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From the Los Angeles Times

Marine Corps seeks to use buddy ethic to stem rise in suicides

52 Marines killed themselves last year, compared with 42 the previous year. The corps wants Marines to rescue other Marines from the edge, just as they would come to their aid in combat.

By Tony Perry, Los Angeles Times

September 10, 2010

Reporting from Helmand province, Afghanistan

The young Marine had just gotten a Dear John letter from a woman he had described as "my everything." Days later, he killed himself while on guard duty here in Helmand province.

None of his buddies, even those who had known him since boot camp, had seen the signs of the man's downward emotional spiral.

The pain of his death was visible on their faces as Sgt. Maj. Carlton W. Kent, the senior enlisted man in the Marine Corps, delivered a message he has repeated at a dozen bases and outposts throughout this dangerous Afghan desert region: Marines are committing suicide in record numbers, and something has to be done about it.

Last year, 52 Marines killed themselves, compared with 42 the previous year. The 2009 toll is the highest since record-keeping began, giving the Marine Corps the grisly distinction of having the highest rate of suicide of any U.S. military service.

The corps, Kent said, can't wait five years for a study by an outside agency to propose solutions to the growing problem. The answer, he said, lies within the corps itself. Marines have a solemn duty to rescue other Marines from suicide, just as they would come to their aid in combat, he said.

At each location, young Marines listened intently. But at the outpost where the young Marine had killed himself, the troops seemed particularly struck by Kent's admonition. (In deference to his family's privacy, The Times is not disclosing the Marine's name or unit.)

Of the 52 who committed suicide last year, 16 had never deployed to a war zone; 25 committed suicide after such a deployment; and 11 killed themselves while in Iraq, Afghanistan or Africa. Along with the deaths, there were 154 attempts, also a record.

There are similarities among the suicides. Many are younger than 25, unmarried and in the junior enlisted ranks. The most common method is gunshot, followed by hanging and poison.

Some kill themselves at the beginning of a deployment, others soon after returning home, unable to adjust to garrison duty or civilian life. Some suicides occur just as a battalion is preparing to return home, possibly because the Marine feels that he did not perform well in the war zone.

The unrelenting stress of back-to-back deployments is a key factor in the rise in suicides, researchers say. Recently, the "dwell time" has been 1:1: for example, seven months at home, seven months deployed. Marine leaders hope that the current dwell time of 2:1, or 14 months at home for each seven months deployed, will help.

Other factors include relationship, family and money problems, run-ins with authority figures and a sense of isolation.

Since the beginning of the war in Afghanistan in 2001, and of the Iraq war in 2003, the Marines have tried various programs to sharpen awareness of suicide in their ranks and to break down the stigma that keeps Marines from seeking help.

Recruits in boot camp are told to watch out for their buddies. Sergeants are given training in how to spot Marines nearing the edge. Chaplains and medical corpsmen are tutored on how to intervene when a Marine begins showing signs of depression.

Still, the rate has increased, and last year, for the first time, it exceeded that of a similar age group in civilian life.

For U.S. civilians age 18 through 25, the rate is 20 suicides per 100,000; in 2009, the Marine Corps' rate was 24 per 100,000. The rate also exceeded that of the Army (now at 22 per 100,000) for the first time.

In response, the corps is preparing a series of updated videos for Marines, showing realistic scenarios of a fictional "Cpl. Decker" who, with marital and job problems, begins thinking of suicide. Each video will be tailored to a specific rank, a kind of "Rashomon" approach showing how a similar problem is viewed differently from various angles.

The Marines are also developing a "de-stress" telephone line with former Marines and corpsmen available to provide confidential counseling.

The idea, said Col. Grant Olbrich, section head of the Marine Corps Suicide Prevention Program, is to "leverage" a culture that calls for the men and women to "leave no Marine behind," in the famous combat motto.

"It doesn't mean they are less of a Marine if they need some help to get through a rough patch in their lives," Olbrich said in a telephone interview from his office at Quantico, Va.

There are hopeful signs that there will be fewer suicides this year. Although the number of attempts in the first seven months of the year was up from the same period in 2009, the number of suicides is down, albeit slightly. At the end of August, the service reported six fewer suicides than last year at that time.

For the Marines at this Helmand province outpost, there was a single number that mattered: the Marine who killed himself without apparent warning.

"We never knew that he was hurting," one Marine said quietly.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-afghanistan-suicides-20100910,0,1853493,print.story

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The U.S. warship Dubuque, left, and the freighter Magellan Star, foreground, in the Gulf of Aden.

U.S. Marines free ship from pirates Nine Somalis are arrested in the Gulf of Aden in the first American military operation of its kind. by Tony Perry, Los Angeles Times September 9, 2010 Reporting from San Diego Marines stormed a ship held by pirates in the Gulf of Aden before dawn Thursday in the first U.S. action of its kind, freeing the crew and detaining a heavily armed gang of Somalis, the Navy announced. The pirates had threatened to open fire on the Americans, but after the Marines boarded the German-owned freighter, most of them dropped their AK-47 assault rifles. The others hid in spaces throughout the ship. "They had been showing a bravado," Marine Capt. Alexander Martin said. "But when we got there, you could see the change in their eyes. They decided they'd rather live than die."

With the help of an interpreter, the Marines on the amphibious transport ship Dubuque, part of an international anti-piracy task force, had communicated for several hours with the pirates, who demanded a ransom.

"They kept telling us, 'Just give us money and we'll go away,' " Marine Lt. Col. Joseph Clearfield said. "They said if we came aboard, 'We're going to burn you.' "

Marines used cutting torches, saws, hammers and other tools to break into various ship compartments to ferret out the hiding pirates. Nine Somalis were captured without a shot fired.

The Somalis were transferred to another task force ship for possible transfer to a country willing to hold them for trial.

The mission was authorized by Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates and President Obama. Officials said it was the first time in modern history that the U.S. military has forcibly boarded a ship held by pirates.

Navy Capt. Christopher Bolt, commander of the Dubuque, said the 15 minutes between the Marines reaching the freighter and the pirates surrendering were the most tense of his Navy career. He commended the Marines for holding their fire even though the pirates were still armed.

The freighter, the Magellan Star, was seized Wednesday about 85 miles southeast of the Yemeni village of Mukalla.

The Dubuque and another U.S. ship were ordered into the area after a distress call was sent by the freighter's captain. Bolt kept in touch with admirals in Bahrain and the Pentagon as Marines talked with the pirates.

As a U.S. helicopter hovered overhead, a boat sped 24 Marines to the freighter, where they scrambled up rope ladders. The boarding party was covered by snipers on the Dubuque, who kept weapons trained on the freighter's deck.

U.S. Coast Guard members boarded the ship after the pirates surrendered, the Navy said.

The Marines, from Camp Pendleton's 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit, had trained for the possibility of forcibly boarding a pirated ship. But there were more pirates than what the Marines had been led to expect by the freighter's crew.

"Every good combat plan goes to … when you get to the point of meeting the enemy," said Staff Sgt. Thomas Hartrick, leader of one of two 12-member teams. "You just have to make those decisions. A takedown is a takedown, whether it's a house, a high-rise or a boat."

The freighter was carrying a load of steel chain. After pirates attacked, the 11 crew members barricaded themselves in a cabin and were able to communicate with task force members planning their rescue.

The crew refused to leave the cabin until Marines bored a small hole in the door and pushed through an American flag patch cut from one of their uniforms to convince the 11 inside that they had indeed been rescued.

An estimated 20% of the world's trade aboard ships passes through the Gulf of Aden and the region off Somalia as part of a course between Asia and Europe through the Suez Canal. Piracy has plagued the region for several years, and task forces have been established by the U.S., the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the European Union.

There are signs that the task forces and new "defensive driving" practices adopted by the shipping industry are discouraging piracy. In the first half of this year, there were 98 piracy incidents, compared with 144 during the same period in 2009.

The most high-profile incident was the seizure of a U.S. commercial ship in April 2009. After a five-day standoff, Navy SEAL snipers killed three pirates holding the captain, an American, at gunpoint. The captain was rescued uninjured.

In comments Thursday after the German ship was freed, the Turkish admiral who heads the anti-piracy task force expressed resolve in the fight against piracy.

"We are completely committed to bringing the disruptive acts of piracy to an end," Turkish Rear Adm. Sinan Ertugrul said.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-marines-somali-pirates-20100910,0,3950607,print.story

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Coffins of victims of the Mexico migrant massacre return to Honduras.

Columnist: Immigrant rights community must react to Mexico migrant massacre September 9, 2010 The massacre in Mexico of 72 migrants bound for the U.S. should be met with outrage and introspection by immigrant-rights groups, but has so far been met mostly with silence, Hector Tobar argues in a Thursday column in The Times. The columnist writes that people in the immigrant-rights community readily protest anti-immigrant legislation in the United States but rarely address the root causes for illegal migration from Latin America. The migrant massacre (which La Plaza has covered here, here, and here) was an "act of psychological warfare" by suspected members of the Zetas drug gang, the columnist writes, and it exposes multiple failures in immigration reform in the U.S., Mexico's drug war, and the lack of economic opportunity across the region. An excerpt: Most of the country's leading immigrant rights groups haven't even bothered to issue a news release. That doesn't surprise me.

Generally speaking, the U.S. immigrant rights movement doesn't have much to say about the social and political conditions that lead so many to leave their native countries and place themselves at the mercy of an increasingly violent smuggling industry.

Indeed, the United Nations released a condemning statement just days after the migrant killings, but major immigrant-rights organizations in the United States apparently did not.

An Amnesty International report released in April says Central and South American migrants seeking to cross Mexico to reach the U.S. embark on " one of the most dangerous journeys in the world ," as human smugglers and corrupt officials routinely expose migrants to abuse and violence, including the rape of female migrants. Those who survive the trek across Mexican territory then face the increasing risk of death along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Mexico's national human rights commission estimates that 20,000 migrants are kidnapped each year in the country, a startling figure. On Wednesday, as U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton likened violence tied to Mexican drug trafficking groups to a Colombian-style "insurgency," sparking rebukes in Mexico , authorities said they arrested seven gunmen suspected of participating in the Aug. 23 massacre in Tamaulipas state.

Tobar, an author and most recently an L.A. Times foreign correspondent in Mexico and Argentina, writes a regular column in the paper.

-- Daniel Hernandez in Mexico City

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/laplaza/2010/09/tobar-column-massacre-migrants-mexico.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+LaPlaza+%28La+Plaza%29

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Court ruling reaffirms regulation of immigration as federal domain

A U.S. appeals court overturns a Pennsylvania city law that punishes landlords for renting to illegal immigrants and employers for hiring them. But the matter of who rules on immigration is far from settled.

By David G. Savage, Tribune Washington Bureau

September 10, 2010

Reporting from Washington

A city may not punish employers who hire illegal immigrants or landlords who rent to them, the U.S. 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia ruled Thursday, asserting that immigration is "clearly within the exclusive domain of the federal government."

The decision strikes down an anti-immigrant ordinance adopted four years ago in Hazleton, Pa., that inspired a wave of similar measures elsewhere, including in Arizona.

The court's unanimous decision is the latest to send the message that Washington sets the rules on immigration, not states or localities.

"Deciding which aliens may live in the United States has always been the prerogative of the federal government," said Chief Judge Theodore McKee of the appellate court. "If Hazleton can regulate as it has here, then so could every other state or locality."

The court cited 11 states and several municipalities, including two in California — Mission Viejo and Escondido — that have passed similar laws to punish illegal immigrants or those who do business with them. Most of those measures have been prevented from taking effect.

In July, a federal judge in Phoenix blocked much of the new Arizona law that requires police to check the immigration status of people they legally stop and suspect are in the country illegally.

Omar Jadwat, an immigrants rights lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union, called Thursday's decision "a major defeat for the misguided, divisive and expensive anti-immigrant strategy that Hazleton has tried to export to the rest of the country. The Constitution does not allow states and cities to interfere with federal immigration laws."

But one of the lawyers for the Washington Legal Foundation, which helped defend the ordinance, expressed optimism that the city would eventually win. States and localities "have traditionally regulated housing and employment, and that's what they wanted to do here," chief counsel Richard Samp said.

Hazleton is a former coal mining center in northeastern Pennsylvania with about 30,000 residents. Mayor Lou Barletta and the City Council gained national attention in 2006 with their crackdown on illegal immigrants. A newly enacted ordinance would have imposed a $1,000 fine on landlords for each rental to an illegal immigrant.

A federal judge blocked the ordinance from taking effect. The city appealed, but lost in Thursday's 3-0 decision.

The ruling is not the final word on this issue, however. In December, the Supreme Court is set to hear an Arizona case to decide whether a state may take away the business licenses of companies that knowingly hire illegal immigrants.

This law, passed when Democrat Janet Napolitano was Arizona's governor, was upheld by the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals on the grounds that states traditionally control the licensing of businesses. The Supreme Court's conservative justices may be inclined to give state and local officials more leeway to enforce their own laws on crime, employment or housing.

Hazleton's lawyers said they would appeal Thursday's decision, but the Supreme Court is unlikely to act on the matter until it resolves the Arizona case early next year.

http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-immigration-law-20100910,0,993587,print.story

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Florida pastor says he may burn Korans after all

Terry Jones says he had canceled the event after securing a promise that the Islamic center planned near the World Trade Center site in New York would be moved. But an imam denies promising a relocation.

By David Zucchino and Tina Susman, Los Angeles Times

September 9, 2010

Reporting from Durham, N.C., and New York

Just hours after backing down from plans to burn copies of the Koran, an anti-Muslim evangelist backtracked again Thursday by announcing that his tiny Florida church was considering burning the Islamic holy book after all.

Terry Jones, pastor of the Dove World Outreach Center in Gainesville, Fla., said he canceled the threatened book burning after securing a promise that a controversial Islamic center and mosque planned two blocks from ground zero in New York City would be relocated farther from the former World Trade Center site.

But after two prominent Muslim leaders contradicted Jones' claim, he ratcheted up tensions anew, telling reporters that he might go ahead with the Koran burning. He said he had been "lied to" by a Florida imam with whom he had discussed moving the New York mosque, the Associated Press reported.

"We assumed what the imam said was true. Now, we're in a state of limbo and we have to rethink our position," Jones said Thursday evening, according to CNN. "We are rethinking our position. We are reconsidering, but we'd like to think what the imam said was true. We're a little back to square one. We hope this thing works out."

The dizzying back-and-forth came after President Obama called the event a "stunt" and warned that it could lead to violence against Americans overseas and serve as a "recruitment bonanza for Al Qaeda."

The president asked Jones to listen to "those better angels" who pleaded with him to call off the event. U.S. and world leaders, Pope Benedict XVI, Sarah Palin, evangelical Christians and leaders of several religions asked Jones to cancel the event.

Jones, appearing outside his church with Imam Muhammad Musri of the Islamic Society of Central Florida, said he had canceled the Koran-burning event scheduled for Saturday based on a guarantee from Musri that an agreement had been reached to move the planned center. Jones said he planned to travel to New York for Saturday's 9/11 anniversary events to seal the deal.

"I asked him three times, and I have witnesses," Jones said. "If it's not moved, then I think Islam is a very poor example of religion. I think that would be very pitiful. I do not expect that."

After vowing for days that his contempt for Islam would not allow him to back down because it would embolden "terrorists," Jones implied that he was not surrendering but was instead forcing Muslims to back down.

At the same time, Jones attempted Thursday to portray himself as a voice of restraint, ordering fellow Christians not to burn Korans because "it's not the time to do it."

"We are, of course, now against any other group burning Korans," Jones said. "We are absolutely strong on that."

Musri thanked Jones "for making the decision today to defuse the situation and bring to a positive end what has become the world over a spectacle that no one would benefit from except extremists and terrorists."

But Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, the man behind the proposed site, said he was surprised by Jones' claims and would not barter with the pastor or "toy with our religion." Abdul Rauf said he had not even spoken to Jones or Musri.

Musri, for his part, told the Associated Press that he merely offered a meeting between Jones and Abdul Rauf to discuss plans for the center's location. Musri said he told Jones he does not believe the Islamic facility should be built near the World Trade Center site and would do everything in his power to get it moved.

Musri said Abdul Rauf had not offered to move the proposed site. "All we have agreed to is a meeting, and I think we would all like to see a peaceful resolution," he said.

In a prepared statement, Abdul Rauf did not indicate whether he would meet with Jones. But he told ABC News that backing down on the proposed Manhattan site would outrage Muslims worldwide and allow terrorists to claim that the U.S. had bullied American Muslims.

Jones had said he might cancel his planned event if he received a personal call from the Obama administration, and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates made a brief call to the pastor. Gates expressed "grave concerns" that burning Korans would put at risk U.S. troops deployed in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Angry demonstrations have already erupted in Indonesia and Afghanistan, where protesters burned an effigy of Jones and an American flag while chanting "Death to Christians!"

In a worldwide travel alert issued before Jones' announcement, the State Department cautioned that "the potential for further protests and demonstrations, which may turn violent, remains high."

U.S. government facilities worldwide "remain at a heightened state of alert," the State Department said.

The FBI this week issued an "intelligence bulletin" encouraging law enforcement officials around the country to remain on heightened alert for potential disturbances or violence related to the Koran threat or to controversies over new mosques and Islamic centers near ground zero, and in Tennessee and California.

Bill Carter, an FBI spokesman, said the bulletin was part of a "situational awareness" advisory for state and local police.

Jones, 58, who has become a TV news fixture with his craggy face and white mustache, has published a book titled "Islam Is of the Devil." He has said that Islam is evil because it ignores biblical truths and encourages violence and terrorism among Muslims.

Even before Jones' cancellation announcement, the Associated Press said it would not publish photos or videos of the event. Fox News said it would not cover the Koran burnings at all.

Real estate developer Donald Trump offered to pay a major investor of the proposed Manhattan site 25% more than the purchase price. "As part of this offer, it would be agreed that, if you or your representatives were to build a mosque, it would be located at least five blocks further from the World Trade Center site," Trump wrote in a letter to the investor.

The investor, Hisham Elzanaty, flatly rejected the offer.

"This is just a cheap attempt to get publicity and get in the limelight," said Elzanaty's lawyer, Wolodymyr Starosolsky.

Sharif El-Gamal, a developer for the project, denied that plans for the Islamic center and mosque had changed.

"It is untrue that the community center known as Park51 in lower Manhattan is being moved," El-Gamal said in a statement. "The project will proceed as planned."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-koran-burning-20100910,0,7125161,print.story

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For Muslims, Koran is 'light from God to humanity'

The major themes in Islam's holy book are mercy, justice and the oneness of God and the human family. Non-Muslims may be surprised to learn Jesus is mentioned more often than the prophet Muhammad.

By Robin Abcarian, Los Angeles Times

September 9, 2010

To Muslims, the Koran is the word of God.

Muslims believe the sacred text was delivered by the archangel Gabriel to the prophet Muhammad over a period of 22 years in the early 7th century, about 600 years after the crucifixion of Jesus.

"It is the light from God to humanity. The healing of the broken hearts. And the skill to decipher right from wrong," said Dr. Maher Hathout, a senior advisor for the Muslim Public Affairs Council.

Like the Bible, the Koran teaches moral values and tells stories of prophets, such as Abraham, Moses and Jesus Christ. Hathout said that the Koran — organized by chapters, called "suras," and verses, called "ayas"— emphasizes three major themes: mercy, justice and the oneness of God and the human family.

The morals of the stories are "to worship God and be good," said Hathout. "No rocket science there. All the stories revolve around that."

Although Muhammad was unlettered, the Koran is considered by many Arab speakers to be "the most beautiful and powerful piece of writing in Arabic literature," said Akbar S. Ahmed, Ibn Khaldun Chair of Islamic Studies at American University in Washington. The word "Koran" means "the recited book," Hathout said.

The Koran, Ahmed said, is treated with reverence in traditional Muslim homes. "Even in America, where Muslims may be very modern, the Koran will always be placed higher than anything else in the room, in a respectful place," he said.

Ahmed and Mathout both noted that the pastor of the Baptist church in Florida who had planned to burn Korans on Sept. 11 said he'd never read the text. He might be surprised, they said, if he did.

"My American friends are sometimes surprised that Jesus is mentioned in the Koran," said Ahmed, who added that not only is Jesus mentioned in the Koran more often than the prophet of Islam, but there is also a chapter called "Mary," about the mother of Christ.

He said the book is frequently misunderstood as a call to arms against non-Muslims.

"The Koran is often criticized in the West by people pulling out one verse or another to establish its violent nature," said Ahmed. "They will say the Koran says 'Fight the Jews and Christians and Muslim renegades,' but they leave out the next line — 'But make peace because God prefers peace….' "

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-koran-20100910,0,1284471,print.story

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The wrong solution in Mexico

The Obama administration is right to consider boosting funding, but increased militarization to combat drug cartels is misguided. The U.S. would be wiser to address rampant corruption.

OPINION

By John M. Ackerman

September 10, 2010

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton made a dangerous mistake Wednesday when she spoke of Mexico's drug cartels as "insurgents" and suggested reviving President Clinton's Plan Colombia to address the issue. That program set up U.S. military bases in Colombia and funneled billions of dollars in military aid to fight the country's drug-trafficking left-wing insurgency. The last thing the United States needs today is a new quagmire south of the Rio Grande.

Mexico is different from Colombia. Colombia was up against a rebel organization bent on taking over the government. In contrast, Mexican drug traffickers are businessmen who we can assume are principally concerned with increasing their profits. In the end, they prefer to use "silver," or bribes, over "lead," or bullets. Although they are quick to kill or decapitate members of rival gangs, they much prefer a pliant police officer, soldier or mayor to a dead one. This is why government officials make up such a small percentage of the dead — only about 3,000 out of 28,000, according to official statistics.

The deployment of U.S. combat troops on Mexican soil could also have the look and feel of a foreign invasion. This would not be the first time the U.S. literally crossed the line. Between 1846 and 1848, the U.S. conquered a third of Mexico's territory. In 1914, the U.S. occupied the strategic port city of Veracruz. In 1917, as the modern Mexican Constitution was being drafted, U.S. troops crossed the border in a failed pursuit of Pancho Villa.

The Mexican people are therefore much more wary than the Colombians of any sort of military relationship with the United States. This is particularly the case this year, as Mexico celebrates the bicentennial of its independence from Spain and the issue of sovereignty is in the forefront of public discussion.

Plan Colombia was highly problematic. More than $4 billion of military aid and the construction of U.S. military bases did reduce the violence. Nevertheless, Colombian cocaine still flows freely into the U.S. market and is one of the most important sources of income for the Mexican cartels.

U.S. military support in Colombia also led to skyrocketing human rights abuses and numerous "disappeared" citizens, at a considerable cost to the country's social fabric. Nongovernmental organization and media reports have found that much of the aid was channeled to paramilitary groups and that the U.S. presence emboldened the Colombian military to act with impunity.

The Obama administration is right to consider boosting funding to Mexico. Secretary of State Clinton is also correct to push for more "political will" south of the border. Last week's decision to withhold $26 million in aid to Mexico on human rights grounds is a breath of fresh air. Recent statements by top U.S. government officials about corruption in Mexico are also a welcome break from the past.

But increased militarization is not the solution. As Alonzo R. Pena, deputy director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said last week to The Times, "Giving the Mexican government 12 new Black Hawk helicopters to fight the drug lords has no value if corrupt officials tip off the cartels before the choppers swoop in." Mexico urgently needs to take the corruption problem head-on.

There is evidence that some progress might be taking place on this front. Last week, the government announced that it had fired 10% of the federal police force because the agents had not passed their "confidence control" exams, which include lie detector and drug tests. Another 5% are subject to investigations and also may be expelled.

In addition, the recent increase in direct attacks on public officials may be a sad indication that something is actually working in Mexico's attempt to clean up government. Nine municipal presidents, one candidate for governor and numerous police chiefs have been assassinated in recent months. Although it is always possible that these officials were killed because they favored one gang over another, at least in some cases the gangs were responding to anti-corruption efforts.

But it is simply naive to think that confidence control exams and a few honest government heroes will do the trick. Mexico needs to implement powerful institutional solutions that change the incentive equation for government officials. Specifically, it should create a new, fully independent and well-funded anti-corruption commission to work closely with civil society to oversee, investigate and catch wrongdoing by public servants. Today, Mexico has nothing even close to such an institution.

Another strategic move would be to aggressively fund and support independent investigative journalism and alternative media outlets, which have played a major role in holding government accountable. Journalism has become a high-risk profession in Mexico. Both cartels and the government have done their best to suppress the truth about corruption.

Unfortunately, neither strong anti-corruption agencies nor support for journalists have formed a part of the new focus on social programs, which months ago the Obama administration suggested as a possible focus for future funding to Mexico. Under the influence of the Calderon government, most of the talk has been about much "softer" initiatives, such as drug education, urban renewal, scholarships and community development programs. All of this is fine, but none of it will attack the roots of the present failure to rein in the drug cartels in Mexico.

It is time to turn the corner in U.S. policy toward Mexico. Instead of sending more money down the black hole of attack helicopters, military bases or social development programs, the U.S. could make a significant contribution to peace in North America by helping to aggressively combat corruption and supporting freedom of expression.

John M. Ackerman is a professor at the Institute for Legal Research at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, editor-in-chief of the Mexican Law Review and a columnist for La Jornada newspaper and Proceso magazine.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-ackerman-mexicoinsurgency-20100910,0,5782057,print.story

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Hiding torture, legally

Five victims of rendition were denied the opportunity to challenge their treatment in court this week; it's a decision the Supreme Court should overturn.

OPINION

September 10, 2010

Of all the excesses of the post-9/11 war on terror, none was as outrageous as the practice of "extraordinary rendition" — transferring suspects abroad for interrogation and, it's alleged, torture. Compounding the injustice, five victims of rendition were denied the opportunity to challenge their treatment in court this week when the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals blocked their lawsuit against a San Jose airline-services company accused of assisting in their transportation to foreign countries.

Overruling a three-judge panel of the same court, the 9th Circuit held 6 to 5 that allowing the suit to proceed, even on the basis of publicly revealed information, would risk the release of state secrets. Judge Raymond C. Fisher's majority opinion agonized about the tension between national security and "justice, transparency [and] accountability." But, in the end, the court ratified extravagant claims by the George W. Bush and Obama administrations that a trial would violate the "state secrets privilege."

The court could have taken a narrower approach, allowing a trial to go forward and letting the judge consider on a case-by-case basis whether particular pieces of evidence needed to be kept secret. Instead, it preempted that process by citing another court's observation that sometimes "seemingly innocuous information is part of a … mosaic," so that even the use of unprivileged information creates a risk of inadvertent disclosure of state secrets.

The decision to short-circuit the trial process is more than a misreading of the law; it's an egregious miscarriage of justice. That's obvious from a perusal of the plaintiffs' complaint. One said that while he was imprisoned in Egypt, electrodes were attached to his earlobes, nipples and genitals. A second, held in Morocco, said he was beaten, denied food and threatened with sexual torture and castration. A third claimed that his Moroccan captors broke his bones and cut him with a scalpel all over his body, and poured hot, stinging liquid into his open wounds.

Perhaps embarrassed by its refusal to give these plaintiffs their day in court, the majority suggested other ways in which they might be compensated, such as payments from the government comparable to the reparations provided to Latin Americans of Japanese descent who were interned in this country during World War II. (A dissenting judge noted that it took 50 years for that offense to be redressed.)

No, the proper remedy for the injustices the plaintiffs allege lies in the courtroom. The Supreme Court should reopen the door that the 9th Circuit slammed shut.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-secrets-20100910,0,2054832,print.story

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Blowback

The reality of Islamophobia in America

Recent events and crime statistics don't support those denying the existence of an anti-Muslim backlash in the U.S.

By John L. Esposito and Sheila B. Lalwani

September 9, 2010

There is the world of neoconservative columnists such as The Times' Jonah Goldberg, who in an Aug. 24 column asserted that the anti-Muslim backlash is mainly a myth.

Then there is the world where the rest of us live.

Anyone who is witnessing the debates over the proposal to build an Islamic center in New York City has watched an unraveling of emotions across America. Muslims in America — numbering between 4 million and 7 million — have been chastised for not being sufficiently sorry for the acts of 19 hijackers on that terrible day in September 2001, or sensitive enough to the victims' families. It has been a momentously myopic moment in American history, made worse by violent acts and signs that disparaged Muslims and Islam.

Expressing one's opinion is, of course, a right; nobody would say otherwise. However, in places like California, Kentucky, Texas, Florida, New York, Wisconsin and elsewhere, disturbing incidents have either taken place or are being planned. These actions undermine years of interfaith efforts and belie our ideals of tolerance, pluralism and multiculturalism.

Goldberg is right to note that hate crimes occur against other groups, namely Jews, and those crimes rightfully disturb and disgust. There are people who harbor strong anti-Semitic views, and some cowards act on those views. The hate crimes committed against Jews are greater in number than the crimes committed against Muslims, but does that make the crimes committed against Muslims insignificant? Of course not. If anything, Jews and Muslims share a common interest in fighting hate crimes in America and working to strengthen pluralism.

The first step is to acknowledge there is a problem. The crimes against Muslims do not look random or isolated.

Law enforcement authorities in California classified the vandalism at the Madera Islamic Center in the Central Valley that nearly smashed a window as a hate crime when they discovered signs that read "Wake up America the enemy is here" and "No temple for the god of terrorism." In New York, an intoxicated man forced his way into a mosque in Queens and urinated on several prayer rugs. Michael Enright, a 21-year-old New York film student, is being charged with attempted murder in connection with the stabbing of a Muslim cab driver. The act has been classified as a hate crime.

There have been many other incidents, such as a reported pipe-bomb incident at a mosque in Florida and the vandalism and arson that took place in Texas in July. This is to say nothing about efforts to construct mosques in Wisconsin and Kentucky that have come under the kind of attack that would never have happened if the building projects were for Christian churches.

Then there are the numbers.

Statistics corroborate the belief that Islamophobia is on the rise in America, and that the temptation to view Islam and Muslims through the prism of extremism remains ever-present. A study from the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life found that the public's view of Islam has worsened. According to the study, 30% say they have a favorable opinion of Islam, while 38% have an unfavorable view. These figures mark a change from 2005, when slightly more expressed a favorable opinion of Islam. The study found that those who are younger than 50 have more mixed views of Islam than older Americans, who harbor more uniformly negative opinions.

These perceptions are undoubtedly linked to the debates in New York, but Christian pastors and elected leaders whose irresponsible rhetoric has undone years of interfaith work on part of Muslims and non-Muslims also deserve blame. Last month, Newt Gingrich compared Muslim Americans who want to build the Islamic center in New York to Nazis who would erect a sign next to Washington's Holocaust museum. Terry Jones, the pastor of the Dove World Outreach Center in Florida, posted a video that outlines his desire to "expose Islam;" he uses fear and paranoia to encourage more people to burn the Koran. He warns that Europe has been lost to Muslims and that America might be next.

No widespread Islamophobia, Goldberg says.

Oh really?

John L. Esposito, the author of "The Future of Islam," is University Professor of Religion and International Affairs at Georgetown University and founding director of the Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding. Sheila B. Lalwani is a research fellow at the center.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/opinionla/la-oew-esposito-islamophobia-20100909,0,3563185,print.story

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From the New York Times

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Pentagon Plan: Buying Books to Keep Secrets

WASHINGTON — Defense Department officials are negotiating to buy and destroy all 10,000 copies of the first printing of an Afghan war memoir they say contains intelligence secrets, according to two people familiar with the dispute.

The publication of “Operation Dark Heart,” by Anthony A. Shaffer, a former Defense Intelligence Agency officer and a lieutenant colonel in the Army Reserve, has divided military security reviewers and highlighted the uncertainty about what information poses a genuine threat to security.

Disputes between the government and former intelligence officials over whether their books reveal too much have become commonplace. But veterans of the publishing industry and intelligence agencies could not recall another case in which an agency sought to dispose of a book that had already been printed.

Army reviewers suggested various changes and redactions and signed off on the edited book in January, saying they had “no objection on legal or operational security grounds,” and the publisher, St. Martin's Press, planned for an Aug. 31 release.

But when the Defense Intelligence Agency saw the manuscript in July and showed it to other spy agencies, reviewers identified more than 200 passages suspected of containing classified information, setting off a scramble by Pentagon officials to stop the book's distribution.

Release of the book “could reasonably be expected to cause serious damage to national security,” Lt. Gen. Ronald L. Burgess Jr., the D.I.A. director, wrote in an Aug. 6 memorandum. He said reviewers at the Central Intelligence Agency , National Security Agency and United States Special Operations Command had all found classified information in the manuscript.

The disputed material includes the names of American intelligence officers who served with Colonel Shaffer and his accounts of clandestine operations, including N.S.A. eavesdropping operations, according to two people briefed on the Pentagon's objections. They asked not to be named because the negotiations are supposed to be confidential.

By the time the D.I.A. objected, however, several dozen copies of the unexpurgated 299-page book had already been sent out to potential reviewers, and some copies found their way to online booksellers. The New York Times was able to buy a copy online late last week.

The dispute arises as the Obama administration is cracking down on disclosures of classified information to the news media, pursuing three such prosecutions to date, the first since 1985. Separately, the military has charged an Army private with giving tens of thousands of classified documents to the organization WikiLeaks .

Steven Aftergood, who directs the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists, said the case showed that judgments on what is classified “are often arbitrary and highly subjective.” But in this case, he said, it is possible that D.I.A. reviewers were more knowledgeable than their Army counterparts about damage that disclosures might do.

Mr. Aftergood, who generally advocates open government but has been sharply critical of WikiLeaks, said the government's move to stop distribution of the book would draw greater attention to the copies already in circulation.

“It's an awkward set of circumstances,” he said. “The government is going to make this book famous.”

Colonel Shaffer, his lawyer, Mark S. Zaid, and lawyers for the publisher are near an agreement with the Pentagon over what will be taken out of a new edition to be published Sept. 24, with the allegedly classified passages blacked out. But the two sides are still discussing whether the Pentagon will buy the first printing, currently in the publisher's Virginia warehouse, and at what price.

A Pentagon spokesman, Cmdr. Bob Mehal, said the book had not received a proper “information security review” initially and that officials were working “closely and cooperatively” with the publisher and author to resolve the problem.

In a brief telephone interview this week before Army superiors asked him not to comment further, Colonel Shaffer said he did not think it contained damaging disclosures. “I worked very closely with the Army to make sure there was nothing that would harm national security,” he said.

“Operation Dark Heart” is a breezily written, first-person account of Colonel Shaffer's five months in Afghanistan in 2003, when he was a civilian D.I.A. officer based at Bagram Air Base near Kabul.

He worked undercover, using the pseudonym “Christopher Stryker,” and was awarded a Bronze Star for his work. Col. Jose R. Olivero of the Army, who recommended Colonel Shaffer for the honor, wrote that he had shown “skill, leadership, tireless efforts and unfailing dedication.”

But after 2003, Colonel Shaffer was involved in a dispute over his claim that an intelligence program he worked for, code named Able Danger, had identified Mohammed Atta as a terrorist threat before he became the lead hijacker in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. An investigation by the Defense Department's inspector general later concluded that the claim was inaccurate.

In 2004, after Colonel Shaffer returned from another brief assignment in Afghanistan, D.I.A. officials charged him with violating several agency rules, including claiming excessive expenses for a trip to Fort Dix, N.J. Despite the D.I.A. accusations, which resulted in the revocation of his security clearance, the Army promoted him to lieutenant colonel from major in 2005. He was effectively fired in 2006 by D.I.A., which said he could not stay on without a clearance, and now works at a Washington research group, the Center for Advanced Defense Studies.

Even before the Able Danger imbroglio, Colonel Shaffer admits in his book, he was seen by some at D.I.A. as a risk-taking troublemaker. He describes participating in a midday raid on a telephone facility in Kabul to download the names and numbers of all the cellphone users in the country and proposing an intelligence operation to cross into Pakistan and spy on a Taliban headquarters.

In much of the book, he portrays himself as a brash officer who sometimes ran into resistance from timid superiors.

“A lot of folks at D.I.A. felt that Tony Shaffer thought he could do whatever the hell he wanted,” Mr. Shaffer writes about himself. “They never understood that I was doing things that were so secret that only a few knew about them.”

The book includes some details that typically might be excised during a required security review, including the names of C.I.A. and N.S.A. officers in Afghanistan, casual references to “N.S.A.'s voice surveillance system,” and American spying forays into Pakistan.

David Wise, author of many books on intelligence, said the episode recalled the C.I.A.'s response to the planned publication of his 1964 book on the agency, “The Invisible Government.” John A. McCone, then the agency's director, met with him and his co-author, Thomas B. Ross, to ask for changes, but they were not government employees and refused the request.

The agency studied the possibility of buying the first printing, Mr. Wise said, but the publisher of Random House , Bennett Cerf, told the agency he would be glad to sell all the copies to the agency — and then print more.

“Their clumsy efforts to suppress the book only made it a bestseller,” Mr. Wise said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/10/us/10books.html?ref=us&pagewanted=print

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Budget Woes Hit Defense Lawyers for the Indigent

OZARK, Mo. — Some public defenders in Missouri say the stressed state budget is interfering with their ability to provide poor defendants with their constitutional right to a lawyer.

They say they are so overworked and underfinanced that they have begun trying to reject new cases assigned to them late in the month, when, they say, their workloads are already beyond capacity.

Concerns about a deteriorating, overwhelmed public defender system in this country have been around for decades, but they have ballooned recently as state budgets shrink and more defendants qualify for free legal counsel.

“This has been a problem in good economic times, and now it's only worse,” said Jo-Ann Wallace, president and chief executive of the National Legal Aid and Defender Association . “What you have is a situation where the eligible pool of clients is increasing, crime rates are potentially increasing, while the resources often for public defenders are going down.”

Missouri's per capita spending on public defense ranks 49th in the nation (only Mississippi spends less), Ms. Wallace's group says. State officials say the defenders system, with its 570 employees, is expected to receive more than $34 million this year. The state public defender's office says a true solution would require 125 more lawyers, 90 more secretaries, 109 more investigators, 130 more legal assistants and more space — all of which would cost about $21 million a year — a seemingly impossible suggestion, given the fiscal climate.

In the meantime, they say, fiscal constraints are colliding with the requirement set forth in a 1963 Supreme Court decision, Gideon v. Wainwright, that poor people accused of serious crimes be provided with lawyers paid for by the government.

Last week, Jared Blacksher found his case sent to the Missouri Supreme Court — not over the accusations that he had stolen prescription pain pills and a blank check, but over the issue of whether the state's public defender system is in such dismal shape that it ought not be forced to represent him.

The public defender's office had pleaded with the judge, repeatedly, not to assign it Mr. Blacksher's case. It was just the latest example of public defenders, charged with representing the poor and indigent, saying they cannot take a case because they have too many already and not enough staff to handle them all. Public defenders in jurisdictions from Florida to Minnesota to Arizona have either sued over their caseloads or refused to take new cases.

The judge in the Blacksher case rejected the public defender's pleas not to be forced to take it. “It flies in the face of our Constitution,” Judge John S. Waters told his Christian County courtroom here last month. “It flies in the face of our culture. It flies in the face of the reason we came over here 300 and some-odd years ago to get out of debtors' prison.”

“I'm not saying the public defenders aren't overworked,” Judge Waters said, but, “I don't know how to move his case and how to provide him what the law of the land provides.”

But last Friday, the Missouri Supreme Court issued an order temporarily rescinding the assignment of public defenders in Mr. Blacksher's case, at least until the court can consider legal briefs on the question of the public defenders' latest demand to refuse cases.

Mr. Blacksher's case, which could now be delayed for several months, has become the center of a debate that long predates it in this state. To some, the signs of stress on the public defender system here have become overwhelming, even frightening: almost all the public defenders' 35 trial division offices lately carried caseloads that would require more than the total number of staff hours available in a month — in some cases, more than two times the hours available, said Cat Kelly, deputy director for the Missouri State Public Defender System.

“Missouri's public defender system has reached a point where what it provides is often nothing more than the illusion of a lawyer,” an outside report asked for by the Missouri Bar concluded last year.

Yet some county prosecutors here are deeply skeptical of the defenders' complaints. With the state facing $550 million less in general fund revenues than a year ago, they say, defenders are no more burdened than the next department.

“They say this every year,” said Ron Cleek, the prosecuting attorney in Christian County, which includes Ozark, adding that he wondered whether some at the defenders offices might “want to think about what time they come in and when they go home.”

“We all work hard,” Mr. Cleek said. “They just need to suck it up and get out there and get it done.”

Missouri's state auditor has announced her office will examine the public defender system to determine whether it is, indeed, overburdened.

Around the country, the indigent are defended by a hodgepodge of systems and financing sources. In some places, private lawyers are appointed by judges; elsewhere, statewide public defender networks (like Missouri's) have been created. Other jurisdictions use some combination of methods.

The public defenders in Missouri and elsewhere all ultimately pose a larger question: How far can defenders be stretched before they no longer provide poor people with the legal help ensured by Gideon?

“Is someone in prison who might have been acquitted if we had had more resources?” Rod Hackathorn, the public defender for a three-county district that includes Ozark, asked the other day. “You don't know. I'm sure that it's happened, and I don't know who it has happened to. And that's the scariest part of this all.”

Mr. Hackathorn's district is one of two in the state to begin announcing this summer that it was turning down cases, including Mr. Blacksher's. Nine others are taking steps to do the same.

So far, results for poor defendants are murky. In cases involving those not in custody, some judges have sidestepped the entire question, quietly advising defendants to wait for the start of a new month (and a fresh monthly caseload count) — at which point their cases will be assigned to a public defender once more. In more serious cases, like Mr. Blacksher's, judges have rejected the public defenders' claims of “unavailability.”

Hours after the State Supreme Court's decision in Mr. Blacksher's case, Mr. Blacksher, who is charged with burglary and forgery, seemed oblivious to what had happened and mystified by his brush with the debate over public defenders.

From the Christian County Jail, where he has been held since July, unable to afford bail, Mr. Blacksher, 22, said he had heard nothing of the delay in his case and was still expecting to be called from his cell for a hearing — which had once been set for last Friday — on its merits.

Just a day earlier, he had met with his assistant public defender and had agreed, he said, to plead guilty in exchange for a prison sentence that would most likely run several months. So far as he knew, he said, the public defender was still his lawyer, and his hearing might come any minute.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/10/us/10defenders.html?ref=us&pagewanted=print

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The Genteel Nation

Most people who lived in the year 1800 were scarcely richer than people who lived in the year 100,000 B.C. Their diets were no better. They were no taller, and they did not live longer.

Then, sometime around 1800, economic growth took off — in Britain first, then elsewhere. How did this growth start? In his book “The Enlightened Economy,” Joel Mokyr of Northwestern University argues that the crucial change happened in people's minds. Because of a series of cultural shifts, technicians started taking scientific knowledge and putting it to practical use. For example, entrepreneurs applied geological research to the businesses of mining and transportation.

Britain soon dominated the world. But then it declined. Again, the crucial change was in people's minds. As the historian Correlli Barnett chronicled, the great-great-grandchildren of the empire builders withdrew from commerce, tried to rise above practical knowledge and had more genteel attitudes about how to live.

This history is relevant today because 65 percent of Americans believe their nation is now in decline, according to this week's NBC/Wall Street Journal poll. And it is true: Today's economic problems are structural, not cyclical. We are in the middle of yet another jobless recovery. Wages have been lagging for decades. Our labor market woes are deep and intractable.

The first lesson from the economic historians is that we should try to understand our situation by looking for shifts in ideas and values, not just material changes. Furthermore, most fundamental economic pivot points are poorly understood by people at the time.

If you look at America from this perspective, you do see something akin to the “British disease.” After decades of affluence, the U.S. has drifted away from the hardheaded practical mentality that built the nation's wealth in the first place.

The shift is evident at all levels of society. First, the elites. America's brightest minds have been abandoning industry and technical enterprise in favor of more prestigious but less productive fields like law, finance, consulting and nonprofit activism.

It would be embarrassing or at least countercultural for an Ivy League grad to go to Akron and work for a small manufacturing company. By contrast, in 2007, 58 percent of male Harvard graduates and 43 percent of female graduates went into finance and consulting.

The shift away from commercial values has been expressed well by Michelle Obama in a series of speeches. “Don't go into corporate America,” she told a group of women in Ohio. “You know, become teachers. Work for the community. Be social workers. Be a nurse. ... Make that choice, as we did, to move out of the money-making industry into the helping industry.” As talented people adopt those priorities, America may become more humane, but it will be less prosperous.

Then there's the middle class. The emergence of a service economy created a large population of junior and midlevel office workers. These white-collar workers absorbed their lifestyle standards from the Huxtable family of “The Cosby Show,” not the Kramden family of “The Honeymooners.” As these information workers tried to build lifestyles that fit their station, consumption and debt levels soared. The trade deficit exploded. The economy adjusted to meet their demand — underinvesting in manufacturing and tradable goods and overinvesting in retail and housing.

These office workers did not want their children regressing back to the working class, so you saw an explosion of communications majors and a shortage of high-skill technical workers. One of the perversities of this recession is that as the unemployment rate has risen, the job vacancy rate has risen, too. Manufacturing firms can't find skilled machinists. Narayana Kocherlakota of the Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank calculates that if we had a normal match between the skills workers possess and the skills employers require, then the unemployment rate would be 6.5 percent, not 9.6 percent.

There are several factors contributing to this mismatch (people are finding it hard to sell their homes and move to new opportunities), but one problem is that we have too many mortgage brokers and not enough mechanics.

Finally, there's the lower class. The problem here is social breakdown. Something like a quarter to a third of American children are living with one or no parents, in chaotic neighborhoods with failing schools. A gigantic slice of America's human capital is vastly underused, and it has been that way for a generation.

Personally, I'm not convinced we're in decline. There are strengths to counter these weaknesses. But the value shifts are real. Up and down society, people are moving away from commercial, productive activities and toward pleasant, enlightened but less productive ones.

We can get distracted by short-term stimulus debates, but those are irrelevant by now. The real issues are whether the United States is content with gentility shift and whether there is anything that can be done about it in any case.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/10/opinion/10brooks.html?ref=opinion&pagewanted=print

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Harvest of Anger

LONDON — A cover of The Economist right after 9/11 declared: “The Day the World Changed.” It has, and not just at airports where several billion shoes have been removed. Nine years later a harvest of anger is in.

Burning books is a lousy idea. Heinrich Heine, the German poet, foresaw the worst early in the 19th century: “Where they burn books, in the end they will also burn people.” Less than a decade separated the Nazi book burning of 1933 from the crematoria of the Final Solution.

Terry Jones, the pastor of a small church in Florida, did well to heed history's warnings — as well as the warnings of America's top military commander in Afghanistan, Gen. David Petraeus — and cancel his planned Koran burning to mark the ninth anniversary Saturday of Al Qaeda's attack.

Images of Islam's Holy Book in flames in northwest Gainesville would have enraged Muslims and become a powerful recruitment tool for the very jihadists who attempt to sanctify indiscriminate violence through selective references to the Koran.

Why, almost a decade from Mohammad Atta, with his parting call to “read the Holy Koran” and “remember all of the things God has promised for the martyrs,” has there been scant healing? Why is America now bitterly divided over plans to build a mosque and Islamic center in the immediate vicinity of ground zero, and Europeans almost equally split over the growing Muslim presence in their societies?

This is a sullen time. Only a spark, it seems, separates resentment from uprising.

Since returning to Europe recently, I've been struck by the venom in the air: a German Bundesbank board member lamenting the Muslim dilution of his nation in a best-selling book called “Germany Does Away with Itself;” the growing political clout of the Dutch rightist Geert Wilders who is expected in Manhattan Saturday to address an anti-mosque rally; a political climate that sees Turkey's entry into the European Union receding, a Swiss ban on minarets and French and Belgian acrimony over the veil.

All this is happening as the American right seizes on the lower-Manhattan mosque plan to galvanize anti-Islamic sentiment — lurking despite the better social integration of U.S. Muslims — and cast the Democrats as soft on Shariah.

The Sept. 11 attacks, seen now with a little perspective, shattered America's self-image. A continent-sized sanctuary, flanked by the shining waters of two oceans, was no longer. A hideous neologism, the “homeland,” was coined to describe a country that now needed vigilant protection from within and without. Two wars, one longer than any in the nation's history, deepened the trauma.

While one America fought, another shopped until the debt-driven spree ended in mayhem; and, to their horror, Americans discovered they could no longer cushion their declining incomes by borrowing against the once rising — now crashing — assets of their homes. Their last coping mechanism had collapsed.

What was left, and now feeds national anger, was a hard quest to keep house, habits and hope intact while the now bailed-out fat cats who'd invented securitized mortgages sloped off into the sunset, and veterans, scarred from faraway wars, limped back to the “homeland,” once just home. Inequality sharpened. American promise, for many, soured.

None of this fosters forgiveness. Rather, it feeds a quest for scapegoats — Wall Street or Wahhabis.

Europe, in Madrid and London, has also been attacked by jihadists, but its unease goes deeper — to chronic unemployment and aging and resentments spurred by the access of immigrants to elaborate, now cash-strapped social welfare programs. The self-image of a Christian continent persists, drawing lines between insider and outsider.

Against these backdrops, Islam is easily manipulated by those who would cast it as enemy. Its very effervescence — that of the youngest of the great monotheistic religions — and its conservative values, especially on women's rights, are fodder. So are its political expression as an ordering framework for society and the contentious concept of jihad.

We should tread carefully. I don't doubt the sincerity of Feisal Abdul Rauf, the man behind a mosque project expressing what he calls the “common impulse of our great faith traditions.”

But nor do I see the project as a test of American religious freedoms. They are abundantly established, not least by the nondenominational chapel — often used as a mosque — at the Pentagon. Nor, above all, do I doubt the pain of many families of the dead who recall Atta's words and are troubled by a major Islamic center so close to the hallowed ground and hallowed air into which their beloved were vaporized.

I went to Auschwitz 12 years ago to cover the story of a burgeoning field of crosses outside the death camp put there by Catholic protesters. Their tone was ugly but it was hard to argue with them: Close to 100,000 non-Jewish Poles had died in the camp, a number dwarfed by the Jewish dead, but not insignificant.

Still, the crosses were a bad idea. They were offensive to Jewish memory. All but one was eventually removed.

The mosque project near ground zero upholds a great American principle, but it's not a sensible idea. Good sense is needed when a harvest of anger is in.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/10/opinion/10iht-edcohen.html?ref=opinion&pagewanted=print

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Making Prisons Safer

Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. has spent nearly 15 months weighing new mandatory rape prevention policies for federal prisons and state correctional institutions that receive federal money. The policies, which are due this fall, need to be as tough as possible.

A recent report from the Justice Department's Bureau of Justice Statistics makes that clear, suggesting yet again that sexual violence is frighteningly commonplace in the nation's prisons and jails.

Based on a survey of more than 80,000 inmates at more than 450 facilities, it found that 4.4 percent of prison inmates and 3.1 percent of jail inmates reported being sexually assaulted one or more times. The bureau estimates that, nationally, 88,500 prison and jail inmates experienced some form of sexual victimization in the previous 12 months. The survey did not include follow-up investigations to determine the veracity of the inmates' claims. But rape victims in prison are often hesitant to report their assaults out of shame or fear of reprisal, and these numbers may actually underestimate the problem.

The report's finding that some prisons have far higher rates of victimization than others are consistent with the findings of the Congressionally mandated National Prison Rape Elimination Commission. It studied this problem extensively and found that some prisons promoted a climate of safety while others implicitly tolerated abuse.

The commission came up with a strong set of prevention recommendations. These included better screening and training for guards, better medical and psychiatric care for assault victims, better protection for the most vulnerable inmates and the creation of a system that allows victims to report rape without risk of reprisal. Mr. Holder received the commission's recommendations in June last year and then put them out for public comment, raising fears that state and local corrections officials would water them down. Mr. Holder needs to ensure that doesn't happen.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/10/opinion/10fri3.html?ref=opinion&pagewanted=print

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From the Chicago Sun Times

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11 Afghans injured in anti-Quran-burning protests  

September 10, 2010
ASSOCIATED PRESS

KABUL, Afghanistan -- Thousands of Afghans are protesting a small American church's plan to burn the Muslim holy book. At least 11 people have been injured.

Police in the northern province of Badakhshan say several hundred demonstrators ran toward a NATO compound where four attackers and five police were injured in clashes. Protesters also burned an American flag at a mosque after Friday prayers.

In western Farah province, police said two people were injured in another protest.

Police say initial reports that someone was killed were wrong.

The Rev. Terry Jones from the Dove Outreach Center in Florida triggered outrage when he promised to burn the Quran on the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks.

He canceled the plans Thursday but then said he was reconsidering.

http://www.suntimes.com/news/world/2693900,quran-afghanistan-protest-091010.article

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From ICE

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ICE rescues more than 3 dozen smuggled aliens from LA-area home

RIVERSIDE, Calif. - Acting on a tip from a concerned family member, agents with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) executed a federal search warrant at a home here Tuesday afternoon and found 37 smuggled aliens from six countries jammed inside a tiny bedroom where some claim they had been held for weeks. ICE HSI agents took an additional seven aliens linked to the same smuggling scheme into custody earlier in the day as they were being transported to other destinations in the Los Angeles area.

The discovery of the human smuggling "drop house" came after the Los Angeles Police Department alerted ICE HSI they had been contacted by an individual whose relative was being held by human smugglers at a residence somewhere in the Riverside area. The caller told police the smugglers had threatened to kill his relative because the family had been unable to come up an additional payment demanded for his release. Following two days of intensive investigation, including the deployment of an infra-red equipped helicopter, ICE HSI agents narrowed down the location and obtained a search warrant for the residence at 1879 Martin Luther King Blvd.

Once inside, investigators found the smuggled aliens crowded in a bedroom at the rear of the residence. The windows were boarded up and the room's only door locked from the outside. As a further deterrent against escape, all of the aliens had been stripped of their shoes. Some told investigators they had gone several days without food. The investigation into the smuggling scheme is ongoing.

"This incident shows yet again the ruthlessness and brutality of the smuggling trade," said Claude Arnold, special agent in charge for ICE Office of HSI in Los Angeles. "While the volume of human smuggling activity in the Los Angeles area has declined in recent times due to stepped up enforcement and economic factors, the aggressiveness and violence exhibited by the smuggling organizations seems to be on the rise. Extortion, torture and physical violence are now commonplace in these cases."

The 44 smuggled aliens are from six countries: Guatemala (16); El Salvador (16); Honduras (7), Mexico (2); Ecuador (2); and the Dominican Republic (1). The group includes 34 adult men, four adult women and six juveniles. The smuggled aliens remain in ICE custody at this time pending further review of their cases.

The discovery of the drop house in Riverside comes just two weeks after ICE HSI agents found 35 smuggled aliens from Central and South America in a residence in Baldwin Park in Los Angeles.

http://www.ice.gov/pi/nr/1009/100908riverside.htm

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