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From the Los Angeles Times

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Afghanistan's most loyal troops

Dogs play an increasing role in ferreting out roadside bombs in key provinces. As with their masters, not all of them get to come home.

by Tony Perry, Los Angeles Times

February 8, 2011

When Pfc. Colton Rusk was shot in Afghanistan by a Taliban sniper, a Marine dog named Eli immediately ran to him, guarding the downed Marine against further attack.

Even Marines who rushed to Rusk's side were initially kept at bay by the snarling Labrador, who had been Rusk's inseparable companion through training and then deployment to a dangerous place called the Sangin Valley.

Rusk, 20, a machine gunner and dog handler from the Camp Pendleton-based 3rd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment, died from his wounds that brutal day in early December.

Out of gratitude for Eli's loyalty to their son, Darrell and Kathy Rusk, with the support of Marine brass, arranged to adopt Eli and take him to their ranch in Orange Grove, Texas, near Corpus Christi.

Such adoptions are unusual, though not unprecedented. Last week, Rusk's family took possession of Eli at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, a major training site for military dogs.

Trainers at Lackland and other sites are busy these days. Dogs are playing an increasing role in the U.S.-led fight in Sangin and neighboring Kandahar province — particularly in ferreting out the buried roadside bombs that are the Taliban's weapon of choice.

"They're Afghanistan's forgotten heroes," said Sgt. ShainNickerson, 24, of Rayland, Ohio, whose German shepherd, Aja, accompanies him on patrol in Sangin. "They're out there every day risking their lives to keep Marines safe."

During a visit with wounded Marines at the military hospital in Bethesda, Md., Marine Commandant Gen. James Amos asked how many had a bomb-sniffing dog with them when they were injured. Half did not.

The Marine Corps is now on a crash program to increase the number of its dogs in Afghanistan. "I'd like a dog with every patrol," Amos said.

The director of the Marine program to provide guard dogs and bomb-sniffing dogs says that despite all the money spent on high-tech methods to find buried roadside bombs — estimated at upwards of $20 billion — well-trained dogs are still the most effective.

"Electronic equipment is great in the laboratory, but out on the battlefield, you can't beat the dogs," said Bill Childress, manager of the Marine Corps working dog program. "The most versatile, mobile piece of equipment we can find is the dog's nose."

In four months, Marines using dogs, electronic gear and intelligence from villagers have found more than 400 buried roadside bombs in Sangin, long a Taliban stronghold. More than 100 bombs exploded before discovery.

That 4-to-1 ratio is considered a sign of success in the grinding fight against improvised explosive devices. Still, 31 Marines have been killed and more than 140 wounded since late September.

In Afghanistan, the Marine Corps has 170 bomb-sniffing dogs, Childress said. The plan is to begin, by late summer, increasing that number to about 280, spread among 20,000 Marines and sailors.

Dogs have deployed with the U.S. military since before the Civil War — a history explained on the website of the nonprofit United States War Dogs Assn. On the site -- http://www.uswardogs.org -- is a K-9 Wall of Honor listing dogs and handlers who have died during or after combat. Rusk's name has been added to the site.

As in other wars, the bonding between the dogs and their Marine handlers in Afghanistan is the stuff of legend.

When Lance Cpl. William Crouse IV, 22, of Woodruff, S.C., and his dog, Cane, were hit by a roadside bomb just days before Christmas, Crouse's dying words as he was being evacuated by helicopter called for the Navy corpsmen to save his wounded dog.

"Get Cane in the Blackhawk!" Crouse cried out before losing consciousness.

Cane did not survive, becoming the fifth Marine dog to die from roadside bomb blasts in Afghanistan. Four other Marine dogs have died from heat stroke and one from friendly fire.

One of the dogs killed by a roadside blast was a German shepherd named Grief. His handler, Cpl. Al Brenner, 22, of Jackson, N.J., suffered a broken arm, a severed finger and injuries to his legs and groin.

Once he's finished with surgeries and rehabilitation, Brenner wants to reenlist and train dogs for work in Afghanistan. "Without dogs, you're just poking around with a stick, just waiting to get blown up," he said.

For Eli, the ceremony welcoming his return at Lackland Air Force Base was brief but emotional. The 4-year-old Labrador, who did two combat tours in Afghanistan, was declared retired from military service.

On his Facebook page, Colton Rusk wrote of Eli, "Whatever is mine, is his." Rusk's phone calls to his family from Afghanistan were filled with references to the dog.

Among the Rusk family's most prized possessions are pictures of Colton and Eli before they deployed to Afghanistan. Kathy Rusk wears a necklace with a picture of the two.

"You're going home," she said with a catch in her voice as she hugged Eli.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-war-dogs-20110208,0,200249,print.story

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OPINION

Rude awakening

Los Angeles is a strangeropolis. But it doesn't have to stay that way.

by Amy Alkon

February 8, 2011

Snapshot from Los Angeles, the place Travel + Leisure readers deemed the rudest city in America: It's late morning in an L.A. coffeehouse. Everybody's staring down into something — a laptop, spreadsheets, a college entrance exam workbook — until the door opens and an elderly woman carrying a canvas book bag walks in. Writers stop writing, students stop studying and wave, smile and call hello to the woman, who smiles brightly and waves back. A few get up, one by one, and go give her a hug.

The woman is Kay, and her husband, who comes in 20 minutes later, steadied by a walker, is Earl. Another round of hugging ensues. I can't trace back exactly how this hugging tradition started, but somebody hugged Kay, and somebody else saw it happen, and now it's just how things are. When Kay and Earl come in, people get up and go hug them.

The people who decided L.A. was America's rudest city probably aren't going to get to this coffeehouse and see how some of us make Los Angeles an incredibly warm and neighborly place. Sure, L.A. is big and spread out, and it's easy to feel alienated here — if you let yourself be alienated. To a great extent, you inhabit the world you create wherever you are.

To understand why L.A. can be a tough city to feel at home in, it helps to understand why people are rude. British anthropologist Robin Dunbar figured out that the human neocortex seems to have a capacity to manage social interaction in societies of about 150 people. Beyond that number, social order seems to break down.

In other words, people are rude — in L.A. and many other places — because we live in societies too big for our brains. In a small society in which everyone knows each other, you can't act out the way you can around strangers. If, however, you're around people you'll never see again, you can get away with all sorts of nasty behavior.

We can't shrink Los Angeles to a more polite population size, but we can bring back some of the constraints and benefits of the small tribal societies our brains are adapted for. This actually doesn't take much.

We need to refuse to be victimized by the rude. This means speaking out when people are behaving hoggishly, like all those cellphone shouters privatizing public space as their own. We also need to make an effort to treat strangers like neighbors — to smile at the guy passing us on the sidewalk, to say hello to the cashier, to do the small kindnesses that you would for someone you know.

It helps to be mindful that L.A. is not just the second-biggest strangeropolis in the country but a place of neighborhoods: geographical neighborhoods and neighborhoods people create in their lives; neighborhoods defined by shared interests.

My first friend in L.A. was the late Cathy Seipp, whom I met after I sent her a fan letter about her New York Press column, "Letter from L.A." We started putting together monthly "writergirl" breakfasts at the Farmers Market. Next, we threw a small party at my house for an author I knew. Before long, Cathy and I, with French journalist Emmanuelle Richard, were bringing together hundreds of people, mainly journalists and authors, at monthly book parties we threw at bars and restaurants around L.A. In just a few years in Los Angeles, I not only found close friends but helped create a vibrant community of writers and thinkers.

In the community in L.A. where I live, I try to remember that you make a place neighborly by acting neighborly: Remind your neighbor when she's forgotten to move her car on street-cleaning day. Pull in somebody's recycling bin when they've been working long hours. Sweep in front of your neighbor's driveway when you sweep yours.

It's also important to expand your concept of "neighbor" to anyone in your vicinity that you can act neighborly to. Not long ago, I saw a car stopped on my street in a place cars don't normally stop. "Everything OK?" I called to the 70ish man at the wheel.

In an Irish accent, he said, "Actually, we're lost." He and his wife were looking for the freeway, which was several miles and several turns behind them. I was running late for an appointment, but I gave them quick directions. The man thanked me, but he looked confused.

"One sec!" I said. I ran to my car, pulled out a pen and paper and wrote the directions down. It was no big deal, but then again, it was.

A minute or two of generosity of spirit is probably all it takes to leave people with a lasting good impression of Los Angeles, and more important, it just might compel them to pass on a little goodwill to the people they encounter — to spread the nice instead of the mean. 

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-alkon-rude-20110208,0,601531,print.story

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From the New York Times

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An H.I.V. Strategy Invites Addicts In

VANCOUVER, British Columbia — At 12 tables, in front of 12 mirrors, a dozen people are fussing intently in raptures of self-absorption, like chorus line members applying makeup in a dressing room.

But these people are drug addicts, injecting themselves with whatever they just bought on the street — under the eyes of a nurse here at Insite, the only “safe injection site” in North America.

“You can tell she just shot cocaine,” Thomas Kerr, an AIDS expert who does studies at the center, said of one young woman who keeps readjusting her tight tube top. “The way she's fidgeting, moving her hands over her face — she's tweaking.”

Insite, situated on the worst block of an area once home to the fastest-growing AIDS epidemic in North America, is one reason Vancouver is succeeding in lowering new AIDS infection rates while many other cities are only getting worse.

By offering clean needles and aggressively testing and treating those who may be infected with H.I.V., Vancouver is offering proof that an idea that was once controversial actually works: Widespread treatment, while expensive, protects not just individuals but the whole community.

Because antiretroviral medications lower the amount of virus in the blood, those taking them are estimated to be 90 percent less infective.

Pioneering work by the British Columbia Center for Excellence in H.I.V./AIDS at St. Paul's Hospital here demonstrated that getting most of the infected onto medication could drive down the whole community's rate of new infections.

According to one of the center's studies, financed by the United States National Institutes of Health, from 1996 to 2009 the number of British Columbians taking the medication increased more than sixfold — to 5,413, an estimated 80 percent of those with H.I.V. The number of annual new infections dropped by 52 percent. This happened even as testing increased and syphilis rates kept rising, indicating that people were not switching in droves to condoms or abstinence.

Studies in San Francisco and Taiwan found similar results. So last July the United Nations' AIDS-fighting agency made “test and treat” its official goal — although it acknowledged that it is only a dream, since global AIDS budgets aren't big enough to buy medication even for all those hovering near death.

It is also only a dream in the United States. Much of the American epidemic is now concentrated in poor black and Latino neighborhoods, where health insurance is less common and many avoid testing for fear of being stigmatized. However, the federal government is conducting a three-year study of “test and treat” in the Bronx and the District of Columbia.

Because the medication can have unpleasant side effects, many American doctors delay prescribing it until their patients have low counts of CD4 cells, a sign that their immune systems are weakening. Doctors often feel a greater commitment to each patient's comfort than to the abstract idea of fewer infections in a given city. But Vancouver is a different story. Canadian medical care is free, doctors are expected to pursue public health goals and Vancouver's provincial health department aggressively hunts for people to test.

“In 2004, I rebelled when the government people started to say, ‘We need to get control over the budget for your program,' ” said Dr. Julio S. G. Montaner, director of the St. Paul's program and a former president of the International AIDS Society. “I went to the ministries of finance and health and told them: The best-kept secret in this field is that treatment is prevention. You need to let us treat more people, not less. And it worked.”

Even $50 million spent on drugs, he said, ultimately saves $300 million because roughly 400 people a year avoid infection. (The estimated lifetime cost of treating a Canadian with AIDS is $750,000.)

Dr. Montaner also pushed for the creation of Insite. There, addicts get clean needles, which they are not allowed to share with anyone else.

In return, they are safe from robbery, which is common on the streets outside, and from arrest. Insite has a special exemption from Canada's narcotics laws.

They also know that if they overdose, they won't die. In Insite's seven years of operation, there have been more than 1,000 overdoses inside, but not a single death. (Mild overdoses are treated with oxygen, serious ones with Narcan, an opiate blocker.)

Also, the staff nurses give medical care: They drain and bandage abscesses from dirty needles, hand out condoms, offer gynecological exams and treatment for sexual diseases, refer addicts to treatment and offer AIDS tests.

“We feel very positive about Insite,” said Dr. Patricia Daly, chief public health officer for Vancouver Coastal Health, the branch of the health system that covers this part of the country. “There are fewer overdose deaths, less open drug use on the street, and we know it's brought more people into detox.”

While the city's large gay community has more infected individuals, the drug-using community is harder to reach. Many addicts are mentally ill or barely educated; many are homeless. About a quarter are Indians, who have historical reasons to view government testing with suspicion.

Also, addicts are often so consumed with finding their next hit of heroin, cocaine or methamphetamine that they ignore everything else and will sell anything, including their antiretrovirals.

“I love a lot of the people here,” said Hugh Lampkin, 48 and a heroin addict since he was 16, as he led a tour of the Downtown Eastside neighborhood. He is vice president of the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users, an addicts' organization formed in 1997 during a wave of overdose deaths. “You get to know them, they're really decent. But you always have to watch yourself. Everybody is predatory. Drugs make you that way.”

Downtown Eastside is a shock even to someone familiar with the Lower East Side of Manhattan in the 1980s or the Tenderloin in San Francisco. Even on a balmy fall afternoon, having 5,000 addicts concentrated in a small neighborhood can make a walk feel like a visit to the set of a zombie movie. On its core blocks, dozens of people are shuffling or staggering, flinching with cocaine tics, scratching scabs. Except for the young women dressed to lure customers for sex, many are in dirt-streaked clothing that hangs from their emaciated frames. Drugs and cash are openly exchanged.

The alleys are worse — people squat to suck on crack pipes, openly undress to find veins or lie down so friends can inject their jugulars — a practice, known as “jugging,” that Insite discourages. The puddles, smelling of urine and feces, are sometimes drawn up into syringes, Mr. Lampkin says — one reason that heart infections hospitalize more addicts than overdoses do.

Even in this milieu, where almost everyone admits being a current or former drug user, denial about AIDS is rife.

Admitting that you are H.I.V.-positive, said Ann Livingston, a founder of the drug users' network, means ostracism: forget about sex, and forget about sharing drugs.

Also, Ms. Livingston said, many users are in and out of prison, where it can be dangerous to admit being infected.

The city began handing out free needles in the late 1980s after studies concluded that the practice lowered rates of hepatitis and AIDS. A 1997 study in The Lancet found that in 29 cities worldwide with needle exchange, H.I.V. infection dropped 6 percent a year among drug injectors, while in 51 cities without, it rose by about 6 percent. A Vancouver study found it did the same. In 2003, at the insistence of a new mayor who was a former police officer and chief coroner, Vancouver went further, opening Insite as a safe haven supervised by nurses.

About 800 injections take place there daily. However, officials think that is only 5 percent of the injections in the city and want permission from the national government to open more sites. “People can't wait to shoot up,” said Jim Jones, who was handing out syringes at a city-financed “needle depot” in a Downtown Eastside alley. At Insite, Mr. Jones said, “they may have to wait 20 minutes, half an hour. When you're dope-sick, that's too long.”

Mr. Lampkin agreed. “People grab a rig, go two feet from here and do their smash,” he said. “Or they don't even cook up, they shake and bake: pour their drugs right in the syringe, shake it with water, and try to heat the barrel. Shake and bake is how you get endocarditis.”

At Insite, clients are left alone, unless they ask for help. Bad vision is common, and many users have veins clogged with scar tissue. The nurses can help find a vein, “but they cannot push the plunger,” Dr. Kerr said.

Needle litter has decreased in the area, and Insite's backers assert that violence has gone down, too. Female addicts are often attacked for their drugs or money, Dr. Montaner explained, so they must get men to protect them, which often means payment with sex, which increases infection risk.

Although the Canadian Medical Association and the public health officers of Canada's 17 largest cities have endorsed supervised sites, no more have opened because the national government refuses to grant more exemptions to the federal narcotics laws.

Insite opened when the Liberal Party was in power. The Conservative-led government that came to power in 2006 has sued to shut it. Local courts have refused to close it, accepting the city's argument that an addict's need for opiates is like a diabetic's for insulin and that a citizen's right to health — recognized in Canada's version of the Bill of Rights — outweighs narcotics law.

Canada's Supreme Court is to take up the case in May.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/08/health/08vancouver.html?_r=1&ref=world&pagewanted=print

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Support Grows for Tiered Risk System at Airports

One reason airport security measures frustrate travelers is that screening procedures tend to treat all passengers the same: as potential terrorists.

But in the wake of the furor last fall over pat-downs and body scanners, several industry organizations are working on proposals to overhaul security checkpoints to provide more or less scrutiny based on the risk profile of each traveler.

While the proposals are in the early stages, they represent a growing consensus around a concept that has the support of John S. Pistole, the head of the Transportation Security Administration: divide travelers into three groups — trusted, regular or risky — and apply different screening techniques based on what is known about the passengers.

“Today we have T.S.A. agents looking at TV screens, but they don't know anything about the person going through the system,” said Steve Lott, a spokesman for the International Air Transport Association. “The idea is to take data that the government and the airlines are already collecting about passengers and bring it to the checkpoint.”

A crucial part of the group's “checkpoint of the future” proposal, and similar plans under discussion by other industry organizations, is creating a trusted traveler program that would allow passengers to undergo a background check to gain access to an expedited security lane at the airport.

These trusted travelers would probably pay a fee for the vetting, much like the $100 application fee for the Global Entry program operated by United States Customs and Border Protection. After submitting to an interview, a background check and a fingerprint scan to join Global Entry, members can clear customs using a kiosk instead of waiting to speak with an agent.

“Our security apparatus has already acknowledged that we can create trusted traveler programs,” said Geoff Freeman, executive vice president of the U.S. Travel Association. “Let's expand on that.”

The association, a trade group, plans to release its own proposal for ways to improve security checkpoints next month, but many of its core concepts overlap with ideas presented by the International Air Transport Association at an industry conference last year.

Both groups envision three screening lanes with different security procedures based on varying levels of risk. Trusted travelers would undergo lighter screening, perhaps passing through a metal detector with their shoes on and laptops in their bags, whereas anyone flagged as potentially risky would receive more intensive scrutiny, using technology like the body scanners and interviews with officers trained in behavioral analysis.

Although many of the procedural details are still just proposals, the idea is to determine who may present a risk based on better use of government intelligence and watch lists as well as suspicious behaviors like checking in for a one-way international flight with no luggage.

Travelers in the middle group — neither vetted nor risky — would receive an intermediate level of screening, but ideally the process would be quicker than current procedures because suspicious passengers would be diverted to a separate lane.

Making the screening process more efficient is the major goal of both trade associations, based on concerns that as the economy improves and passenger traffic increases, security lines will slow down, deterring people from traveling. Whether more invasive procedures like pat-downs and body scanners are discouraging air travel is open to debate, but there is a growing consensus that 10 years after the Transportation Security Administration was created, it is time to re-evaluate the agency's strategy.

In remarks to the American Bar Association in January, Mr. Pistole expressed a need to formulate a vision for transportation security, mentioning a trusted traveler program as an option under consideration and expressing an openness to other suggestions.

“If people have ideas, he wants to hear them because he's looking at ways to make changes,” a T.S.A. spokesman, Nicholas Kimball, said.

In response to concerns about the body scanners, the agency last week demonstrated software it was testing at Las Vegas McCarran International Airport that allowed the machines to display a generic outline of a human figure rather than the graphic images some passengers view as a privacy invasion.

The agency has also responded to pilots' concerns about escalating security measures by expediting the screening process for crew members, based on their trusted status and the background checks they undergo as a condition of their employment. The Air Line Pilots Association is also calling for a more risk-based approach to screening, not just for the crew but also for passengers.

There is growing support for this type of approach, even on a global level. The International Civil Aviation Organization, a United Nations body that helps establish aviation policies for 190 member countries, has convened a working group to make recommendations about security screening procedures. A trusted traveler program is one idea on the table, said Jim Marriott, head of the organization's aviation security branch.

While there is support for more standardized practices around the world — rather than a hodgepodge of rules about liquids and laptops — Mr. Marriott cautioned that countries had different security needs, capabilities and resources.

“There are also some hard realities that we have to recognize in the security world about the protection of personal information and sensitivities to individual rights,” he said.

Another issue is the cost of escalating security measures, and how much taxpayers and travelers are willing to spend to feel safe in the air.

“We need strong high-level leadership that levels with the public and says, ‘Look, you cannot expect perfection out of any security system,' ” said Robert Poole, director of transportation policy at the Reason Foundation.

For years, Mr. Poole has advocated for a more risk-based approach to aviation security, including some type of trusted traveler program. Now there finally seems to be more support to make it happen, he said.

“For the first time since 9/11, I think we have the conditions where it might be politically possible to have a serious debate about it,” he said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/08/business/08security.html?ref=world&pagewanted=print

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Switzerland: Rights Groups Issue ‘Indictment' of Bush

Two rights groups issued what they called a preliminary indictment against former President George W. Bush on torture charges in Geneva on Monday, vowing that he would face a case against him wherever he traveled outside the United States.

The 42-page document by the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights and the Berlin-based European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights said that Mr. Bush had authorized the torture of terrorism suspects in American custody. The document was described as “a preliminary legal analysis” that could be modified for particular plaintiffs and countries.

“So if he decides to leave the United States in the future, as soon as we hear about it we will have a complaint filed,” said Katherine Gallagher, a senior attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights. Mr. Bush canceled a trip to Geneva this week because of security concerns.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/08/world/europe/08briefs-Switzerland.html?ref=world&pagewanted=print

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Muslims to Be Congressional Hearings' Main Focus

WASHINGTON — The new chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee said Monday that he planned to call mostly Muslim and Arab witnesses to testify in hearings next month on the threat of homegrown Islamic terrorism.

Representative Peter T. King, Republican of New York, said he would rely on Muslims to make his case that American Muslim leaders have failed to cooperate with law enforcement officials in the effort to disrupt terrorist plots — a claim that was rebutted in recent reports by counterterrorism experts and in a forum on Capitol Hill on Monday.

“I believe it will have more of an impact on the American people if they see people who are of the Muslim faith and Arab descent testifying,” Mr. King said.

The hearings, which Mr. King said would start the week of March 7, have provoked an uproar from both the left and the right. The left has accused Mr. King of embarking on a witch hunt. The right has accused him of capitulation for calling Muslims like Representative Keith Ellison, Democrat of Minnesota, to testify while denying a platform to popular critics of Islamic extremism like Steven Emerson, Frank Gaffney, Daniel Pipes and Robert Spencer.

As the hearings approach, the reaction from Muslim groups — initially outraged — has evolved into efforts to get Mr. King to enlarge the scope of the hearings beyond Muslims. They want to use the forum to reinforce the notion that the potential for terrorist violence among American Muslims is very marginal and very isolated.

“Our heads aren't in the sand,” Alejandro J. Beutel, the government and policy analyst for the Muslim Public Affairs Council, a national advocacy group, said at a forum his group sponsored on Monday on Capitol Hill. “The threat clearly exists, but I also want to put it in perspective. The threat exists, but it is not a pandemic.”

Fifty-one Muslim, civil rights and interfaith groups sent a letter last week to Speaker John A. Boehner, Republican of Ohio, and the House minority leader, Nancy Pelosi, Democrat of California, protesting Mr. King's hearings as modern-day McCarthyism. They said that if Congress was going to investigate violent extremism, it should investigate extremists of all kinds and not just Muslims.

“Singling out a group of Americans for government scrutiny based on their faith is divisive and wrong,” said the letter, which was led by Muslim Advocates, a legal and policy organization in San Francisco, and was signed by non-Muslim groups including Amnesty International USA, the Interfaith Alliance and the Japanese American Citizens League.

Mr. Ellison said that while he would participate, “I'm going to make it clear that I challenge the premise of the hearings.

“If you put every single Muslim in the U.S. in jail, it wouldn't have stopped Jared Loughner,” Mr. Ellison said, referring to the man accused of opening fire on an Arizona congresswoman and her constituents. “It wouldn't have stopped the young man who killed his classmates at Virginia Tech. It wouldn't have stopped the bombing in Oklahoma City or the man who killed a guard at the Holocaust Museum in Washington.”

But Mr. King dismissed this line of criticism, saying: “I totally reject that. That, to me, is political correctness at its worst. If we included these other violent events in the hearings, we'd be sending the false signal that we think there's a security threat equivalency between Al Qaeda and the neo-Nazi movement, or Al Qaeda and gun groups. There is none.”

Mr. King added, “I'm not going to dilute the hearings by including other extremists.”

In fact, he said he planned to hold three or four more hearings this year on topics like the radicalization of Muslims in prisons and Saudi financing for American mosques.

He said the only witness he had settled on for certain of the three he would call in the first hearing was Dr. Zuhdi Jasser, a doctor from Arizona and an American military veteran who has little following among Muslims but has become a favorite of conservatives for his portrayal of American Muslim leaders as radical Islamists.

Mr. King said he had changed his mind about summoning as a witness Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a Somali-born feminist critic of Islam who became a member of Parliament in the Netherlands and then fled because of threats on her life.

The hearings, Mr. King said, would be organized into panels of witnesses, one of them to include members of Congress. He said Mr. Ellison would serve as a witness on that panel. He said he did not expect to call any of the local law enforcement or counterintelligence experts who he said had told him repeatedly that noncooperation by American Muslims is a “significant issue.” He says they will say these things privately, but not in public.

Some law enforcement experts have challenged Mr. King's portrayal of widespread noncooperation. At the forum Monday, Sheriff Leroy Baca of Los Angeles County said he had cultivated extensive relationships with Muslim leaders throughout his county. He said that as a member of the Major City Chiefs Association, the Major County Sheriffs Association and the National Sheriffs Association, he had not heard complaints about noncooperation from Muslims.

Two other experts at the forum, Peter Bergen, director of the National Security Studies Program at the New America Foundation, and Roger Cressey, former director for transnational threats at the National Security Council, said the really sophisticated terrorists stop traveling and stop communicating in order to avoid detection. When that happens, they said, law enforcement must rely almost entirely on tips from the Muslim community to catch them.

A report issued last week by an independent research group on national security found that 48 of the 120 Muslims suspected of plotting domestic terrorist attacks since Sept. 11, 2001, were turned in by fellow Muslims, including parents, mosque members and even a Facebook friend. The report was issued by the Triangle Center on Terrorism and Homeland Security, which is affiliated with Duke and the University of North Carolina .

The report said, “In some communities, Muslim-Americans have been so concerned about extremists in their midst that they have turned in people who turned out to be undercover informants.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/08/us/politics/08muslim.html?ref=us&pagewanted=print

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From Google News

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ACLU wants city to stop putting up cameras

by FRAN SPIELMAN AND FRANK MAIN

Feb 8, 2011

The American Civil Liberties Union is urging the city to order a moratorium on expanding its video-surveillance system and is calling on new rules to safeguard citizens' privacy.

Chicago's network of more than 10,000 public and private surveillance cameras is already the most extensive and integrated in the nation.

Most aldermen appear to like it that way because of the sense of security that cameras can bring to residents of high-crime neighborhoods.

Ald. Edward M. Burke (14th), chairman of the City Council's Finance Committee, scoffed at the demand for a halt in installing new cameras.

“Anyone who's had a tour of the 911 center would agree that surveillance cameras are one of the most effective tools in law enforcement today and it seems like they're very popular with the local residents,” said Burke, a former Chicago Police officer.

“I wouldn't want to see anything that would interfere with what the Police Department has been able to achieve in reduction of crime. A large part of that is using technology to supplement personnel,” he added.

The ACLU, in a report made public today, said the millions of dollars spent on cameras could have been used to put more officers on the street.

The ACLU also questioned the effectiveness of the cameras. The city says they accounted for 4,500 arrests from 2006 through May 2010, which the ACLU pointed out is less than 1 percent of the total number of arrests over that period.

The report didn't identify any misconduct involving Chicago's camera system, but highlighted problems in England and other cities.

“Chicago's camera network invades the freedom to be anonymous in public places,” the report said, calling on a city review of whether to stop adding or even reduce the number of cameras in the system.

Ald. Carrie Austin (34th), chairman of the City Council's Budget Committee, said she's not opposed to a moratorium on new surveillance cameras in her Far South Side ward, acknowledging that “crime in my area has not decreased the way I hope that it would have” when cameras were installed.

But, she said, “There are many communities that are asking for them. So I wouldn't want to impose my opinion on what needs to be done in somebody else's community.”

http://www.suntimes.com/news/politics/3707104-418/aclu-wants-city-to-stop-putting-up-cameras.html

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From the White House

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National Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Day: Coming Together to Fight HIV/AIDS

To commemorate National Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Day, Senior Advisor to President Obama Valerie Jarrett shared her heart-felt thoughts on the importance of combating HIV/AIDS.

National Black HIV/AIDS Awareness is not just a day to increase awareness, but a day to act on your own health.

• Do you know your status? If not, text your zipcode to 566948 (“KNOWIT”) to find and HIV testing site near you or go to HIVtest.org.
  
  
• You can also call 1-800-CDC-INFORMATION for more information and testing sites in your area.
  
  
• Visit www.aids.gov for Federal resources, events in your area and tools to commemorate National Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Day.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2011/02/07/national-black-hivaids-awareness-day-coming-together-fight-hivaids

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From ICE

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Chester County, Pa., man charged with child sex tourism

PHILADELPHIA - An indictment was unsealed Feb. 4 charging John Charles Ware in a case of child sex tourism, announced U.S. Attorney Zane David Memeger of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. This case is being investigated by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), Philadelphia.

Ware, 47, of Oxford, Pa., is charged with: two counts of transporting a minor in foreign commerce with the intent to engage in illegal sexual activity, involving two minors; one count of transporting one of those minors in interstate commerce with the intent to engage in illegal sexual activity; two counts of attempting to transport a minor in foreign commerce with the intent to engage in illegal sexual activity, involving two additional minors; production of child pornography and the receipt and possession of child pornography. He was arrested Feb. 4.

If convicted, the defendant faces a maximum possible sentence of life in prison with a mandatory minimum of 15 years, a $1,750,000 fine, a mandatory 5 years supervised release to lifetime supervised release, and an $700 special assessment.

The case is being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Sherri A. Stephan.

This HSI investigation is part of Operation Predator, a nationwide ICE initiative to protect children from sexual predators, including those who travel overseas for sex with minors, Internet child pornographers, criminal alien sex offenders, and child sex traffickers.

ICE encourages the public to report suspected child predators and any suspicious activity through its toll-free hotline at 1-866-DHS-2ICE . This hotline is staffed around the clock by investigators.

Suspected child sexual exploitation or missing children may be reported to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, an Operation Predator partner, at 1-800-843-5678 or http://www.cybertipline.com.

http://www.ice.gov/news/releases/1102/110204philadelphia.htm

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From the DEA

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Operation Four Horsemen Results in Millions Going Back to Law Enforcement Agencies

Millions Seized in Major Drug Case; Five Agencies to Share $8 Million

FEB 03 --ATLANTA - In a brief presentation at the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) Atlanta Division today, millions of dollars in seized assets from the two-year investigation code-named Operation Four Horsemen were distributed to law enforcement agencies who contributed hours and efforts in the case. The investigation was led by DEA and coordinated through the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force program.

“This investigation further reveals that the greater Atlanta area has become the hub of operations for Mexican cartel groups who seek to destroy lives by distributing a multitude of illegal drugs in the Eastern United States,” said DEA Atlanta Field Division Special Agent in Charge Rodney G. Benson. “The seizure of large sums of U.S. currency from this organization severely disrupted its operations. Today's sharing of these forfeited funds are a direct result of the great working relationship that DEA continues to have with its federal, state and local counterparts.”

United States Attorney Sally Quillian Yates, whose office coordinated the transfer of the forfeited funds, said, “This is one of the largest drug and money cases in this district in recent history. The law enforcement officers working this case seized over $23 million in cash which was on its way back to Mexico to fuel the cartels. By taking money out of the pockets of the cartels and putting it into our local law enforcement, we can help provide the resources necessary for our local law enforcement agencies to fight an international threat. Our partnership with the state and local counterparts is critical to effective law enforcement in this district.”

“The result of this multi-year and multi-agency operation confirms our suspicions that Georgia has become a hub for drug traffic operations. It is imperative for police organizations to understand drug trafficking patterns and work together to combat the traffic and the problems that evolve there from,” said Lawrenceville Police Chief Randy Johnson. “The drug problem knows no city limits, state lines, or international borders. I am proud to have my agency work with the Federal Government in task force efforts to combat this problem.”

“I wish to commend the inter-agency community and our law enforcement state, federal and local partners for their significant interdiction efforts in the Operation Four Horsemen investigation. The Henry County Sheriff's Office is pleased to have been part of this major drug interdiction effort that will protect countless lives from the dangers of drug abuse, trafficking, and production,” said Henry County Sheriff Keith McBrayer. “These arrests and seizures have taken apart a major drug organization. I am confident that the dedicated men and women of this task force will continue to have a critical impact on interdicting drug trafficking in Henry County and well beyond.”

“The significance of this investigation serves as a wake- up call that Georgia is ground zero for east coast poly-drug Mexican cartels,” said Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI) Director Vernan Keenan. “These violent organized criminal enterprises destroy lives as they peddle their poisons throughout the eastern United States, acquiring market control and unimaginable illegal drug proceeds like those represented here.”

“The Georgia State Patrol works closely with federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies as a team in the ongoing task of drug interdiction,” said Colonel Bill Hitchens, Commissioner of the Georgia Department of Public Safety. “Participating agencies provide critical resources that together assist in the successful prosecution of those involved.”

Troup County Sheriff Donny Turner said, “The Troup County Sheriff's Office is grateful for the collaborative efforts of the DEA, ICE, the United States Attorney's Office for the Northern District of Georgia, the Georgia State Patrol, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, the Georgia Department of Public Safety and all other agencies along the I-85 corridor to suppress the trafficking of illegal drugs by those who attempt to contaminate the homes of our citizens and endanger neighborhoods along that route, throughout the State of Georgia. Whenever a successful traffic stop is executed, it is a win for the entire Law Enforcement community. By stopping the illicit movement of illegal narcotics, these agencies are saving lives!”

At today's brief presentation, the following amounts were presented to the following law enforcement agencies:

?$2,096,769.15 to the Lawrenceville Police Department

?$1,223,115.34 to the Henry County Sheriff's Office

?$1,223,115.34 to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation

?$1,048,384.58 to the Georgia Department of Public Safety

?$174,730.76 to the Troup County Sheriff's Office.

Beginning in mid-2007, the DEA initiated an investigation which ultimately uncovered two Mexico-based drug trafficking cells operating in the Atlanta area. The investigation revealed that the cells operated in a similar fashion, receiving multi-kilogram shipments of cocaine that arrived in tractor-trailers from Mexico. After the drug traffickers received the cocaine shipments, they shipped millions of dollars in U.S. currency back to Mexico by concealing the money in tractor-trailers and other vehicles. The Mexican-based importation, transportation, and distribution Drug Trafficking Organization (DTO) spanned multiple states, and reported to command and control heads located within Mexico. The DTO co-inhabited the metropolitan areas of Atlanta, Laredo, McAllen, San Antonio, Greensboro, Raleigh, Newark, and Chicago.

The investigation revealed that Atlanta was the primary distribution point for the organization. The organization imported narcotics into the United States along strategic border points in Texas, and then transported and stored narcotics in Atlanta before distributing them in Atlanta and to other cities along the eastern coast. In addition, the group organized and collected large amounts of bulk narcotic proceeds and then coordinated transportation from Atlanta back to Mexico via tractor-trailer vehicles. Operation Four Horsemen is linked to what DEA identified as its highest-level traffickers known as a Consolidated Priority Target.

During the Atlanta-based Operation Four Horsemen investigation, a total of $23,834,407 in bulk U.S. currency and 567 kilograms of cocaine were seized, and 23 organization members were arrested.

Throughout the course of Operation Four Horsemen, DEA Atlanta passed several investigative leads to other DEA offices, including DEA Laredo and DEA San Antonio which resulted in the initiation of multiple investigations which led to the seizure of over 400 kilograms of cocaine, 1,445 kilograms of marijuana and approximately $7 million in bulk U.S. currency in Texas. Operation Four Horsemen investigative leads and strategic intelligence was also passed to the DEA Mexico City Country Office where high ranking DTO command and control leaders continue to be identified and investigated in coordination with host country law enforcement officials.

The seizures of U.S. currency include the following:

? On September 3, 2008, $1,040,120 in U.S. currency was seized pursuant to a traffic stop of a tractor-trailer on I-20 in Carroll County. The currency had been picked up in Atlanta and was destined for Mexico.

? On December 3, 2008, $1,023,465 in U.S. currency was seized pursuant to a traffic stop of a tractor-trailer on I-20 in Carroll County. The currency had been picked up in Atlanta and was destined for Mexico.

? On December 7, 2008, $8,824,950 in U.S. currency was seized pursuant to a traffic stop of a tractor-trailer on I-85 in Troup County. The currency had been picked up in North Fulton County and was destined for Mexico.

? On January 22, 2009, $4,754,159 in U.S. currency was seized pursuant to a traffic stop of a vehicle on I-75 in Henry County. The currency had been picked up at the Mall of Georgia and was destined for Mexico.

? On July 7, 2009, agents seized $51,400 in U.S. currency during the execution of a search warrant on a single-family residence located at 2971 Hollow Mill Lane in Buford.

? On August 4, 2009, agents seized $5,241,180 in U.S. currency which was concealed inside a bus parked outside a hotel on Paces Ferry Road in the Vinings area. The money was believed to be destined for Mexico. On the same date, agents seized $179,978 in U.S. currency during the execution of a search warrant on a single-family residence located at 1290 Beeblossom Trail in Lawrenceville.

The case was investigated by DEA special agents, with valuable assistance by the Georgia State Patrol, Lawrenceville Police Department, the Henry County Sheriff's Department, and the GBI. Further assistance was provided by the Troup County Sheriff's Office.

Assistant United States Attorneys Michael Herskowitz and Jeffrey Viscomi prosecuted the case.

DEA Atlanta's SAC Benson encourages parents, along with their children, to educate themselves about the dangers of legal and illegal drugs by visiting DEA's interactive websites at www.justhinktwice.com, www.GetSmartAboutDrugs.com and www.dea.gov.

http://www.justice.gov/dea/pubs/states/newsrel/2011/atlanta020311.html

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