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From Los Angeles Times

Demjanjuk convicted, gets 5 years in prison

The Ohio man, 91, faced 28,060 counts of accessory to murder, one for each death at the Sobibor camp in Poland while he allegedly was a guard.

from the Associated Press

May 12, 2011

MUNICH

Retired Ohio autoworker John Demjanjuk was convicted of thousands of counts of acting as an accessory to murder at a Nazi death camp and sentenced Thursday to five years in prison -- closing one chapter in a decades-long legal battle.

It was not immediately clear how much credit the 91-year-old native of Ukraine he would get for time served.

Demjanjuk was charged with 28,060 counts of being an accessory to murder, one for each person who died during the time he was accused of being a guard at the Sobibor camp in Nazi-occupied Poland. There was no evidence he committed a specific crime. The prosecution was based on the theory that if Demjanjuk was at the camp, he was a participant in the killing -- the first time such a legal argument has been made in German courts.

Demjanjuk sat in a wheelchair in front of the judges as they announced their verdict, but showed no reaction. Earlier Thursday, he had declined the opportunity to make a final statement to the court.

"The court is convinced that the defendant … served as a guard at Sobibor from 27 March 1943 to mid-September 1943," presiding Judge Ralph Alt said as he announced the verdict.

The verdict will not entirely end more than 30 years of legal wrangling. The defense has pledged to appeal any German conviction, and legal proceedings continue in the United States.

In the 1980s, Demjanjuk stood trial in Israel after he was accused of being the notoriously brutal guard "Ivan the Terrible" at the Treblinka extermination camp. He was convicted, sentenced to death -- then freed when an Israeli court overturned the ruling, saying the evidence showed he was the victim of mistaken identity.

Demjanjuk maintains he was a victim of the Nazis -- first wounded as a Soviet soldier fighting German forces, then captured and held as a prisoner of war under brutal conditions before joining the Vlasov Army, a force of anti-communist Soviet POWs and others that was formed to fight with the Germans against the Soviets in the final months of the war.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fgw-demjanjuk-20110513,0,6707789.story

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Osama bin Laden's journal contains his thoughts on killing Americans

In one passage, he wonders how many Americans would have to die on U.S. soil to force the government to withdraw from the Arab world, and concludes that it would require another mass murder on the scale of Sept. 11, an official says.

by Ken Dilanian and Brian Bennett, Los Angeles Times

May 12, 2011

Reporting from Washington

Osama bin Laden kept a personal journal in which he contemplated how to kill as many Americans as possible, including in terrorist attacks against Los Angeles, Chicago and Washington, according to U.S. officials.

The handwritten journal was part of a vast cache of digital and printed material hauled away from Bin Laden's hide-out after U.S. Navy SEALs killed him last week in Abbottabad, Pakistan.

One official said Wednesday that the trove provided "terabytes" of new information about Al Qaeda.

The official described the journal as full of planning ideas and outlines of potential operations — "aspirational guidance" on how to kill the maximum number of people rather than specific proposals or plots that were actually underway.

In one passage, Bin Laden wondered how many Americans would have to die in U.S. cities to force the U.S. government to withdraw from the Arab world. He concluded that it would require another mass murder on the scale of the Sept. 11 attacks to spur a reversal in U.S. policy, an official said.

The officials declined to provide details about potential plots in Los Angeles and Chicago. Bin Laden discussed an operation in Washington, one official said, "because of its iconic value."

Michael Downing, commanding officer of the Los Angeles Police Department's counter-terrorism and special operations bureau, said the intelligence cache confirms what authorities have long known: "Los Angeles was on the target list for Al Qaeda."

In 1999, an Al Qaeda-trained terrorist, "millennium bomber" Ahmed Ressam, was arrested in Port Angeles, Wash., with a carload of explosives. He was convicted of plotting to bomb Los Angeles International Airport.

A CIA-led multiagency task force continues to scrutinize data from five computers, dozens of flash-drive storage devices and other items taken from Bin Laden's walled compound. The analysts have not found evidence of an imminent threat of attack by Al Qaeda or its affiliates around the globe, officials said.

But the initial analysis has shown that Bin Laden was in regular communication with several deputies, including reputed operations chief Atiyah Abd Rahman, officials said. The messages were sent primarily by couriers carrying flash drives, the official said.

Some reports have said Rahman was killed in a 2010 drone strike, but U.S. officials say they believe he is still alive.

The intelligence cache has also upended the long-held belief that Bin Laden was an isolated, inspirational figurehead who had cut off communications and played no operational role in attacks or plots, according to the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to publicly discuss sensitive intelligence information.

"These assumptions [are] going out the window," one official said.

Discovery of the journal was not entirely unexpected. Bin Laden's son Omar described his father in a 2009 memoir, "Growing Up Bin Laden," as regularly recording his thoughts and plans.

The son sharply criticizes his father's terrorist operations in the book, but this week he accused the Obama administration of murdering his father instead of capturing him. "We maintain that arbitrary killing is not a solution to political problems," he said in a statement released to several news organizations.

Intelligence officials throughout the U.S. government have been briefed daily this week on new information gleaned from the intelligence haul, one official said.

The messages to Rahman, a Libyan in his mid-30s, are of particular interest.

Rahman joined Bin Laden in Afghanistan as a teenager in the 1980s and "since then, he has gained considerable stature in al-Qaeda as an explosives expert and Islamic scholar," according to a State Department website that offers a $1-million reward for information leading to him.

In 2005, Rahman signed a letter to Abu Musab Zarqawi, the now-dead leader of the group Al Qaeda in Iraq, rebuking the group for indiscriminate violence against Shiite Muslims, according to counter-terrorism experts. Rahman met Zarqawi in Herat, in western Afghanistan, in the late 1990s, according to the State Department dossier.

Rahman is now believed to be in Pakistan, U.S. officials said.

Also Wednesday, several members of Congress and other officials got a chance to examine photos of Bin Laden's corpse. President Obama has decided not to release the photos publicly. Bin Laden was shot in the head and chest and was buried at sea.

"By viewing these photos, I can help dispel conspiracy theorists who doubt that Bin Laden is in fact dead," said Sen. James M. Inhofe (R-Okla.), who was among those who traveled to CIA headquarters in Langley, Va., to see the photos.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-bin-laden-intel-20110512,0,6823870,print.story

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Citizen children and life under the radar

In the U.S. are 4.5 million citizens whose parents are illegal immigrants. Often these fearful parents keep their children from programs and opportunities that would improve their development.

by Hirokazu Yoshikawa

May 12, 2011

President Obama spoke Tuesday about the economic reasons for providing a pathway to citizenship for the nation's undocumented. This is clearly a polarizing issue, and there is much room for honest disagreement. But there's one fact we can't ignore: Undocumented immigrants in the U.S. include the parents of 4.5 million children who are legal citizens. What that means is that, on average, one or two children in every elementary school classroom in the country is coping with huge uncertainty about future family stability.

As the president noted in his speech, border enforcement is now stronger; the number of people illegally entering the U.S. is declining. But these millions of citizen children are here and will remain. It is in the interest of all of us to ensure that these children grow up to become productive citizens.

I recently published a study that followed hundreds of young children in immigrant families in order to examine how parents' undocumented status affects their children's development. Our findings are sobering.

Living under the radar creates enormous stress and necessitates terrible choices for these families. Many choose to keep their citizen children from taking advantage of programs and opportunities that would improve their development because parents fear that putting in applications could increase their risk of being deported and their families' risk of being ripped apart. This means that the children of undocumented immigrants are less likely to receive the kind of high-quality, center-based child care that research has shown to improve early development. The results are lower cognitive and language skills that can be seen as early as 24 months.

For more than three years, my colleagues and I visited families in their homes, neighborhoods and workplaces from the time their children were born. We got to really know parents and children, and many of us feel personally obligated to speak out on their behalf.

Living in fear of deportation and family separation comes at a high price. Afraid to request raises at work, undocumented parents generally don't get them. Scared to complain, they endure terrible working conditions — more than a third of the parents in our study were paid less than the legal minimum wage. Reluctant to report their landlords to authorities, undocumented parents silently endure disasters like ceiling collapses that are never fixed. In many parts of the country, parents without papers are afraid even to let their children go outside to play.

This doesn't mean they are not good parents. The undocumented mothers and fathers in our study, despite working long hours, were just as likely to read books, tell stories and interact with their infants and toddlers as were their citizen-parent counterparts. One father without papers, for example, had done deliveries for a deli for over 15 years. Like many of our undocumented dads, he worked 12-hour days, six days a week, with no vacation, sick days or overtime. Afraid to ask for a raise, he worked for less than the minimum wage. Despite these hardships, he was engaged in nurturing care, play and reading to his young son. Year after year, the undocumented mothers and fathers in our study showed high levels of nurturing and social engagement with their babies.

Many of us know undocumented parents, and there are things we can do on behalf of their citizen children. First, we can inform parents about the opportunities and resources available for their children. Some of our field workers were the first people to tell undocumented parents about public libraries, pre-kindergarten programs and early-intervention services to identify and support children with disabilities. These are services that pay for themselves in returns to society.

Second, we can work with organizations in our communities to increase their capacity to serve low-income immigrant families. Many undocumented parents in our sample attended church regularly. Congregations should be sure they are providing information and resources about opportunities for children.

Finally, we can support policy change. In 2006, President George W. Bush proposed a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. Now Obama has voiced ideas of his own about how to fix our broken immigration system to meet the nation's economic and security needs. We must add our voices to theirs.

The citizen children of undocumented parents are growing up among us. They will populate the workforce of tomorrow. And it is in the interest of all of us that they have the skills and motivation to become secure and high-achieving members of society.

Hirokazu Yoshikawa is the incoming academic dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Education and the author "Immigrants Raising Citizens: Undocumented Parents and Their Young Children," Russell Sage Foundation 2011.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-yoshikawa-immigration-20110512,0,815266,print.story

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From the New York Times

The Dogs of War: Beloved Comrades in Afghanistan

by ELISABETH BUMILLER

WASHINGTON — Marines were on a foot patrol last fall in the Taliban stronghold of Marja, Afghanistan, when they shot and killed a lethal threat: a local dog that made the mistake of attacking the Marines' Labrador retriever.

Capt. Manuel Zepeda, the commander of Company F, Second Battalion, Sixth Marines, was unapologetic. If the Lab on the patrol had been hurt, the Marines would have lost their best weapon for detecting roadside bombs — and would have called for a medevac helicopter, just as they would for a human. An attack on the Lab was an attack on a fellow warrior.

As Captain Zepeda put it that day, “We consider the dog another Marine.”

The classified canine that went on the Navy Seals' raid of Osama bin Laden's compound last week has generated a wave of interest in military dogs, which have been used by the United States since at least World War I. Now, more valued than ever, they are on their own surge into Afghanistan.

American troops may be starting to come home this summer, but more dogs are going in. In 2007, the Marines began a pilot program in Afghanistan with nine bomb-sniffing dogs, a number that has grown to 350 and is expected to reach nearly 650 by the end of the year. Over all, there are some 2,700 dogs on active duty in the American military. A decade ago, before the Sept. 11 attacks, there were 1,800.

“Most of the public isn't aware of what these dogs add to national security,” said Gerry Proctor, a spokesman for training programs at Lackland Air Force Base in Texas, including the Military Working Dog School. Dogs are used for protection, pursuit, tracking and search and rescue, but the military is also increasingly relying on them to sniff out the homemade bombs that cause the vast majority of American casualties in Afghanistan. So far, no human or human-made technology can do better.

Within the military, the breeds of choice are generally the German shepherd and a Belgian shepherd, or Malinois, but Marines in Afghanistan rely on pure-bred Labrador retrievers because of the dogs' good noses and nonaggressive, eager-to-please temperaments. Labs now accompany many Marine foot patrols in Helmand Province in southern Afghanistan, wandering off-leash 100 yards or more in front as bomb detectors. It is the vital work of an expensively trained canine (the cost to the American military can be as high as $40,000 per dog), but at the end of a sweltering day, sometimes a Lab is still a Lab.

Last spring on a patrol in Helmand's Garmsir District, a Lab, Tango, was leading a small group of Marines on a dirt road leading into a village when the dog suddenly went down on all fours, wagging his tail — a sign that he had detected explosives nearby. The patrol froze as a Marine explosives team investigated. No bomb was found and the patrol continued, but on the way back the dog, miserable in the 102-degree heat and like most Labrador retrievers a good swimmer, abandoned his duties and leaped into an irrigation canal to cool off. But then he could not climb back up the steep bank. One of the Marines, swearing lustily, finally jumped into the canal and carried the dog out in his arms.

The bonds that grow in battle between the Labs and their Marine handlers are already the stuff of heart-tugging war stories. But few have had the emotional impact of that of Pfc. Colton W. Rusk, a 20-year-old Marine machine gunner and dog handler who was killed in December by sniper fire in Sangin, one of the most deadly areas in Helmand. During his deployment, Private Rusk sent his parents a steady flow of pictures and news about his beloved bomb dog, Eli, a black Lab. When Private Rusk was shot, Marine officers told his parents, Eli crawled on top of their son to try to protect him.

The 3-year-old Eli, the first name of the survivors listed in Private Rusk's obituary, was retired early from the military and adopted in February by Private Rusk's parents, Darrell and Kathy Rusk. “He's a big comfort to us,” Kathy Rusk said in a telephone interview from her home in Orange Grove, Tex. After the dog's retirement ceremony in February at Lackland Air Force Base, an event that generated enormous news coverage in Texas, the Rusks brought Eli for the first time into their home. “The first place he went was Colton's room,” Mrs. Rusk said. “He sniffed around and jumped up on his bed.”

So far, 20 Labrador retrievers out of the 350 have been killed in action since the Marine program began, most in explosions of homemade bombs, Marine officials said. Within the Special Operations Command, the home of the dog that went on the Bin Laden mission, some 34 dogs were killed in the line of duty between 2006 and 2009, said Maj. Wes Ticer, a spokesman. Like their handlers, dogs that survive go on repeat deployments, sometimes as many as four. Dogs retire from the military at the age of 8 or 9.

To an American public weary of nearly 10 years of war, dogs are a way to relate, as the celebrity status of the still-unknown commando dog proved. (President Obama is one of the few Americans to have met the dog, in a closed-door session with the Seal team last week.)

Few understand the appeal of dogs in battle better than Rebecca Frankel, the deputy managing editor of ForeignPolicy.com. Last week, she posted a “War Dog” photo essay, with her favorite pictures of dogs jumping out of helicopters, skydiving from 30,000 feet and relaxing with Marines. The photo essay went viral, with 6.5 million page views to date — a record for the site.

“I think people go weak at the knees for these dogs,” Ms. Frankel said in an interview. “I do, too. But their contribution is significant. These are serious dogs.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/12/world/middleeast/12dog.html?_r=1&hp

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Two Men Are Arrested in Terror Case

Two men who the authorities said intended to carry out a terrorist attack in New York City were arrested late Wednesday, two law enforcement officials said with knowledge of the matter.

The two men had sought to purchase hand grenades and guns. They were arrested after what one law enforcement official described as a sting operation, saying that their aims appeared “aspirational.” The identities of the men were not released but another official characterized the suspects as “homegrown” and another said one of the young men was of Moroccan descent.

The case was being prosecuted by the Manhattan district attorney's office, and law enforcement officials said the men were expected to be charged under New York State's terrorism law.

Major terrorism cases are generally investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and prosecuted by the United States attorney's office in federal court. But in this case, a law enforcement official said, one official had told the F.B.I. it was not a terrorism case.

The New York Police Department, working with the F.B.I., is usually involved in such cases. They are not generally handled by the Police Department alone and are seldom prosecuted in state court. A terrorist act, according to state law, is one that is intended to intimidate or coerce civilians, influence government policy by intimidation or coercion, or affect government conduct by murder, assassination or kidnapping.

I It was unclear Wednesday what had prompted the arrests, which, officials said, were made by the Police Department's Intelligence Division. The F.B.I.- N.Y.P.D. Joint Terrorism Task Force, made up of police detectives and federal agents, chose not to become involved, the officials said, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the investigation was continuing. There has been a history of tensions between the police and the F.B.I., though it was unclear if that played a role in this case.

Paul J. Browne, the Police Department's chief spokesman, did not return calls about the case. An F.B.I. spokesman and a spokeswoman for the district attorney's office declined to comment.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/13/nyregion/two-men-arrested-in-new-york-terror-case-police-say.html?hp=&pagewanted=print

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A Rite of Torture for Girls

HARGEISA, Somaliland

People usually torture those whom they fear or despise. But one of the most common forms of torture in the modern world, incomparably more widespread than waterboarding or electric shocks, is inflicted by mothers on daughters they love.

It's female genital mutilation — sometimes called female circumcision — and it is prevalent across a broad swath of Africa and chunks of Asia as well. Mothers take their daughters at about age 10 to cutters like Maryan Hirsi Ibrahim, a middle-aged Somali woman who says she wields her razor blade on up to a dozen girls a day.

“This tradition is for keeping our girls chaste, for lowering the sex drive of our daughters,” Ms. Ibrahim told me. “This is our culture.”

Ms. Ibrahim prefers the most extreme form of genital mutilation, called infibulation or Pharaonic circumcision. And let's not be dainty or euphemistic. This is a grotesque human rights abuse that doesn't get much attention because it involves private parts and is awkward to talk about. So pardon the bluntness about what infibulation entails.

The girls' genitals are carved out, including the clitoris and labia, often with no anesthetic. What's left of the flesh is sewn together with three to six stitches — wild thorns in rural areas, or needle and thread in the cities. The cutter leaves a tiny opening to permit urination and menstruation. Then the girls' legs are tied together, and she is kept immobile for 10 days until the flesh fuses together.

When the girl is married and ready for sex, she must be cut open by her husband or by a respected woman in the community.

All this is, of course, excruciating. It also leads to infections and urinary difficulties, and scar tissue can make childbirth more dangerous, increasing maternal mortality and injuries such as fistulas.

This is one of the most pervasive human rights abuses worldwide, with three million girls mutilated each year in Africa alone, according to United Nations estimates. A hospital here in Somaliland found that 96 percent of women it surveyed had undergone infibulation. The challenge is that this is a form of oppression that women themselves embrace and perpetuate.

“A young girl herself will want to be cut,” Ms. Ibrahim told me, vigorously defending the practice. “If a girl is not cut, it would be hard for her to live in the community. She would be stigmatized.”

Kalthoun Hassan, a young mother in an Ethiopian village near Somaliland, told me that she would insist on her daughters being cut and her sons marrying only girls who had been. She added: “It is God's will for girls to be circumcised.”

For four decades, Westerners have campaigned against genital cutting, without much effect. Indeed, the Western term “female genital mutilation” has antagonized some African women because it assumes that they have been “mutilated.” Aid groups are now moving to add the more neutral term “female genital cutting” to their lexicon.

Is it cultural imperialism for Westerners to oppose genital mutilation? Yes, perhaps, but it's also justified. Some cultural practices such as genital mutilation — or foot-binding or bride-burning — are too brutish to defer to.

But it is clear that the most effective efforts against genital mutilation are grass-roots initiatives by local women working for change from within a culture. In Senegal, Ghana, Egypt and other countries, such efforts have made headway.

Here among Somalis, reformers are trying a new tack: Instead of telling women to stop cutting their daughters altogether, they encourage them to turn to a milder form of genital mutilation (often involving just excision of part or all of the clitoris). They say that that would be a step forward and is much easier to achieve.

Although some Christians cut their daughters, it is more common among Muslims, who often assume that the tradition is Islamic. So a crucial step has been to get a growing number of Muslim leaders to denounce the practice as contrary to Islam, for their voices carry particular weight.

At one mosque in the remote town of Baligubadle, I met an imam named Abdelahi Adan, who bluntly denounces infibulation: “From a religious point of view, it is forbidden. It is against Islam.”

Maybe the tide is beginning to turn, ever so slowly, against infibulation, and at least we're seeing some embarrassment about the practice. In Baligubadle, a traditional cutter named Mariam Ahmed told me that she had stopped cutting girls — apparently because she knows that foreigners disapprove. Then a nurse in the local health clinic told me that she had treated Ms. Ahmed's own daughter recently for a horrific pelvic infection and urinary blockage after the girl was infibulated by her mother.

I confronted Ms. Ahmed. She grudgingly acknowledged cutting her daughter but quickly added that she had intended only a milder form of circumcision. She added quickly: “It was an accident.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/12/opinion/12kristof.html?ref=opinion&pagewanted=print

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