Last week, the Audubon Society released a new report describing the sharp and startling population decline of some of the most familiar and common birds in America: several kinds of sparrows, the Northern bobwhite, the Eastern meadowlark, the common grackle and the common tern. The average decline of the 20 species in the Audubon Society’s report is 68 percent.

Forty years ago, there were an estimated 31 million bobwhites. Now there are 5.5 million. Compared to the hundred-some condors presently in the wild, 5.5 million bobwhites sounds like a lot of birds. But what matters is the 25.5 million missing and the troubles that brought them down — and are all too likely to bring down the rest of them, too. So this is not extinction, but it is how things look before extinction happens.

The word “extinct” somehow brings to mind the birds that seem like special cases to us, the dodo or the great auk or the passenger pigeon. Most people would never have had a chance to see dodos and great auks on their remote islands before they were decimated in the 17th and 19th centuries. What is hard to remember about passenger pigeons isn’t merely their once enormous numbers. It’s the enormous numbers of humans to whom their comings and goings were a common sight and who supposed, erroneously, that such unending clouds of birds were indestructible. We recognize the extraordinary distinctness of the passenger pigeon now because we know its fate, killed off largely by humans. But we have moralized it thoroughly without ever really taking it to heart.

The question is whether we will see the distinctness of the field sparrow — its number is down from 18 million 40 years ago to 5.8 million — only when the last pair is being kept alive in a zoo somewhere. We love to finally care when the death watch is on. It makes us feel so very human.

Like you, I’ve been reading dire reports of declining species for many years now. They have the value of causing us to pay attention to species in trouble, and the sad fact is that the only species likely to endure are the ones we humans manage to pay attention to. There was a time when it was better, if you were a nonhuman species, to be ignored by humans because we trapped, shot or otherwise exploited all of the ones that got our attention. But in the past 40 years, we have killed all those millions of birds or, let us say, unintentionally caused a dramatic population loss, simply by going about business as usual.

Agriculture has intensified. So has development. Open space has been sharply reduced. We have simply pursued our livelihoods. We knew it was inimical to wolves and mountain lions. But we somehow trusted that all the innocent little birds were here to stay. What they actually need to survive, it turns out, is a landscape that is less intensely human.

The Audubon Society portrait of common bird species in decline is really a report on who humans are. Let me offer a proposition about Homo sapiens. We are the only species on earth capable of an ethical awareness of other species and, thus, the only species capable of happily ignoring that awareness. So far, our economic interests have proved to be completely incompatible with all but a very few forms of life. It’s not that we believe that other species don’t matter. It’s that, historically speaking, it hasn’t been worth believing one way or another. I don’t suppose that most Americans would actively kill a whippoorwill if they had the chance. Yet in the past 40 years its number has dropped by 1.6 million.

In our everyday economic behavior, we seem determined to discover whether we can live alone on earth. E.O. Wilson has argued eloquently and persuasively that we cannot, that who we are depends as much on the richness and diversity of the biological life around us as it does on any inherent quality in our genes. Environmentalists of every stripe argue that we must somehow begin to correlate our economic behavior — by which I mean every aspect of it: production, consumption, habitation — with the welfare of other species.

This is the premise of sustainability. But the very foundation of our economic interests is self-interest, and in the survival of other species we see way too little self to care.

The trouble with humans is that even the smallest changes in our behavior require an epiphany. And yet compared to the fixity of other species, the narrowness of their habitats, the strictness of their diets, the precision of the niches they occupy, we are flexibility itself.

We look around us, expecting the rest of the world’s occupants to adapt to the changes that we have caused, when, in fact, we have the right to expect adaptation only from ourselves.

18/06/07, Jeffrey Gettleman, In Ethiopian Desert, Fear and Cries of Army Brutality

In the Ogaden Desert, Ethiopia — The rebels march 300 strong across the crunchy earth, young men with dreadlocks and AK-47s slung over their shoulders.

Often when they pass through a village, the entire village lines up, one sunken cheekbone to the next, to squint at them.

“May God bring you victory,” one woman whispered.

This is the Ogaden, a spindle-legged corner of Ethiopia that the urbane officials in Addis Ababa, the capital, would rather outsiders never see. It is the epicenter of a separatist war pitting impoverished nomads against one of the biggest armies in Africa.

What goes on here seems to be starkly different from the carefully constructed up-and-coming image that Ethiopia — a country that the United States increasingly relies on to fight militant Islam in the Horn of Africa — tries to project.

In village after village, people said they had been brutalized by government troops. They described a widespread and longstanding reign of terror, with Ethiopian soldiers gang-raping women, burning down huts and killing civilians at will.

It is the same military that the American government helps train and equip — and provides with prized intelligence. The two nations have been allies for years, but recently they have grown especially close, teaming up last winter to oust an Islamic movement that controlled much of Somalia and rid the region of a potential terrorist threat.

The Bush administration, particularly the military, considers Ethiopia its best bet in the volatile Horn — which, with Sudan, Somalia and Eritrea, is fast becoming intensely violent, virulently anti-American and an incubator for terrorism.

But an emerging concern for American officials is the way that the Ethiopian military operates inside its own borders, especially in war zones like the Ogaden.

Anab, a 40-year-old camel herder who was too frightened, like many others, to give her last name, said soldiers took her to a police station, put her in a cell and twisted her nipples with pliers. She said government security forces routinely rounded up young women under the pretext that they were rebel supporters so they could bring them to jail and rape them.

“Me, I am old,” she said, “but they raped me, too.”

Moualin, a rheumy-eyed elder, said Ethiopian troops stormed his village, Sasabene, in January looking for rebels and burned much of it down. “They hit us in the face with the hardest part of their guns,” he said.

The villagers said the abuses had intensified since April, when the rebels attacked a Chinese-run oil field, killing nine Chinese workers and more than 60 Ethiopian soldiers and employees. The Ethiopian government has vowed to crush the rebels but rejects all claims that it abuses civilians.

“Our soldiers are not allowed to do these kinds of things,” said Nur Abdi Mohammed, a government spokesman. “This is only propaganda and cannot be justified. If a government soldier did this type of thing they would be brought before the courts.”

Even so, the State Department, the European Parliament and many human rights groups, mostly outside Ethiopia, have cited thousands of cases of torture, arbitrary detention and extrajudicial killings — enough to raise questions in Congress about American support of the Ethiopian government.

“This is a country that is abusing its own people and has no respect for democracy,” said Representative Donald M. Payne, Democrat of New Jersey and chairman of the House Foreign Affairs subcommittee on Africa and global health.

“We’ve not only looked the other way but we’ve pushed them to intrude in other sovereign nations,” he added, referring to the satellite images and other strategic help the American military gave Ethiopia in December, when thousands of Ethiopian troops poured into Somalia and overthrew the Islamist leadership.

According to Georgette Gagnon, deputy director for the Africa division of Human Rights Watch, Ethiopia is one of the most repressive countries in Africa.

“What the Ethiopian security forces are doing,” she said, “may amount to crimes against humanity.”

Human Rights Watch issued a report in 2005 that documented a rampage by government troops against members of the Anuak, a minority tribe in western Ethiopia, in which soldiers ransacked homes, beat villagers to death with iron bars and in one case, according to a witness, tied up a prisoner and ran over him with a military truck.

After the report came out, the researcher who wrote it was banned by the Ethiopian government from returning to the country. Similarly, three New York Times journalists who visited the Ogaden to cover this story were imprisoned for five days and had all their equipment confiscated before being released without charges.

Ethiopia’s Tiananmen Square

In many ways, Ethiopia has a lot going for it these days: new buildings, new roads, low crime and a booming trade in cut flowers and coffee. It is the second most populous country in sub-Saharan Africa, behind Nigeria, with 77 million people.

Its leaders, many whom were once rebels themselves, from a neglected patch of northern Ethiopia, are widely known as some of the savviest officials on the continent. They had promised to let some air into a very stultified political system during the national elections of 2005, which were billed as a milestone on the road to democracy.

Instead, they turned into Ethiopia’s version of Tiananmen Square. With the opposition poised to win a record number of seats in Parliament, the government cracked down brutally, opening fire on demonstrators, rounding up tens of thousands of opposition supporters and students and leveling charges of treason and even attempted to kill top opposition leaders, including the man elected mayor of Addis Ababa.

Many opposition members are now in jail or in exile. The rest seem demoralized.

“There are no real steps toward democracy,” said Merera Gudina, vice president of the United Ethiopian Democratic Forces, a leading opposition party. “No real steps toward opening up space, no real steps toward ending repression.”

Ethiopian officials have routinely dismissed such complaints, accusing political protesters of stoking civil unrest and poking their finger into a well-known sore spot. Ethiopia has always had an authoritarian streak. This is a country, after all, where until the 1970s rulers claimed to be direct descendants of King Solomon. It is big, poor, famine-stricken, about half-Christian and half-Muslim, surrounded by hostile enemies and full of heavily armed separatist factions. As one high-ranking Ethiopian official put it, “This country has never been easy to rule.”

That has certainly been true for the Ogaden desert, a huge, dagger-shaped chunk of territory between the highlands of Ethiopia and the border of Somalia. The people here are mostly ethnic Somalis, and they have been chafing against Ethiopian rule since 1897, when the British ceded their claims to the area.

The colonial officials did not think the Ogaden was worth much. They saw thorny hills and thirsty people. Even today, it is still like that. What passes for a town is a huddle of bubble-shaped huts, the movable homes of camel-thwacking nomads who somehow survive out here. For roads, picture Tonka truck tracks running through a sandbox. The primary elements in this world are skin and bone and sun and rock. And guns. Loads of them.

Camel herders carry rifles to protect their animals. Young women carry pistols to protect their bodies. And then there is the Ogaden National Liberation Front, the machine-gun-toting rebels fighting for control of this desiccated wasteland.

Rebels Live Off the Land

Lion. Radio. Fearless. Peacock. Most of the men have nicknames that conceal their real identities. Peacock, who spoke some English, served as a guide. He shared the bitter little plums the soldiers pick from thorn bushes — “Ogaden chocolate,” he called them. He showed the way to gently skim water from the top of a mud puddle to minimize the amount of dirt that ends up in your stomach — even in the rainy season this is all there is to drink.

He pointed out the anthills, the coming storm clouds, the especially ruthless thorn trees and even a graveyard that stood incongruously in the middle of the desert. The graves — crude pyramids of stones — were from the war in 1977-78, when Somalia tried, disastrously, to pry the Ogaden out of Ethiopia’s hands and lost thousands of men. “It’s up to us now,” Peacock said.

Peacock was typical of the rebels. He was driven by anger. He said Ethiopian soldiers hanged his mother, raped his sister and beat his father. “I know, it’s hard to believe,” he said. “But it’s true.”

He had the hunch of a broken man and a voice that seemed far too tired for his 28 years. “It’s not that I like living in the bush,” he said. “But I have nowhere else to go.”

The armed resistance began in 1994, after the Ogaden National Liberation Front, then a political organization, broached the idea of splitting off from Ethiopia. The central government responded by imprisoning Ogadeni leaders, and according to academics and human rights groups, assassinating others. The Ogaden is part of the Somali National Regional State, one of nine ethnic-based states within Ethiopia’s unusual ethnic-based federal system. On paper, all states have the right to secede, if they follow the proper procedures. But it seemed that the government feared that if the Somalis broke away, so too would the Oromos, the Afar and many other ethnic groups pining for a country of their own.

The Ethiopian government calls the Ogaden rebels terrorists and says they are armed and trained by Eritrea, Ethiopia’s neighbor and bitter enemy. One of the reasons Ethiopia decided to invade Somalia was to prevent the rebels from using it as a base.

The government blames them for a string of recent bombings and assassinations and says they often single out rival clan members. Ethiopian officials have been pressuring the State Department to add the Ogaden National Liberation Front to its list of designated foreign terrorist organizations. Until recently, American officials refused, saying the rebels had not threatened civilians or American interests.

“But after the oil field attack in April,” said one American official who spoke on the condition of anonymity, “we are reassessing that.”

American policy toward Ethiopia seems to be in flux. Administration officials are trying to increase the amount of nonhumanitarian aid to Ethiopia to $481 million next year, from $284 million this year. But key Democrats in Congress, including Mr. Payne, are questioning this, saying that because of Ethiopia’s human rights record, it is time to stop writing the country a blank check.

In April, European Commission officials began investigating Ethiopia for war crimes in connection to hundreds of Somali civilians killed by Ethiopian troops during heavy fighting in Mogadishu, Somalia’s capital.

Women Are Suffering the Most

In the Ogaden, it is not clear how many people are dying. The vast area is essentially a no-go zone for most human rights workers and journalists and where the Ethiopian military, by its own admission, is waging an intense counterinsurgency campaign.

The violence has been particularly acute against women, villagers said, and many have recently fled.

Asma, 19, who now lives in neighboring Somaliland, said she was stuck in an underground cell for more than six months last year, raped and tortured. “They beat me on the feet and breasts,” she said. She was freed only after her father paid the soldiers ransom, she said, though she did not know how much.

Ambaro, 25, now living in Addis Ababa, said she was gang-raped by five Ethiopian soldiers in January near the town of Fik. She said troops came to her village every night to pluck another young woman.

“I’m in pain now, all over my body,” she said. “ I’m worried that I’ll become crazy because of what happened.”

Many Ogaden villagers said that when they tried to bring up abuses with clan chiefs or local authorities, they were told it was better to keep quiet.

The rebels said thats was precisely why they attacked the Chinese oil field: to get publicity for their cause and the plight of their region (and to discourage foreign companies from exploiting local resources). According to them, they strike freely in the Ogaden all the time, ambushing military convoys and raiding police stations.

Mr. Mohammed, the government spokesman, denied that, saying the rebels “will not confront Ethiopian military forces because they are not well trained.”

Expert or not, they are determined. They march for hours powered by a few handfuls of rice. They travel extremely light, carrying only their guns, two clips of bullets, a grenade and a tarp. They brag about how many Ethiopians they have killed, and every piece of their camouflage, they say, is pulled off dead soldiers. They joke about slaughtering Ethiopian troops the same way they slaughter goats.

Their morale seems high, especially for men who sleep in the dirt every night. Their throats are constantly dry, but they like to sing.

“A camel is delivering a baby today and the milk of the camel is coming,” goes one campfire song. “Who is the owner of this land?”