DebateGate

Bodies laid out on mortuary floor
By Noel Mwakugu
BBC News, Kisumu 


_{There has also been violence in Nairobi and Mombasa}

Outside the mortuary in the Nyanza Provincial Hospital, to the west of the city of Kisumu, a small angry crowd had gathered on Monday morning.
 
They had come after hearing that dozens of bodies had been taken there by police overnight and in the early morning.

Inside the main room in the mortuary, I counted 43 bodies - mostly young men, two women and three children.

They had been brought in after a night of violence, blamed on the disputed presidential election.

Mortuary attendants were quietly moving among the bodies, which had been laid on the floor in a single row.

None of them had been covered - some of the men were topless, others were naked.


 

One man said that police had fired indiscriminately, even after protesters had started running away

 

All of the bodies had sustained at least one gunshot wound, in the legs, chest, stomach and back. One man had been hit by a bullet in the head.

A woman had been laid next to a child, presumably her daughter.

Outside, I spoke to one man who had witnessed their deaths. He said that police had fired indiscriminately, even after protesters had started running away. The woman and her daughter were both hit by the bullets.

Police chief Grace Kahindi said she had no knowledge of any deaths.

There are fears that news of all of the shootings might spark more anger in the city and its suburbs.

The streets of Kisumu - Kenya's third largest city and a stronghold of opposition leader Raila Odinga - are almost deserted. Police in full riot gear are patrolling in their vehicles.

Shops and business remain closed and the water supply to the city has been cut. Many people have moved out to the suburbs.

Following last night's sporadic shooting, barricades built from boulders, trees and tyres have been built across the roads leading to the suburbs.

Small groups of young men are keeping watch for the riot police.

The mood is sombre, mixed with anger.

One man told me that peopled wanted to know why the government was killing them for demanding their rights.


Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/africa/7165666.stm

Published: 2007/12/31 11:08:59 GMT

? BBC MMVII

I read an article quite a while ago in US News & World Report on young ladies being rejected from Ivy League schools (primarily Harvard and Yale) that were more than qualified for entry. They are being rejected because these schools are struggling to maintain a ratio of male students that is roughly equal (or at least in the 48 to 49% range) of male students to female students. It is the first time that Harvard, Yale and other Ivy League schools have faced this phenomenon.

In 21 of 27 western developed nations, young women are equal to or constitute the majority of current college graduates. More than that, studies have shown that 15 year-old females in most western nations are far outpacing their male counterparts in academic achievement. Most universities predict a trend in rising female graduates and a declining ratio of male graduates. Even in Iran, the ratio of female university students to male students is nearly 2 to 1. High enough that the ultra-conservative Clerics have considered enforcing quotas to lower this ratio.

Higher female education rates have been linked to lower poverty rates in poor countries. It has also been linked to a reduction in disease and a general increase in the standard of living.

On the opposite end, higher education rates for women has been linked to lower marriage rates and a later age for first marriages. This has especially been seen in Northern and Western Europe, but in the United States as well. Women without a college education are more likely to be married younger and have more children than those with a college degree. Though that is by no means a hard and steadfast rule (also note that the rate of marriage is increasing amongst college graduated women, though still at a much later age). Note: These stats can be found at Rutgers State of the Marriage website...a good read for any data dorks ;

The one area where women are having a much more difficult time and it is still completely a "man's world" as James Brown would say, are the "hard sciences" and Engineering. Men still comprise nearly 70% of the university degrees earned in these fields, with a higher percentage in developing countries.

Also, the change has yet to be made in the workforce, where women are still feeling the effects of gender inequality in pay and some jobs are still gender dominated. The Nordic countries once again lead the way with very little difference in employment rates between men and women. In Mexico, Turkey, Spain, Japan, and Ireland the rate may very as much as 50%.

Interestingly, studies have shown that occupational segregation (i.e. X is a woman's field whereas Y is a man's field) is trending towards increasing in the future, not decreasing as many would expect with the educational trend for women. Questions over whether this is an area for Government intervention (a market failure?) or simply an area to leave alone are being debated in several countries.

What is not up for debate is that the future role of women in society is going to impact society itself. The role of the family, women in politics, women in the workplace, and issues such as pay inequity and occupational segregation will become more and more important as women themselves become the majority of the educated class.

What will society look like as these women begin to take their role in it?

You know, Tee and Brass take a lot of shit in here for posting alternatives to what is generally accepted as conventional wisdom.

Yet, there are a number of people in here who actually believe that the tens of thousands of tons of biological, chemical and possibly nuclear weapons of Saddam Hussein's Iraq were smuggled out of that country and into Syria while under constant surveillance by the United States, United Kingdom, and other powers.

I thought this an isolated nutter theory for those whose tongues were so attached to a Bush orifice that they simply could not allow for the WMD to not be there, even if it meant that a two-bit dictator with absolutely no military tactical ability at all, pulled one of the most cunning tricks of modern history.

Yet, this is really a belief, a strong one in the right-wing world. I'm a bit bewildered. So I thought a closer look was in order.

According to newsmax the real culprits were the infamous Russian Spetsnaz special forces units.

"I am absolutely sure that Russian Spetsnatz[sp] units moved WMD out of Iraq before the war," stated John Shaw, the former deputy undersecretary for international technology security.

Just to note, it is spelled "Spetsnaz" (without the 't') when transliterated and it means Special Purpose Regiment. Supposedly the WMD were hidden in both Syria and Lebanon by the Spetsnaz and there are satellite photos confirming this.

For further proof of Russian involvement with rebuilding Saddam's chemical weapons stockpile the article makes the following claims:

According to the book "Russian Military Power," published in 1982, "It is known that the Soviets maintain stocks of CW (chemical weapons) agents."

The two primary Russian chemical weapons in the 1982 Soviet inventory were the nerve agent "VX" and "blistering agents - developments of mustard gas used so effectively in World War I."

Of course, the Soviet Union wasn't the only nation that had a massive stockpile of VX in 1982! Mustard Gas was not used "so effectively" in World War I. In fact, it was mostly a failure except as an area-denial agent, which only helped to further the massive stalemate. Where mustard gas excelled was in later use against weaker enemies who had no way to counter it, or use it back against the attacker. For example, Italy used it against the Ethiopians in the 1930's.

Back to the article, this is not proof at all, of anything! It is just a statement from a book on the Cold War Soviets who certainly did have a lot of nasty NBC weapons, just as we did.

Now we really go on a conspiracy rollercoaster ride. Did the assassinated Prime Minister of Lebanon, Rafik Hariri discover that the Russians and Syrians had hidden Iraq's WMD in his country? Is that why the Syrians had to rub him out? The article suggests this...

However, the possibility that Hariri discovered the location of the Iraqi WMD systems inside his country lends some credible backing to a Syrian assassination effort to silence him.

Also, we are told that Moscow gives Syria a great line of credit on new weapons systems, whereas the Russians expect China to pay in cash, upfront. This can only mean that Syria is "paying" for these new weapons by hiding Russia's big secret! We wouldn't want a full-scale mob war to break out.

And how did the author come by the above piece of dirty little information? We're never told. Maybe he had a private eye tail a Syrian weapons buyer, or maybe he did a credit check on Syria. Who knows?

So how do explain the ability of Iraq and the sinister Russians to pull this big ruse off? Well that is one issue the author does not sidestep, surprisingly. It was out and out CIA failure.

There is no question that the Russian effort to remove Iraqi WMD systems was the most successful intelligence operation of the 21st century. The Russians were able to move hundreds of tons of chemical, biological and nuclear materials without being discovered by CIA satellites or NSA radio listening posts.

"There is a clear sense on how effective they were," noted Shaw.

"The fact that the CIA did not know shows just how successful the Russian operation was," he concluded.

So where was MI6 and James Bond? No doubt he was taken in by an alluring Iraqi belly-dancer, who was really an Iraqi double agent. 


This is another article from the very esteemed Worldnet Daily.

I'm not sure it is even worth covering. An opposition Syrian party based in Maryland, claims that President Assad smuggled in the Iraqi WMD in "large wooden crates and barrels."

A little note about the Reform Party of Syria. They are pro-Israel, believe in separating mosque and state (something they have in common with the Ba'athists), and they supported Nicolas Sarkozy's election in France. Why they supported anyone in France, I have no clue other than Syria was at one time a colonial extension of France.

That's about it on this article. Of course, it is wise to remember that we took a lot of information on Iraq's programs from an Iraqi political pressure (Iraqi National Congress) group led by Ahmed Chalabi. So one is wise to understand the group's own motives, especially this particular group who would never be elected by the Syrians in a free election.

Lost in translation
Jonathan Steele
June 14, 2006 12:49 PM

Comment is Free

My recent comment piece explaining how Iran's president was badly misquoted when he allegedly called for Israel to be "wiped off the map" has caused a welcome little storm. The phrase has been seized on by western and Israeli hawks to re-double suspicions of the Iranian government's intentions, so it is important to get the truth of what he really said.

I took my translation - "the regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time" - from the indefatigable Professor Juan Cole's website where it has been for several weeks.

But it seems to be mainly thanks to the Guardian giving it prominence that the New York Times, which was one of the first papers to misquote Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, came out on Sunday with a defensive piece attempting to justify its reporter's original "wiped off the map" translation. (By the way, for Farsi speakers the original version is available here.)

Joining the "off the map" crowd is David Aaronovitch, a columnist on the Times (of London), who attacked my analysis yesterday. I won't waste time on him since his knowledge of Farsi is as minimal as that of his Latin. The poor man thinks the plural of casus belli is casi belli, unaware that casus is fourth declension with the plural casus (long u).

The New York Times's Ethan Bronner and Nazila Fathi, one of the paper's Tehran staff, make a more serious case. They consulted several sources in Tehran. "Sohrab Mahdavi, one of Iran's most prominent translators, and Siamak Namazi, managing director of a Tehran consulting firm, who is bilingual, both say 'wipe off' or 'wipe away' is more accurate than 'vanish' because the Persian verb is active and transitive," Bronner writes.

The New York Times goes on: "The second translation issue concerns the word 'map'. Khomeini's words were abstract: 'Sahneh roozgar.' Sahneh means scene or stage, and roozgar means time. The phrase was widely interpreted as 'map', and for years, no one objected. In October, when Mr Ahmadinejad quoted Khomeini, he actually misquoted him, saying not 'Sahneh roozgar' but 'Safheh roozgar', meaning pages of time or history. No one noticed the change, and news agencies used the word 'map' again."

This, in my view, is the crucial point and I'm glad the NYT accepts that the word "map" was not used by Ahmadinejad. (By the way, the Wikipedia entry on the controversy gets the NYT wrong, claiming falsely that Ethan Bronner "concluded that Ahmadinejad had in fact said that Israel was to be wiped off the map".)

If the Iranian president made a mistake and used "safheh" rather than "sahneh", that is of little moment. A native English speaker could equally confuse "stage of history" with "page of history". The significant issue is that both phrases refer to time rather than place. As I wrote in my original post, the Iranian president was expressing a vague wish for the future. He was not threatening an Iranian-initiated war to remove Israeli control over Jerusalem.

Two other well-established translation sources confirm that Ahmadinejad was referring to time, not place. The version of the October 26 2005 speech put out by the Middle East Media Research Institute, based on the Farsi text released by the official Iranian Students News Agency, says: "This regime that is occupying Qods [Jerusalem] must be eliminated from the pages of history." (NB: not "wiped". I accept that "eliminated" is almost the same, indeed some might argue it is more sinister than "wiped", though it is a bit more of a mouthful if you are trying to find four catchy and easily memorable words with which to incite anger against Iran.)

MEMRI (its text of the speech is available here) is headed by a former Isareli military intelligence officer and has sometimes been attacked for alleged distortion of Farsi and Arabic quotations for the benefit of Israeli foreign policy. On this occasion they supported the doveish view of what Ahmadinejad said.

Finally we come to the BBC monitoring service which every day puts out hundreds of highly respected English translations of broadcasts from all round the globe to their subscribers - mainly governments, intelligence services, thinktanks and other specialists. I approached them this week about the controversy and a spokesperson for the monitoring service's marketing unit, who did not want his name used, told me their original version of the Ahmadinejad quote was "eliminated from the map of the world".

As a result of my inquiry and the controversy generated, they had gone back to the native Farsi-speakers who had translated the speech from a voice recording made available by Iranian TV on October 29 2005. Here is what the spokesman told me about the "off the map" section: "The monitor has checked again. It's a difficult expression to translate. They're under time pressure to produce a translation quickly and they were searching for the right phrase. With more time to reflect they would say the translation should be "eliminated from the page of history".

Would the BBC put out a correction, given that the issue had become so controversial, I asked. "It would be a long time after the original version", came the reply. I interpret that as "probably not", but let's see.

Finally, I approached Iradj Bagherzade, the Iranian-born founder and chairman of the renowned publishing house, IB Tauris. He thought hard about the word "roozgar". "History" was not the right word, he said, but he could not decide between several better alternatives "this day and age", "these times", "our times", "time".

So there we have it. Starting with Juan Cole, and going via the New York Times' experts through MEMRI to the BBC's monitors, the consensus is that Ahmadinejad did not talk about any maps. He was, as I insisted in my original piece, offering a vague wish for the future.

A very last point. The fact that he compared his desired option - the elimination of "the regime occupying Jerusalem" - with the fall of the Shah's regime in Iran makes it crystal clear that he is talking about regime change, not the end of Israel. As a schoolboy opponent of the Shah in the 1970's he surely did not favour Iran's removal from the page of time. He just wanted the Shah out.

The same with regard to Israel. The Iranian president is undeniably an opponent of Zionism or, if you prefer the phrase, the Zionist regime. But so are substantial numbers of Israeli citizens, Jews as well as Arabs. The anti-Zionist and non-Zionist traditions in Israel are not insignificant. So we should not demonise Ahmadinejad on those grounds alone.

Does this quibbling over phrases matter? Yes, of course. Within days of the Ahmadinejad speech the then Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon, was calling for Iran to be expelled from the United Nations. Other foreign leaders have quoted the map phrase. The United States is piling pressure on its allies to be tough with Iran.

Let me give the last word to Juan Cole, with whom I began. "I am entirely aware that Ahmadinejad is hostile to Israel. The question is whether his intentions and capabilities would lead to a military attack, and whether therefore pre-emptive warfare is prescribed. I am saying no, and the boring philology is part of the reason for the no."

The shifting fronts of Bush?s war

28 September 07
Issue 116


_{Pakistani soldiers deployed in Waziristan.}
 
When Gordon Brown took over from Blair the biggest obstacle to refurbishing the image of New Labour was the war in Iraq. It remains an obstacle, despite the British withdrawal of troops from the centre of Basra to the airport outside the city?effectively a recognition of defeat in the effort to control the south of the country. But the one thing Brown did not dare say was that this marked the end of British involvement. For that would have been seen as withdrawing moral support for George Bush?s war.

The Bush administration feels it must try to rescue something from defeat. That is the significance of the Petraeus-Cocker report to Congress and Bush?s announcement that the ?surge? will continue into next year. All the Petraeus report showed, in reality, was that if enough troops are concentrated long enough in one area, their opponents are likely to move elsewhere or to go into hiding. To retreat in the face of overwhelming numbers is the most elementary rule of guerrilla warfare.

Yet the very visible failure of the US military presence in Iraq is eroding its global power. This provides the context for a speech in late August in which Bush raised the threat of military action against Iran. There have been several such moments of anti-Iranian rhetoric over the past three years. This instance may also lead nowhere, but the possibility that Bush will try to compensate for defeat in Iraq by bombing Iran cannot be ruled out. A US attack on Iran would create near insuperable difficulties for Brown. The massive opposition to Blair?s support for the Israeli war on Lebanon last year shows how easily such actions can massively reinvigorate the anti-war movement.

There is, however, one US war which Brown thinks he will gain from backing?the one in Afghanistan. Those Western powers who did not see any advantage in supporting a war in Iraq have sought to show that the US has to take them seriously by offering to help it out in Afghanistan. France, Germany and Spain all have troops in Afghanistan. The Brown strategy seems to be to use the British presence in southern Afghanistan to overcome any tension with the US over withdrawal from Basra. Much of the media has come to Brown?s aid, painting the conflict as the ?good war? in contrast with the ?bad war? in Iraq.

Such arguments have even gained currency with sections of the left internationally. So the Spanish social democrats who won an election by opposing the Iraq war, and the leaders of Rifondazione Comunista in Italy, who mobilised huge numbers against it, now routinely vote for troops in Afghanistan on the grounds that they are ?peacekeepers?. This involves an assumption that the imperialist powers can bring ?civilisation?, ?peace? and ?freedom for women?. Yet it is precisely the intervention of the imperialist great powers that has pushed Afghanistan backwards over the past 30 years.

Afghanistan in the 1970s was a peculiarly lopsided society?an extreme example of ?uneven and combined? development. The great mass of the population were cultivators and herders, eking out a living from the land, sometimes supplemented by low level trade, artisanal production, smuggling and brigandage, with social relations characteristic of clan or tribal societies. Only a relatively small segment of the population, based in the towns, especially Kabul, were fully part of the modern world of capitalism. They experienced university education or military training, and aspired to turn Afghanistan into a ?modern country?. A section of this group, based mainly among the army officers and organised through the ?Communist? People?s Democratic Party, tried to impose top_down modernisation after a coup in 1977. The attempt to speed up history failed disastrously. Spontaneous rural uprisings occurred, which increasingly articulated their opposition through rival Islamist currents. The ?modernisers? ended up blaming each other for their failure. The Communist leader, Taraki, was murdered by his number two, Amin, and the party split along ethnic lines between Persian speaking and Pushtun speaking factions.

The country had long been a buffer state with Russia on one side and Britain, then the US, on the other. Now inter-imperialist rivalry began to have a devastating effect. Since the Communist officers were allied with the USSR, the US thought it could weaken its influence by providing arms to the various insurgent forces. The USSR, afraid of losing influence, intervened to try to stabilise the country under its own control. It sent in many thousands of troops, murdering Amin, imposing Babrik Karmal as his successor and attempting to crush resistance using all the tried and tested forms of ?ant-insurgent? warfare pioneered by the British in Malaya and the US in Vietnam. The US then upped the ante by working with the Pakistani military dictatorship of Zia ul-Haq and that country?s right wing Islamist parties to provide heavy armaments to?and exercise control over ?the rival Afghan resistance forces.

What would have been a nasty civil war, involving the use of light weapons, until rival factions came to a compromise, became a devastating conflict involving the most destructive modern weaponry. Even the final abandonment of Afghanistan by the USSR, preoccupied by its domestic crisis, did not end the mayhem. The different forces armed by the great powers turned on each other, as rival Tajik, Uzbek and Pushtun groups (the latter with arms and encouragement from the US allies, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia) fought for control of Kabul.

The effect of a decade and a half of such devastation, epitomised by the five million Afghans who took refuge in neighbouring countries, was to push the whole society backwards. It was this that gave rise to the Taliban, although an important role was also played by Saudis and the then prime minister of Pakistan, Benazir Bhutto, who wanted a Pakistan dominated zone in southern Afghanistan to counter any Indian influence over the central government in Kabul.

The Taliban were the sons of Pushtun peasants and refugees whose education in Islamic seminaries, madrassas, gave them a certain status in their villages of birth. Their ultra puritanical version of Islam, with its rejection of modern ?Western? artefacts such as recorded music and videos, and its strict segregation of the sexes, fitted in with the perception of village people who blamed ?foreigners? and ?modern ways? for the devastation and the murderous infighting between the old Islamist parties. Such had been the destruction that even supposedly modern-thinking traders welcomed its military victories, while former members of the Pushtun wing of Afghan Communism, the Khalq, were to be found fighting in its ranks. The paradox was that the Taliban, by giving heightened expression to the traditional peasant distrust of the city and ?city folk?, were able to take control of Kabul.

The contradictory position the Taliban found themselves in would eventually have produced internal convulsions. They were, after all, trying to impose the traditional values of a peasant society while keeping the country?s traders content, working closely with the government of modern, capitalist Pakistan and engaging in negotiations over the building of an oil pipeline with US multinationals. But the US bombardment and invasion of the country after 11 September 2001 meant the internal contradictions never had a chance to work themselves out.

Capitalist ideological orthodoxy holds that economic development after the US occupation should have weaned the Pushtun peasantry away from their attachment to the Taliban. This proposition ignores the fact that capitalist development can further impoverish and marginalise layers of peasants. But the orthodoxy was never put to the test. The aid that was meant to encourage capitalist development was simply not forthcoming, and the US and its allies were happy to hand the country over to the ?Northern League?, one of the armed factions that had caused so much devastation in the past, with a token Pushtun presiding over an overwhelmingly non_Pushtun government. It is hardly surprising that the Taliban have been able to find a new hearing among Pushtun peasant communities.

The most recent twist to events is the US demand for ?hot pursuit??the right to attack supporters of the Taliban across the border in Pakistan. Even from Bush, this is an amazing combination of arrogance and short sightedness. The border region of Waziristan is populated by peasant clans who have a history of a century and a half of exploiting its rugged terrain to defeat invading armies. The British never succeed in controlling the region, even though at one point in the 1930s there were more British Indian army troops in Waziristan than in the whole of the rest of the subcontinent. The British were forced to negotiate with local clans. A government ?political agent? resided in a protected enclave in each ?tribal area? with a military force to protect him, but could only get his way through bribes, diplomacy aimed at exploiting feuds between different clans, and the threat of punitive military raids. The same method was used by successive Pakistani governments,1 until the present insurgency led to the deaths of 150 political agents in two years.

Musharraf has 130,000 Pakistani troops in the region, but he faces the problem that virtually the whole of the local population identifies with the struggles of their relatives across the border against the Nato forces. As a commentator in the Karachi paper Dawn noted a few months ago, bombing the area simply creates a bitterness that demands revenge against the outsiders.2 In fact, the only success Musharraf seems to have had has been to get one of the clans to turn against a group of Uzbek Islamist fighters on the grounds that their attempts to fight the Pakistani government as ?hypocrites? are a diversion from the fight against ?infidel? invaders of Afghanistan.3

It is nonsense to believe that US or Nato forces will be able to achieve more than the Pakistani army did, especially since their numbers would be much smaller. (In the whole of Afghanistan Nato has a quarter of the number of troops deployed by Pakistan in Waziristan.) The only significantly different approach Nato could take to that of the Pakistani army would be even more brutal, bombing wide areas in the hope of terrifying the whole population. The most likely effect would be to give further impetus to the other Pushtun peoples of North West Pakistan to identify with the struggle against the US and with the Taliban?and then the logic for Nato would be to spread the brutality even further and to justify it by the need to end ?savage? and ?barbaric? behaviour.

The argument of the liberals and the supposed left wing supporters of military intervention in this situation?as in so many others?is that ?something must be done?. Some of the practices of the Waziristan peoples are anathema to anyone trying to make the world a better place. But that is not going to be overcome by waging war.

Waziristan is an impoverished peasant society, with the average holdings among the biggest clan group, the Mahsuds, amounting to no more than two acres. Like many such societies elsewhere in the world it has been characterised by bloody vendettas and by patriarchal practices in the full meaning of the term (the male head of a household has been able to treat women like chattels). It has been drawn partially into the wider capitalist world in recent years, but this has happened in a way that has distorted people?s lives even more. Some families have risen out of abysmal poverty. One in ten men work as labourers in the Gulf states; others play a part in smuggling networks that stretch from Iran across Afghanistan and deep into Pakistan; a few have made careers in the Pakistani army or state bureaucracy; the number of children in primary schools has grown fivefold over the last quarter century. Yet the basic poverty of most people remains untouched. The drop out rate from primary schools remains 90 percent; high school enrolment has fallen by more than a third; families unable to afford a state education send their children to the religious madrassas.

It is these conditions that encourage people to continue to recast their traditional values in a Taliban form. The answer to that does not lie in the military obliteration of men, women and children alike. Rather it involves dealing with the roots of the poverty and providing them with a wider perspective on life. Neither Nato troops nor the Pakistani military are going to do this. The one thing that might is wider, deep seated social change in Pakistan. But, as the British and American governments repeatedly make clear, one purpose of the military activity in Afghanistan is to ?stabilise? Pakistan. The left internationally should oppose this war as firmly as the one in Iraq.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Notes
1: One former political agent has described both the anthropology of the region and the methods of the government: see Akbar S Ahmed?s Resistance and Control in Pakistan.

2: Dawn, 11 March 2007.

3: Dawn, 10 April 2007.

Romney embraces Jones endorsement
By GLEN JOHNSON
Associated Press Writer


_{"I'm proud to have the respect of people and the support of people who don't agree with my faith, but agree that I'm the right person to be president."}

Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney embraced his association with Christian conservative Bob Jones III Thursday despite Jones' sharp criticism of the Mormon faith central to Romney's life.

"I'm proud to have the respect of people and the support of people who don't agree with my faith, but agree that I'm the right person to be president," the former Massachusetts governor said while campaigning here. "And I'm not running for preacher; I'm running for president."

In the 2000 election, George W. Bush similarly basked in the reputation of Bob Jones University, a Greenville, S.C., school named for Jones's grandfather that is influential with some conservative Christians. Less than a month after a visit to the school, Bush wound up apologizing to Roman Catholic leaders for "causing needless offense."

The university teaches its students that Catholicism, like Mormonism, is a cult. At the time, it also had a policy banning interracial dating between its students. It rescinded the policy after publicity generated by Bush's visit.

The university continues a policy of banning alumni it says are "militant" homosexuals from its campus, school spokesman Jonathan Patie said Monday during an interview with The Associated Press.

Bob Jones III, the university's chancellor, said in his endorsement of Romney last week, "As a Christian, I am completely opposed to the doctrines of Mormonism." He also labeled the Mormon church an "erroneous faith," and included it in with Catholicism as a non-Christian "cult."

Nonetheless, Jones said he was backing Romney because he believes the GOP presidential contender embraces conservative values.

Romney's campaign has been touting the endorsement to skeptical evangelicals. Such support could prove critical in the Upstate area of South Carolina, the state slated to hold the third presidential primary.

Romney, bidding to become the first Mormon president, has said he understands questions about his faith, but he has also been protective of the Utah-based Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which he once served as a bishop and which he continues to back financially.

Asked Thursday how he could accept Jones's criticism of such a central facet of his life, Romney said: "Each church thinks their church is the best one or they wouldn't be going to it. ... The great thing about America is, we have our differences in viewpoint, but they don't lead to our discrimination against people based on their faith, or certainly lead to the kinds of violence we see in other places in the world."

Later, in comments certain to appeal to social conservatives, Romney jabbed at the "family values" of Democratic front-runner Hillary Rodham Clinton and her husband by harkening back to former President Clinton's affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky.

In response to a guest at a house party in Hooksett, N.H., who asked him how he would instill family values as president, Romney said: "One of the ways that you help instill, if you will, family values is by having a White House be a place that demonstrates family values. And, you know, I think during the last Clinton presidency, the White House did not demonstrate that in a way that was helpful to our nation's character."

Howard Wolfson, a spokesman for Clinton, fired back: "Hillary Clinton needs no lessons on character from a man who switches his positions on a daily basis."

Is it OK for disabled people to go to brothels?

By Finlo Rohrer
BBC News Magazine



We live in a society saturated with sex, but disabled people can often feel they've not been invited to the party. Some feel prostitution might provide the answer. But is visiting a brothel the right thing to do?
 
Taking your first steps. Riding a bike. Your first kiss. The first time you have sex. All standard rites of passage for anyone growing up in much of the world.

But what if you never took your first step? What if you couldn't ride a bike? What if the disability you were born with distanced you socially? What if there never was a first time?

Asta Philpot, 25, is a confident, extroverted person, similar to many other British men in their 20s. But he was born with arthogryposis, a condition that severely limits the movement in his limbs.

"Are you having a nice night?" is a line Asta is used to hearing, delivered by women in pubs and clubs throughout his adult life. There often seems to be a patronising undertone. Flirting isn't easy when you can't move.

Last year, he chose to lose his virginity in a licensed Spanish brothel. This year he took two other disabled men on a bus trip to the same brothel, filmed by BBC's One Life.

"When I was younger I had a friend and we always used to talk about relationships. He had muscular dystrophy and passed away without having a sexual experience. Why should people struggle for that experience?", Asta says.

Skewed view

This is the decade when discrimination against disabled people is finally being tackled in the UK, but while the law can open up a workplace or install a ramp, it is never easy to change what is in people's minds. And there are many people who would shy away from a relationship with a disabled person.

"I've been out to pubs and clubs, you see people with each other. Then they go off home. But people look at disabled people as not being able to have a relationship."

Society has a difficulty with disabled people and sex, Asta suggests. Television, and particularly the film industry, doesn't like to present people in wheelchairs in romantic scenarios. As objects of pity, or as exemplars of an inspirational fight against adversity maybe. But when was the last time you saw a disabled person playing the run-of-the-mill romantic lead?

To Asta, the situation is stark. Sexual experiences are a vital part of life. They are hard to come by. And visiting a brothel is the right course of action, he thinks.

"I feel more confident with girls. I'm totally for it. Not one regret. Disabled people are so sheltered and protected, in an institutionalised forcefield."

He believes in legalised prostitution, a view that many across society will not share but that appears to have currency within the "disabled community".

Moral issue

A survey for the Disability Now website in 2005 suggested that 75% of disabled people believed in the legalisation of prostitution, with 62.5% of men and 19.2% of women saying they would use trained sex workers. It's a situation that exists in the Netherlands where a voluntary group provides just such a service for disabled people. Most clients pay for it themselves but some local authorities subsidise the service.

There is also a group within the UK attempting to put disabled people in touch with suitable prostitutes, but there are those for whom visiting a brothel is morally wrong.

Anna Bowden, of Eaves, a group that helps vulnerable women, including those who have been trafficked into prostitution, recognises that disabled people face "a very difficult situation".

"Obviously I don't think the answer is perpetuating a form of violence against women. We reject the view that men have a right to sex."

But the notion that visiting a prostitute is intrinsically wrong is not shared by all. Cari Mitchell, of the English Collective of Prostitutes, make no distinction between disabled and non-disabled.

"Prostitution is consenting sex between adults. There's nothing uniquely degrading about prostitution except that it is criminalised," she says. "Men with disabilities going to a brothel is no different to any other men. They have the same needs as anybody else and should be entitled to the same access to paying for sex... as anybody else."

But counselling psychologist Simon Parritt, the author of the 2005 Disability Now survey, says it is difficult to see brothels as the answer.

"I think everybody has the right to a sexual identity," he says. "I don't think everybody has the right to sex with another person. That involves somebody else's rights."

Sexual exclusion

And in the eyes of some, he says, the Netherlands approach risks "ghettoising", with disabled people regarded "as something so different they need some kind of specialised charity sex".

But it is clear that many disabled people in the UK face sexual exclusion.

"The process of learning from experience is limited. When you get to 15-16 you may go out clubbing. The gap between you and your peer group becomes particularly big. Sexual and relationship skills get left behind," Mr Parritt says.

And he has first-hand experience of people's attitudes. Some years ago he placed identical personal ads, one mentioning that he was disabled, one not mentioning. The advert that mentioned his disability drew the better quality of responses but they were vastly fewer in number than the advert that did not mention his disability.

"People end up in their mid 20s and later not having had any kind of sexual experience. The right kind of experience gives you confidence."

Confidence is one of the things Asta was seeking. He thinks he has found it.

US-Iraqi contract 'in disarray'

A $1.2bn (?590m) contract for training Iraqi police was so badly managed that auditors do not know how the money was spent, the US state department says.


_{Training police and army is a key part of the US strategy in Iraq}

The programme was run by a private US company, DynCorp. It insists there has been no intentional fraud.

Auditors have stopped trying to audit the programme because all the documents are in disarray and the government is trying to retrieve some of the money.

Training Iraqis to take over security is a key part of US strategy.

Correspondents say this case is the latest to highlight problems linked to private companies being awarded lucrative government contracts in Iraq.

Olympic pool and VIP trailers

The US government audit, due to be released in Washington, says the state department cannot say "specifically what it received" for most of the money paid to DynCorp, the largest single contractor to the department.

DynCorp had won a contract to provide housing, food, weapons and specialist training for Iraq's police force in February 2004.

But some of its spending included the acquisition of a $1.8m X-ray scanner that was never used, and the $4m purchase of 20 VIP trailers and an Olympic-size swimming pool with money intended to fund an Iraqi police compound.

Stuart Bowen Jr, the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR), blamed the problems on long-standing contract administration problems within the state department office that awarded the contract.

He said "lack of controls" and "serious contract management issues" within the Bureau for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (INL) made it "vulnerable to waste and fraud".

Senator Joe Lieberman, chairman of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, said it could take the state department up to five years to review invoices and demand repayment from DynCorp for unjustified expenses.

"This scenario is far too frequent across the federal government," he said.

DynCorp had been asked to improve its management of government-owned equipment in Iraq twice before.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/world/americas/7057629.stm

Published: 2007/10/23 10:40:02 GMT

? BBC MMVII