AU School of International Service in the News - February 2006

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Total Clips: 27

Outlet	Headline		Date	News Type
Washington Examiner	аа	Judge delays ruling in case against alleged spy	02/01/2006	Brief Mention
Daily Times, The	аа	Akbar Ahmed in dialogue with Christian leader	02/01/2006	Brief Mention
National Journal	аа	Guantanamo's Grip	02/04/2006	Quote
KCOL-AM		Fw: Radio Interview Request	02/08/2006	Radio Interview
CBS News Network	аа	Billboard Raises Hackles In Havana	02/08/2006	Quote
AFP / Agence France-Presse - Washington DC Bureau	аа	US faces tough balancing act in cartoon row	02/08/2006	Quote
Philadelphia Inquirer, The	аа	Islam and the West trapped in lies told about each other	02/09/2006	AU Author
Korea Herald	аа	Washington says products from Gaeseong complex cannot be regarded as made in S. Korea	02/10/2006	Brief Mention
Citizen	аа	Graduation	02/12/2006	Hometown Mention
Washington Examiner	аа	Trial for alleged spy to resume in Arlington	02/13/2006	Brief Mention
New York Times, The	аа	U.S. Muslims tell brethren to stop the violence	02/13/2006	Quote
USA Today	аа	Muslims have enormous love for the prophet	02/14/2006	Quote
Canadian Jewish Week, The	аа	Daniel Pearl maintained his dignity until the end	02/15/2006	Brief Mention
USA Today - New York City Bureau	аа	Can anything be done to limit future culture clashes?	02/15/2006	Quote
PRI's The World - Public Radio International	аа	Nigeria oil report	02/17/2006	Quote
Bucks County Courier Times	аа	Resident is on red hot seat for TV's 'Millionaire'	02/18/2006	Brief Mention
NewsHour with Jim Lehrer - Public Broadcasting Service (PBS)	аа	THIRD TERM RUMORS SPARK POLITICAL DEBATE IN NIGERIA	02/21/2006	Quote
Insight - Cable News Network International (CNNII)		Ghareeb CNN	02/21/2006	Television Appearance
United Press International		Ghareeb UPI	02/21/2006	Quote
BBC America		Ghareeb BBC	02/21/2006	Quote
Al Jazeera - Washington DC Bureau		Ghareeb Al Jazeera etc.	02/21/2006	Television Appearance
Kojo Nnamdi Show - WAMU-FM, The		SIS Professor Peter Lewis on WAMU Kojo Nnamdi Show	02/22/2006	Radio Interview
Voice of America	аа	Some American Evangelicals Call for Action to Stop Global Warming	02/22/2006	Quote
Chicago Tribune	аа	Hamas' win muddles Rice's pitch	02/23/2006	Brief Mention
Christian Science Monitor, The	аа	Roots of violence found in disrespect	02/23/2006	Quote
Washington Journal - C-SPAN		Ghareeb on C-SPAN's Washington Journal	02/25/2006	Television Appearance
KQED-FM		Edmund Ghareeb Discusses Violence in Iraq	02/28/2006	Radio Interview


Judge delays ruling in case against alleged spy 02/01/2006 Washington Examiner Rupert, Mike		Return to Top
A U.S. immigration judge wants to hear from more witnesses before deciding whether to deport a Herndon woman convicted of selling sensitive technology to China, officials said. Judge Paul Schmidt heard testimony from dozens of witnesses during four days of closed-door hearings last week in the case of Gao Zhan, 44, a former American University researcher and Chinese human rights advocate who pleaded guilty in 2003 to tax evasion and selling $500,000 worth of military-grade microprocessors to a Chinese company. An Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesman said Schmidt wants to hear more testimony before making a final decision. Schmidt will first decide whether Gao, a mother of three young U.S.-born children, should be considered a "national security risk." The judge will then decide is Gao should be granted asylum or be deported back to China, where she was convicted of espionage in 2001.

Akbar Ahmed in dialogue with Christian leader 02/01/2006 Daily Times, The Hasan, Khalid		Return to Top
WASHINGTON: The Pakistani academic Dr Akbar Ahmed rejected propaganda against Islam as a violent religion in a dialogue held over the weekend with leading evangelist Luis Palau Bio. He said that the Holy Prophet (peace be upon him) always emphasised mercy and compassion, not violence. He also criticised the depiction of Islam by some of its detractors as a Уsatanic religionФ, pointing out IslamТs Abrahmic roots. He recited RumiТs poems about Jesus as an example of the reverence that Muslims feel toward him. He said that Islam has a global vision, illustrating that point with a verse from the Quran. Ahmed emphasised that there is nothing in Islam that incites violence, while stressing that Muslims need justice. There is anger at the injustice being suffered by Muslims worldwide, he said. He cited the examples of Kashmir and Palestine. The Reverend Palau said that contrary to the belief in many circles, Christians do not worship three Gods. The concept was that God chose to reveal Himself in three people, but there is only one God. He emphasised that he would like Muslims not to confuse Christianity with the West, especially Europe. He also spoke about the Christian belief in Resurrection and the need to understand it. He reprimanded those Christian leaders who denounced Islam, emphasising that Уwe all come from Adam and Eve, and were meant to live among each otherФ. When Ahmed spoke of the hurt that Muslims have felt because of the abuse directed at the Prophet, (peace be upon him), Palau said that he found that УappallingФ, pointing out that Уyou cannot have dialogue with Muslims if you attack themФ. The meeting was held at the house of George Kettle, a prominent Washingtonian, and was attended by around 60 guests, including academics, religious figures and diplomats.

Guantanamo's Grip 02/04/2006 National Journal Hegland, Corine		Return to Top
You may have seen an image of Detainee 032. He came to Guantanamo Bay early on, a slender 18-year-old Yemeni among the anonymous men who knelt, dressed in orange, for the photographs viewed around the world. He was there on January 27, 2002, when Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld took four senators to see the "most dangerous, best-trained, vicious killers on the face of the earth." He was there two days later, when President Bush proudly declared in his State of the Union address that the "terrorists who once occupied Afghanistan now occupy cells at Guantanamo Bay," and he was there one week later when Bush firmly and finally ruled out prisoner-of-war status for any of the men held at Guantanamo. Like many of the men who came handcuffed to Cuba, Detainee 032 has never been accused of fighting against America. He fell into U.S custody far away from any battlefield. But today, after four years of interrogations and investigations, he is still an "enemy combatant," even though he was never an enemy or a combatant. He is something else: something that might be dangerous or might not. But he's securely in our custody, and raise your hand if you want to be responsible for releasing the man who next flies an airplane into a skyscraper. In some other world, one where the earth still turned west to east instead of inside out as it did on September 11, 2001, Detainee 032 would be finishing college this year, like his brother, father, and uncle before him. In this world, he's beginning his fifth year in prison, with neither charges nor freedom in sight. "No Court, Justice, Or Judge ... " David Remes, a veteran litigator at the Washington law firm Covington and Burling, spotted the first sign of trouble over his morning coffee on November 8 last year. He was reading a Washington Post story about the Supreme Court's decision to accept a challenge to the military commissions that had been set up to decide the fate of a handful of Guantanamo detainees. The military lawyers defending the men had sued the government, arguing that the proposed proceedings fell outside any military, criminal, civil, constitutional, or international law that they had ever heard of. Turning to the jump page of the Post story, Remes saw an unexpected item in the penultimate paragraph, a report that Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., hoped to "add language to the Defense authorization bill that would eliminate habeas rights for detainees captured during the terrorism fight, to halt 'the never-ending litigation that is coming from Guantanamo.'" Outside of the Ten Commandments, laws don't come much more primal than habeas corpus. It's an ancient bulwark against imprisonment without charge; the medieval Latin phrase, roughly translated, means "You have the body." Bringing a habeas petition forces the jailer to explain why he's holding the petitioner. Habeas corpus predates even the Magna Carta of 1215. The right is enshrined in the U.S. Constitution, and on June 28, 2004, the Supreme Court said it extended to the detainees at Guantanamo Bay. Upon reading of Graham's intention, Remes, who has 17 habeas petitions in court on behalf of Guantanamo prisoners -- including one for Detainee 032 -- fired off an e-mail to the 500-plus lawyers volunteering their services for the detainees. The lawyers started asking around: "Does anybody know anything about this?" It was the first any of them had heard of Graham's proposal. "We're not lobbyists, we're litigators," one lawyer later moaned, recounting the ensuing panic. They had spent a year and a half duking it out in court with the Bush administration's attorneys, slowly forcing the executive branch to explain why it was holding individual men -- 132 such explanations so far. Two federal judges had split over the habeas petitions. One declared that the men had a right to court; a second said they did not and granted the government's motion to dismiss the cases. Everybody was waiting for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit to speak about the conflicting decisions, and whatever the appeals court ruled would likely head to the Supreme Court. The lawyers had simply never considered any role in this dispute for the third branch of government, Congress. It was as though they were playing checkers and winning -- only to discover that the game was chess. The attorneys scrambled into a full-court press, calling their senators, writing editorials for local and national papers, walking the halls of Congress. But it was already too late. A week later, Congress passed the Defense authorization bill, including the amendment, which had been somewhat modified by Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich. President Bush signed the bill into law on December 30, and on January 6 the Justice Department began asking judges to dismiss the cases. But the game is not over yet. The Graham amendment leaves detainees one avenue of judicial appeal. They can challenge the process by which they were designated "enemy combatants" before the U.S. Court of Appeals for D.C., although the court's jurisdiction stops when the men are removed from Guantanamo Bay. The appeals court typically takes months, if not years, to work through a case. Furthermore, a narrow interpretation of the amendment means that the men might be able to challenge only the process -- the dotting of i's and the crossing of t's -- not the underlying facts. More promising for the advocates, the Center for Constitutional Rights, which has coordinated the pro bono detainee effort since 2002, filed habeas petitions on behalf of every remaining man at Guantanamo before Bush signed the bill. The lawyers intend to argue that the legislation can't strip courts of their ability to hear pending cases, a position bolstered somewhat by Levin's contention that the bill was never intended to affect those pending petitions. The amendment's language, though, is stark: "No court, justice, or judge shall have jurisdiction to hear or consider an application for a writ of habeas corpus filed by or on behalf of an alien detained by the Department of Defense at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba." Law Of War Most of the lawyers who represent the detainees say they volunteered their services because of a gut impulse about the importance of due process; they didn't spend a lot of time musing about why due process exists. Their prospective clients, they thought, were probably terrorists, the infamous "worst of the worst." They may have killed Americans in Afghanistan; they may have helped to kill Americans in America. Still, even terrorists are entitled to their day in court. Lawyers don't take kindly to being told that their skills aren't needed. "These are people picked up off the battlefield in Afghanistan. They weren't wearing uniforms, they weren't state-sponsored, but they were there to kill," President Bush said last June, after Amnesty International criticized Guantanamo as the "gulag of our times." But a battlefield implies stark lines of separation: Here, I'm trying to kill you. There, you're trying to kill me. Battlefield justice is swift, proximity implies culpability, and buzzing bullets brush aside legal niceties. The farther you move from the bullets, however, the grayer and messier the lines become. If the law of war surrounds the battlefield, and you know what to do with men who are captured with guns in hand, then consider this: More than 3,000 Taliban fighters surrendered to Gen. Rashid Dostum, a U.S. ally in the anti-Taliban coalition, at Konduz, Afghanistan, in November 2001. The agreed-upon surrender terms were that Afghan nationals would be allowed to put down their weapons and go home but that any foreign fighters would be placed in U.N. custody. Instead, Dostum, acting in accordance with his historical disregard for human life, locked them all into airtight container trucks. Some sympathetic Afghan drivers punched holes in the trucks and passed water to the prisoners when the general's men weren't looking, a crime for which one driver was brutally beaten, they later told Newsweek. When the trucks finally arrived at the Sheberghan prison in northwest Afghanistan, dead bodies spilled out. How many of the men died isn't clear: Nobody has exhumed their mass grave, although both the United Nations and the Physicians for Human Rights have identified its location as only a few minutes from the prison. Some of the men who survived that convoy are at Guantanamo, and clearly, they were captured on a battlefield. But if proximity implies culpability, how do you justify the detention of so many others in Cuba who were arrested far from any Afghanistan front? How about the aid worker sleeping at home in Karachi, Pakistan? How about the men arrested in Sarajevo and sent by the Americans to Guantanamo even though they were clutching their exoneration-from-terrorism papers issued by the judge who had reviewed their cases? How about miscellaneous Arabs -- some fighters, some not -- who together with other refugees passed through Afghanistan's borders as war arrived? How about two British Muslims arrested as they stepped off a plane in Gambia? How about a hypothetical little old lady in Switzerland who writes checks to a charity, not knowing it's a terrorist front, but who a government lawyer nevertheless conceded in court could be properly termed an enemy combatant? The law of war has come far in a century of genocides and massacres and nuclear bombs. But has it come so far that when Al Qaeda made the entire world a battlefield, all of the world's population fell under the law of war? As the U.S. government started putting its cards on the table, explaining why the men described above, and others like them, were still behind bars, the habeas lawyers started to ponder more deeply what happens to justice -- even in a wartime setting -- when you strip away due process and the presumption of innocence. The government told the lawyers that their clients were all well-trained liars. But as the lawyers read the files, they started to wonder whether they were facing an impossible paradox: After all, if a well-trained liar looks like an innocent man, what does an innocent man look like, if not a well-trained liar? Detainee 032 Back before everything happened, before the world came unhinged, Detainee 032 was a boy of 16 living in Yemen with his mother, his father, his four sisters, and his five brothers. His name was Farouq Ali Ahmed, and he studied Islamic law in high school. One day, the boy made a solemn vow before God: If it was God's will that Farouq commit the Koran to memory, more than 6,000 verses in all, he would spend a year, before he went off to college, teaching the holy texts, in Afghanistan. A man who did this thing, he'd been told, would be rewarded by God. Any number of young men in those years set off for Afghanistan with their heads full of God. The land of the Hindu Kush mountains was a broken Islamic nation, in desperate need of succor. Some tales say that the Taliban rose to power after young ethnic Pashtuns executed an Afghan warlord for raping two young girls; others say a single young boy was the victim. Regardless, the men from the eastern mountains had rallied under the name of the Taliban, "the students of the book," and they promised stability and a return of piety in a country sick to death of two decades of war. Fighting continued in the north, with the Northern Alliance and the Taliban trading atrocities as they traded ground, but the land under the Taliban's control remained stable, if barbaric. World governments shunned the Taliban, which gained diplomatic recognition from only three countries -- Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates -- but conservative and radical imams throughout the Islamic world exhorted followers to help their Afghan brothers defend Islam against those who would destroy it: the Tajiks, Uzbeks, and apostate Shiite Hazara of the Northern Alliance. Osama bin Laden came early on; his Arab fighters helped the Taliban soldiers and trained new arrivals. Nearly all of the foreigners who came to Afghanistan for jihad came to fight not the United States but the Northern Alliance. Some put in a few months of fighting in the north before returning home, their Islamic duty done; some stayed longer. One man in Guantanamo, asked whether he was a member of Al Qaeda, replied simply, "I do not know. I am an Arab fighter." Others didn't go to Afghanistan to fight but to help in other ways, or just to work and live. The Arabs in Afghanistan, according to Barnett Rubin of New York University, who has studied the country since the 1980s when the United States funded the mujahedeen fighting the Soviets, weren't all jihadist fighters, any more than all Westerners in Afghanistan at the time were CIA operatives -- although many in both groups properly fell under those assumptions. "Arabs went there for a lot of reasons," Rubin said. "There were humanitarian organizations, religious missions, and adventure-seekers." A Christian nonprofit group, Save the Children, had workers providing schooling and medical care. Muslim organizations ran clinics and schools and dispensed what aid they could; U.N. workers provided daily bread for more than 3 million people. And some Arab men went to Afghanistan to teach the Koran in an Islamic land where few could read the word of God. Such was Allah's will that in the spring of 2001, Farouq, then 17, set off for Afghanistan. He took a little room in a big house in Kabul and began teaching 7- and 8-year-olds, gathering four or five of them together and reciting Allah's words until the children had them memorized. It wasn't easy work. The Koran is always taught in Farouq's native language, Arabic, which the Afghan children didn't understand, and Farouq didn't speak their language. But he had made an oath to Allah. After a few months, he moved to the city of Khost, where he continued to teach out of a mosque until the Taliban fell and the cities were no longer safe for Arabs. One day, his host told him that if he stayed any longer, his life would be in danger. He had left his passport in Kabul for safekeeping, but he was told there was no time to get it back. He was taken to Pakistan, where Afghans have long sought haven from their never-ending wars. Once across the border, Farouq encountered the Pakistani military. "One of the soldiers pointed a weapon toward me," Farouq told his Combatant Status Review Tribunal. The Defense Department established the tribunals after the Supreme Court ruled that the detainees could challenge their imprisonment. "The Pakistani officer took me and said, don't be mad at him, we are Muslim, we will take care of you. He asked me about my parents. He said, you are a kid, you are going to the Yemen Embassy, and you shouldn't have any problems getting back to Yemen. After that, they took me to a jail, and there were lots of people. They put handcuffs on our hands." Farouq spent time in two Pakistani prisons before the government handed him over to American forces in Afghanistan. As a foreigner without a passport, he met the U.S. criteria for Guatanamo, and he was quickly whisked onto a plane headed for the sunny Caribbean jail that most military people refer to simply as "The Bay." In the chaos of post-9/11 Afghanistan, military leaders say, there wasn't time for much consideration of anomalies like Farouq. The United States was pulling Arabs, Afghans, Pakistanis, Chinese into detention centers, some tens of thousands in all. U.S. intelligence agents weren't able to debrief every prisoner; just keeping them secure was difficult, as Afghans gathered outside temporary holding facilities and clamored for blood. They had never much liked the foreigners, whose idea of Islamic law was sometimes harsher than even the Taliban's. Incentives But Cuba wasn't much less chaotic. Interpreters were scarce; facilities were rudimentary, with buckets for drinking and urinating. Background information about anything -- detainees, Islam, Al Qaeda -- was hard to come by. The American military officers had been ordered to set up a prison at Guantanamo practically overnight. Intelligence agents there were asked mainly to certify, in short order, that the president "had reason to believe" that each shackled man was involved in terrorism. The agents rapidly reported back, according to New York Times accounts of that time, that they didn't have enough information to do even that. "If we had any information, many times [the detainees] had multiple identities and multiple passports," recalled Army Maj. Gen. Michael Dunlavey, who headed the interrogation effort at Guantanamo through November 2002. So the interrogators started asking routine questions of all the prisoners; many of the sessions were documented in FBI memos released to the American Civil Liberties Union under a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit last year: Where are you from? Why were you in Afghanistan? What do you think of jihad, of Osama bin Laden? When did you hear about 9/11? What do the detainees talk about? What do you know of attacks planned on the United States? Have you heard whispers about attacking the Guantanamo guards? Do you know any of the other detainees? More than 24,000 interrogations have now taken place among the 800 men who have been held at The Bay. The prisoners were shown photographs, too, large books containing mug shots of all the men held at Guantanamo: Do you recognize any of these men? Can you tell me about them? If a man talked, if he cooperated, he received rewards: tobacco, a game of chess, a milk shake, free time in a room with movies and books, the chance to have a countryman put into the neighboring cell to ease the loneliness, a promise of a return home. Simply attending a Qaeda training camp before 9/11, an FBI interrogator told a detainee, "did not constitute a crime." Just talk to us, was the interrogators' refrain. But many of the men wouldn't talk, according to Dunlavey. Citing the so-called "Manchester document," a Qaeda training manual discovered in England that advises captured jihadists to lie about their identity, stick to a cover story, and claim torture, Dunlavey said: "They followed it to a 'T.' " The Americans came up with inducements for those who wouldn't talk: A prisoner could be chained in a strobe-lit room with Metallica or Britney Spears playing at full volume; interrogated for 16 hours straight; awakened every few hours for a move to a new cell; questioned while shivering in full-blast air conditioning; stroked by a woman who whispered that his situation was hopeless. In July of last year, the Defense Department released a report on allegations of abuse at Guantanamo Bay: All of the above tactics were used, and were acceptable at the time, according to the report. Other tactics deemed unacceptable were also used, according to the report, FBI memos, and the International Committee of the Red Cross. For one special prisoner who wouldn't talk, interrogators employed further inducements. Detainee 063, a Saudi, had stubbornly claimed that he had gone to Afghanistan merely for love of falconry. By July 2002, the FBI knew that in August 2001 he had flown from a foreign country to Orlando, where a customs agent turned him away while a cohort, Mohamed Atta, the lead 9/11 hijacker, waited for him outside. On August 8, 2002, Detainee 063 was moved into an "isolation facility," where he stayed for the next 160 days, his cell continually flooded with light, his only human contact with interrogators and guards. He was questioned for 18 to 20 hours a day for 48 out of 54 straight days; he was threatened with a menacing dog; he was forced to wear a bra while thong panties were placed upon his head; he was leashed and ordered to perform dog tricks; he was stripped naked in front of women; he was taunted that his sister and mother were whores and that he was gay. Most of these techniques would later show up in Iraq, at Abu Ghraib prison.

Fw: Radio Interview Request 02/08/2006 KCOL-AM Fallen, Gail		Return to Top
Akbar appeared on Fox News Radio 600 KCOL Thanks for your quick response. We heard back from Dr. Ahmed, and will have him on this morning at 6:35 MST. If you'd like to listen, you can stream us at 600kcol.com Thanks so much for getting back in touch. Sent this to Dr. Ahmed this morning, but thought I double up with you. Sorry for the short notice, but hope we can make something happen. You can reach me at 866-888-5449. Thanks much -- Gail Fallen Co Host / Executive Producer Mornings with Keith & Gail Fox News Radio 600 KCOL -----Original Message----- From: 600KCOL Sent: Wednesday, February 08, 2006 5:28 AM To: 'akbar@american.edu' Subject: Radio Interview Request Importance: High Dr. Ahmed -- We're Mornings with Keith & Gail, Fox News Radio 600 KCOL, a Clear Channel of Northern Colorado affiliate. Heard you on Fox News on my way in to work this morning (about 4:20 am MST), and would love a few minutes of your time this morning on our morning show. FYI, we're the number one news/talk morning show and station in Northern Colorado. Our reach is approximately 3/4 million, covering all of Northern Colorado, south to metro Denver, and into Wyoming and Nebraska. We'd need about 12-15 minutes of your time, and would like to do something with you at 8:35 MST, 10:35 Eastern. The topic, of course, would be very similar to your discussion this morning on Fox, that of the outcry over the cartoons relative to the Prophet Mohammed. I know your media relations department doesn't get in until 9 am Eastern, so I took a long shot that you may check your email sooner. If this is something you might be able to fit into your schedule, please reply via return email, or give me a call at the studio at 866-888-5449 at your earliest convenience. I'll answer this line off the air, and we'll see what we can set up. I really appreciated hearing your concise assessment of the situation this morning (since I know that this is no easy subject to sum up in sound bites), and hope that we can share your perspectives with our listeners. Looking forward to hearing from you! Best regards -- Gail Fallen Co Host / Executive Producer Fox News Radio 600 KCOL Clear Channel of Northern Colorado www.600kcol.com C: 970-227-0372

Billboard Raises Hackles In Havana 02/08/2006 CBS News Network Siegelbaum, Portia		Return to Top
HAVANA, Feb. 8, 2006(CBS) By CBS News Producer Portia Siegelbaum in Havana. As Washington tries to undermine Cuban President Fidel Castro, Havana is branding the United States a source of terrorism and suffering for the communist island. American diplomats looking out the windows of the U.S. Interests Section Tuesday faced a vigil by workers and students wearing black T-shirts holding up photos of Cubans they say were killed in anti-Castro violence over the past four decades. The 24-hour vigil by pro-government forces began Monday evening right after a mourning field of 138 black banners - each with a single white star - was raised in front of the American mission. The banners partially block an electronic news ticker running pro-democracy and anti-government messages in bright crimson letters along the buildingТs fifth floor. Rumors have been rampant ever since construction on the site began two week ago. Some critics suggested Castro was building a wall to prevent Cubans from reading messages such as УThe only thing we want to provoke with our sign is the free flow of ideas and voicesФ, which streamed by as the flag-raising ceremony took place. Other messages have clearly been intended to insult the government. For example, one said, the people best suited to running the country, are those currently driving taxis and cutting hair. In comments to the press, USIS chief, Michael Parmley insists that he is just continuing to apply the Bush AdministrationТs Cuba policy, which involves breaking through government censorship. However, in a speech earlier this month Castro called the electronic sign a "gross provocation aimed at rupturing fragile relations". УA parallel action would be for the Cuban Interests Section [in Washington] to display five-foot high photos of President Bush and lobbyist Jack Abramoff, which the White House is withholding from the public,Ф says Philip Brenner, Senior Associate Dean at the American UniversityТs School of International Relations. U.S. embassies in other countries with alleged press censorship, says Brenner, do not "antagonize their hosts with similar signs. It is inconsistent with the behavior of a diplomatic mission to be undiplomatic." Although clearly annoyed, Havana has not made the electronic sign put up by the Americans the focus of its street protests. Instead a march by hundreds of thousands of government supporters January 24th spotlighted the presence in the U.S. of Cuban born Luis Posada Carriles, accused of a string of bombings, including the 1976 mid-air explosion of a Cuban airliner killing all 73 on board. Castro is charging the Bush Administration of protecting Posada, who is in immigration detention for illegally entering the United States. The banners that went up Monday Уrepresent the nationТs mourning for over 3,400 Cubans killed by U.S.-sponsored violence since the 1959 revolution,Ф declared Carlos Alberto Cremata, whose father was the co-pilot of the Cubana plane. Speaking at the flag-raising ceremony, Cremata noted, "They are white stars over a black background, representing the light of a people that are in pain and mourning for their children and families.Ф Speaking to journalists at his residence on the outskirts of Havana the day after construction began on what is now a monument to victims of terrorism, Ambassador Parmley accused the media of blowing the story out of proportion. УThe press has called this Сthe billboard warТ, which I find funny and amusing, but I donТt consider this to be a war. I repeat, and IТm probably going to start to sound boring, our effort is to communicate with the Cuban people.Ф Asked if there was a crisis in the making, CBS News Foreign Affairs analyst Pamela Falk downplayed the tension. УRelations between the United States and Cuba remain strained but the best example that Washington is not trying to provoke a confrontation is the authorization of Cuban players to the World Baseball Classic,Ф she said. Referring to the sale of U.S. food and agricultural products to the island, she added, УAnd despite the difficult of the transactions and CastroТs complaints about the obstacles, U.S. agricultural sales to the island are increasing.Ф The cash sales, which take place under a congressional exemption to trade restrictions, are now up to $400 million a year. Also skeptical about the apparent step up in the decades old conflict is Cuban American Rafael Penalver, director of the San Carlos Institute in Key West. УBoth Castro and the U.S. have heightened tensions before to promote self-serving agendas. They have played with the emotions of the Cuban people so often in the past that itТs difficult to determine whether this time there is more to the old familiar story,Ф he says. УThe harsh rhetoric and tough posturing might be the ingredients needed to enable each side to claim victory in an eventual accommodation,Ф Penalver concludes. Still, last December, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice reconvened an anti-Castro panel to Уhasten and ease a democratic transitionФ on the island. She outlined a two prong approach that would deny the Cuban Government cash and provide the Cuban people with information. The U.S. already has a more than four decades old economic and trade embargo against Cuba, which the island claims has cost it some $82 billion in losses. Since then the Treasury DepartmentТs Office on Foreign Assets Control, which enforces the embargo, has cracked down on travel to Cuba sending letters to more than 200 Americans it believes violated the existing restrictions. Penalties range from a warning letter to $65,000 fines. It has also closed down one of the largest travel agencies in Miami offering trips to the island, as it investigates alleged violations of travel licensing regulations. The travel rules were stiffened back in May 2004 to limit Cuban American family visits to just one every three years. The УfamilyФ was also redefined at that time to exclude aunts, uncles and cousins. Virtually all non-academic educational programs and university and college programs have been eliminated. The State Department originally denied the Cuban baseball team visas to participate in the Baseball Classic, only relenting after Castro announced that any cash winnings would be donated to Katrina victims. Then this weekend, OFAC ordered an American-owned hotel in Mexico City to evict 16 Cuban officials, including a vice-minister, lodged there. The Cubans were asked to leave the Sheraton hotel where they were attending a conference with U.S. energy companies, including the largest U.S. oil refiner, Vaero Energy Corp. and Exxon Mobil Corp. OFAC rules that it is illegal for U.S. companies to provide services to Cuban nationals or entities in third countries.

US faces tough balancing act in cartoon row 02/08/2006 AFP / Agence France-Presse - Washington DC Bureau		Return to Top
WASHINGTON: The United States faces a tough balancing act in dealing with the uproar over cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad as it tries to reach out to Muslims while upholding established principles of free speech. WashingtonТs initial reaction to the firestorm sparked by the cartoons, which were first published in a Danish newspaper and later reprinted in several European publications, was to blast the drawings as incitement to religious hatred. But as the violence escalates, with Western embassies being torched by Muslim protesters and people being killed, the administration of US President George W Bush has toned down its criticism. On Monday it said that while it understood the anger sparked by the cartoons, it also urged Muslims to condemn frequent anti-Semitic and anti-Christian Уhate speechФ in the Islamic world. Analysts said the cautious US approach to the controversy reflects its struggle to find a middle ground between the bedrock democratic principle of free speech and tolerance for diverse religious beliefs. Muslims consider the cartoons Ч one of which shows Muhammad wearing a bomb-shaped turban Ч blasphemous. Islamic tradition strictly forbids showing images of the Prophet. УPresident George W BushТs administration is clearly in a bind because they believe both in free speech and not gratuitously offending people and inciting people to violence,Ф John Alterman, director of the Middle East program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think-tank, said. He said the administration was forced to tread carefully in dealing with the issue so as not to offend and appear to be taking sides. УThere is a perception in the Muslim world that the West believes in free speech as long as people are speaking in tune with what they hold dear,Ф Alterman said. УBut you get an issue like the Holocaust and people (who question it) are thrown in jail. УSo the context in which this is seen is Сwell you say free speech as long as itТs offending Muslims but if it starts offending Jews you throw people in jailТ,Ф he said. Duncan Clark, a professor of international relations at WashingtonТs American University, said the US response to the cartoon controversy was also dictated by AmericaТs negative image among many in the Middle East, especially in the aftermath of the Iraq war. УFundamentally the administration certainly does not want to pour gasoline on a fire that is already raging in the Middle East, much of it due in no small part to US policies and practice,Ф Clark said. УItТs quite clear that throughout most of the Islamic world, this is a hot potato so IТm not surprised the administration tilted the way it did.Ф Others noted that it was evident the Bush administration did not wish to wade too much into the controversy and was fine-tuning its reaction as the situation evolves. УIt seems as if theyТre getting there in fits and starts,Ф said Stephen Hess, a political analyst at the Brookings Institution. УBut again, nations respond when it directly affects them. УWhen they start burning American flags or ransacking American embassies, then things will take a different turn.Ф

Islam and the West trapped in lies told about each other 02/09/2006 Philadelphia Inquirer, The		Return to Top
By Abdul Aziz Said and Benjamin Jensen Whether you take the recently published cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad as idolatry and blasphemy or free speech and defiance, there is a larger context mobilizing the madness. "Islam" and "the West" are becoming trapped in the stories they tell about each other. The West is a hopeless bigot and hypocrite; Islam is an intolerant religion that legitimizes extremism. If you tell a lie enough times, it eventually becomes the truth and as such, frames the way you see the world. There is no clash of civilizations, just a clash of narratives that sustains bias and ignorance. The real cartoon that we should all criticize is the ignorance embedded within "Western" and "Islamic" narratives about each other. These misperceptions are being used by an increasingly fearful cabal of puppet masters seeking to hold onto power as pressure mounts for democratic reform. In the Islamic world, as in the United States, political leaders have a well-documented history of abusing religion for political gain. In the current situation, think of it as a "rally around the Koran" effect. Autocratic leaders strategically ignore, even enable, protests that distance public attention away from the decrepit state of their regimes and, even better, implicate "the West" as the single source of all of society's woes. An Egyptian government-owned newspaper recently ran an editorial claiming that the cartoons reflect a conspiracy against Islam and Muslims. In Syria, where public assembly is by no means free, the protests could well have been orchestrated to send a clear message to Washington: If you want democracy and regime change, here is what you are going to get. There is no better release valve to the social unrest building beneath the surface of authoritarian regimes in the Arab world and beyond than to invoke the West as the enemy at the gates. What started as a highly provocative cartoon in very poor taste has turned unwittingly into a symbol manipulated by puppet masters seeking to tell a tale of the rising West seeking to destroy Islam. Repressive elites who run the majority of the Islamic world want nothing more than to show that Western values such as democracy and free speech are incompatible with Islam. They want to emphasize a story of Western domination, conspiracy and hypocrisy that legitimates their rule. The more we insist on seeing the growing crisis as a wave of ignorance, not as the actions of politically mobilized mobs, so much the better for the puppet masters abusing Islam. To stop this madness, cooler heads have to prevail. In "the West," we must resist the temptation to see all Islam as extremist and somehow antidemocratic. Rather, we must be wise to the puppet masters that have stripped a religion advocating social justice of its emancipating potential to maintain their grip. Apologies are free. Why not offer them while reserving your right to free speech and asking the more important question: Why are citizens allowed to protest cartoons, but not allowed to protest for free and fair elections? The blame game recurrent in Western and Islamic narratives is contagious. Narratives of victimization are used by the puppet masters to legitimize what is viewed as a historical struggle against the West. The West dismisses Muslims as polemical and emotional. Both narratives are retrospective as well as ideologically loaded and intellectually weak. The road to peace and cross-cultural understanding requires a prospective posture, a new story not easily hijacked by puppet masters. Abdul Aziz Said is a professor and director of the Center for Global Peace at American University in Washington. Benjamin Jensen is a research associate of the Center for Global Peace. Contact them at bj4479a@american.edu.

Washington says products from Gaeseong complex cannot be regarded as made in S. Korea 02/10/2006 Korea Herald		Return to Top
The United States will insist that Korea drop government protection of its rice industry as part of a free-trade accord the two countries plan to negotiate this year, a top U.S. trade official said in Washington on Wednesday. Meanwhile in Seoul, a senior official at the U.S. Embassy said Washington would not recognize products manufactured by South Korean companies in the Gaeseong industrial complex in North Korea as made in South Korea. "A free-trade agreement means free-trade," Richard Crowder, the chief U.S. agriculture negotiator, told reporters in Washington. Asked if the U.S. would insist on an end to Korea`s cap on rice imports, he responded: "Yes. These agreements are comprehensive." Korea, Asia`s fourth-largest economy, is the sixth-largest export market for U.S. farm products, and that is under tariffs that average 64 percent for those goods, according to the U.S. trade office. In 2004, Korea agreed to double the size of a quota on rice imports to 8 percent of domestic consumption and make imported rice available at retailers for the first time, the U.S. trade office said in its 2005 annual report. Still, rice prices in Korea are about four-times that of world prices, according to a report by the American University in Washington. Korean farmers, about half of whom grow rice, rioted in Hong Kong during December`s global trade talks in a bid to maintain those trade barriers. Farmers are also protected by duties of more than 40 percent on fruit, beef and other products. The Seoul government said Wednesday that it will give farmers 901.5 billion won ($933.0 million) in March to compensate them for last year`s drop in rice prices. The amount will help offset the 13.4-percent drop in prices for last year`s crop when the minimum price for a sack of rice was set at 170,083 won. It has since fallen to 140,028 won due to excessive production and anemic consumer demand. An agreement that allows foreign-made rice to be sold directly on the market, signed in late 2004 between Korea and nine rice-exporting nations, also hurt prices. Seoul had pledged last year to support rice-growing farmers by establishing a set price guaranteed until 2007. A new price will be set after this based on average market prices. The government already paid farmers 603.8 billion won last November as part of its new policy of providing automatic funds to support rice growing. Korean Trade Minister Kim Hyun-chong said Feb. 2 that his country is ready to accept more farm imports, and would prepare an aid package to help local farmers adjust to new competition. He said there will be political difficulties in removing protections for farmers in a country that saw a famine just across its border in North Korea within the past decade. The United States exported about $25 billion in goods to Korea in the first 11 months of 2005, and imported $40 billion from the nation. A successful agreement could boost U.S. income by $30 billion and that of Korea by $12 billion, according to a University of Michigan estimate. In a separate move, the United States clarified its position on the goods manufactured at the Gaeseong industrial complex in North Korea. "In our view, the FTA applies to goods originating within territories of South Korea and the United States," a senior economic official at the U.S. Embassy in Seoul said at a press briefing. Asked by a reporter about whether there is room for negotiations, the U.S. official said, on condition of anonymity, that Washington is eager to exclude the Gaeseong matter from the FTA negotiating table with Seoul. "The Gaeseong matter should not distract from the primary goal of this negotiation," the official said. The clarification is expected to present another stumbling block to the free trade negotiations between South Korea and the U.S., which officially got under way on Thursday. South Korea wants the U.S. to recognize products made in the Gaeseong industrial complex as South Korean goods, in a move to further promote the inter-Korean economic cooperation project. About 15 South Korean companies are now producing goods, mostly household items and clothes, in Gaeseong, which is less than a two-hour drive from Seoul. On Friday, Kim Jong-hoon, who was appointed as South Korea`s chief negotiator for the FTA talks with the U.S., said his government will raise the issue of regarding products from the industrial park as South Korean items. Having a free trade pact with South Korea, Asia`s fourth-largest economy, will help the U.S. raise its geopolitical profile in the Northeast Asian region, the U.S. Embassy official said. "We don`t have any FTA in the region," he said, adding that the U.S. hopes other countries in the region are inspired by the start of FTA talks with South Korea. For years, South Korea has hoped to sign a free trade deal with the world`s largest economy. To begin the talks, the South Korean government offered two concessions by lifting its import ban on U.S. beef despite mad cow fears and by cutting quotas to protect its local movie industry. Starting on July 1, the number of days a year that local theaters must show South Korean films will be reduced to 73 from 146. U.S. businesses welcomed the decision. Asked whether the U.S. plans to ask South Korea for a further cut of the quota or to abolish the protective system, the U.S. Embassy official said, "So far, there are no instructions from the U.S. government." "If (South) Korea goes to zero days, we will be even happier," he said. Aside from those issues, South Korean politicians are under intense pressure from farmers, who say a free trade pact with the U.S. will devastate the nation`s agricultural industry. South Korea and the U.S. hope to wrap up the negotiations by March 2007, and the U.S. Congress will have 90 days to approve the deal. At the end of June next year, the U.S. negotiators` fast-track trade promotion authority will expire, meaning South Korea and the U.S. have only one year to seal the agreement. Given the seemingly short timeframe available, some economists here are pessimistic about prospects for the negotiations with the U.S. It took more than four years before South Korea`s legislators ratified the nation`s first FTA with Chile in 2004.

Graduation 02/12/2006 Citizen		Return to Top
WASHINGTON, DC Ч Rachel Houhoulis, a resident of Meredith, graduated Summa Cum Laude and received a Bachelor of Arts in international studies from American University's School of International Service in December 2005. She will continue her studies at American University and plans to complete a Master's degree in international politics. As an undergraduate, Houhoulis was a member of several academic honor societies including the National Society of Collegiate Scholars, Alpha Lambda Delta and Sigma Iota Rho. She was also involved in Greek life as member of Phi Mu Fraternity. During the 2004-05 academic year, she was named a David L. Boren Scholar and studies aboard in Beijing, China. Houhoulis is the daughter of Nicholas and Joan Houhoulis. She graduated from Inter-Lakes High School in 2002.

Trial for alleged spy to resume in Arlington 02/13/2006 Washington Examiner Rupert, Mike		Return to Top
The trial of alleged spy and convicted felon Gao Zhan will resume in U.S. Immigration Court in Arlington this morning. Judge Paul Schmidt heard testimony from dozens of witnesses during four days of closed-door hearings earlier this month in the case of Gao, 44, a former American University researcher and Chinese human rights advocate who pleaded guilty in 2003 to tax evasion and selling $500,000 worth of military-grade microprocessors to a Chinese company. Schmidt is expected to decide whether Gao should be deported back to China or given asylum in the U.S. - Mike Rupert

U.S. Muslims tell brethren to stop the violence 02/13/2006 New York Times, The Goodstein, Laurie		Return to Top
As the crisis over the Danish cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad flared over the past two weeks, leaders of several American Muslim groups began working quietly to try to mediate between European Muslims and the West. The leaders say they share the outrage over the cartoons felt by Muslims in countries where riots have turned bloody and some Danish embassies have been burned. Yet in calls to Muslim leaders in Europe and in interviews with media outlets in the Middle East like al-Jazeera, they have offered a consistent message to Muslims: You must stop the violence because the Prophet Muhammad would never have approved, and you are playing into the stereotype of Muslims as barbarians. At the same time, in meetings at the Washington embassies of European nations, the American Muslim leaders have presented their concerns to foreign diplomats: We, too, value free speech, but your governments should condemn the cartoons as hateful and bigoted and work at better integrating your alienated Muslim minorities. "The reason that Muslims in America have not responded the way they have in Europe is that we have come to know that so many people here speak out against such bigotries, and so many newspapers have not published the cartoons," said Mohamed Magid, the imam and executive director of a large mosque in Virginia, the All Dulles Area Muslim Society, who was among a group of Muslim leaders who met with the ambassador of Denmark, Friis Arne Petersen, last week in Washington. 'Islamophobia' The American Muslim leaders hold up their approach to living in a Western nation as a model. They told the Danish ambassador that they have lived in the United States longer than Muslims have lived in most European countries, and have managed to build effective organizations and achieve greater acceptance and economic success than their brethren in Europe have. They portray the cartoons as part of a wave of global Islamophobia, and have encouraged Muslim groups in Europe to use the same term. "We told the ambassador flat out that the biggest resource you have is the American Muslim community," said Ahmed Younis, national director of the Muslim Public Affairs Council, referring to the meeting with Petersen. "We, too, deal with Islamophobia and discrimination, but we have developed lines of communication for trying to resolve these problems." American Muslims noted that a group of Danish Islamic clerics had traveled to Egypt, Syria and elsewhere in the Middle East in December to try to stir up support and force an apology from the paper that published the cartoons, but that the result was an uproar among Muslims around the world. The American Muslims are encouraging European Muslims to build better alliances with leaders of other faiths. In the United States, Muslims in communities across the country intensified their involvement in interfaith organizations after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, an effort they say has helped defuse tension. Asked why Europe's Muslims would listen to America's, Abdul Karim Bangura, a professor of international relations and Islamic studies at American University, said, "Muslims in America and in Canada are doing very well economically and in other ways, and that gives them pretty significant clout to get Muslims in Europe to listen to what they have to say." Effect unclear How the American Muslims' efforts will play out in Europe remains unclear. Muslim leaders in Europe insist that they have already been playing a pivotal role in appealing for calm and persuading some Muslims to vent their anger through peaceful means. But Abdul Wahid Pedersen, an influential imam in Denmark, said in an interview Friday that Denmark's 250,000 Muslims could learn from their American counterparts by becoming more united. "In the past, the community here has been divided, and this had made it difficult to speak with one voice," he said. "It is important in a crisis like this that moderate voices in the community are heard." Karen P. Hughes, the undersecretary of state for public diplomacy, said, "The voices of Muslim Americans have more credibility in the Muslim world frankly than my voice as a government official, because they can speak the language of their faith and can share their experience of practicing their faith freely in the West, and they can help explain why the cartoons are so offensive." Muslim American leaders say they feel anguish over the Muslim world's violent protests, which have left at least 11 dead. Azeem Khan, assistant secretary general of the Islamic Circle of North America, based in New York, said, "It hurts us when people attack embassies, because it reinforces the image that we were protesting in the first place, which is that Muslims are violent." Offending the prophet In his sermon during Friday prayer, Imam Magid in Virginia said he told worshippers that during the Prophet Muhammad's life, a woman threw trash in his house, and other people had called him crazy and spit in his face. "He responded by forgiving her and asking God to guide those who had wronged him," Imam Magid said. "I told them every time a Muslim commits a suicide bombing, walks into a pizza place and kills innocent people, that person has offended their own prophet."

Muslims have enormous love for the prophet 02/14/2006 USA Today		Return to Top
Even today, few of the world's 1.5 billion Muslims Ч including protesters Ч have seen the images at the center of the controversy. The affair began last year, when a Danish author working on a children's book on the Quran and the life of Mohammed was unable to find an illustrator. Artists said they feared the wrath of Muslims if they drew images of Mohammed. Upon learning this, the culture editor of Jyllands-Posten, Denmark's largest circulation daily, invited cartoonists to submit entries. The editor, Carsten Juste, published 12 drawings on Sept. 30, saying he wanted to challenge the trend toward self-censorship. One cartoon showed Mohammed with a turban shaped like a bomb. Another had him telling suicide bombers arriving in heaven that he'd run out of virgins with which to reward them. The cartoons aroused Muslim protests Ч 5,000 demonstrated in Copenhagen Ч but little international reaction. Triggered by three events Then, three things happened: ХOn Oct. 21, the Danish prime minister refused to meet with ambassadors from Muslim nations to discuss the issue, saying the government had no control over, or responsibility for, the newspaper. ХIn December, Danish Muslims visited Middle Eastern nations, including Egypt, Syria and Lebanon, to ask for support. They showed not only the 12 cartoons, but other images allegedly demeaning to Muslims that were not published. Word spread via satellite TV, the Internet and text messaging. ХOn Jan. 10, a Christian newspaper in Norway reprinted the cartoons in what it described as a show of support for press freedom. By the end of the month, protests had erupted throughout the Muslim world. They continued even after Jyllands-Posten apologized Jan. 30 for causing offense. Meanwhile, news media in more than a dozen other European countries reprinted some or all the cartoons. Few U.S. media outlets ran any of the cartoons; a notable exception, The Philadelphia Inquirer, said it was important for readers to understand both sides of the story. The incident followed other clashes in recent years over a French policy of banning Muslim girls from wearing traditional head coverings in school; the murder by Muslim radicals of a Dutch filmmaker who had criticized Muslim treatment of women; and reports, never verified, that U.S. military interrogators at Guantanamo threw a copy of the Quran, the Muslim holy book, in a toilet. Whatever caused the controversy, students of Islam and Muslim society agree more friction is likely. "You have the Western tradition of freedom of expression and you have Muslim religious sensitivities," says Akbar Ahmed, professor of international relations at American University in Washington. "It's the irresistible force and the immovable object." Why the explosion? Experts identified existing conditions that contributed: Muslim immigrants in Europe John Keiger, director of the European Studies Research Institute at the University of Salford in Manchester, England, says many Europeans feel confronted at home by "a Muslim culture that not only is foreign, but which does not want to be integrated." He says right-wing political parties trade on that worry, at a time when nations in the European Union are struggling with their own identities and values. Muslims also are afraid, Keiger adds: "They are increasingly being portrayed as violent, as ones who only have violent solutions." Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen's center-right government has remained in power partly because of a popular crackdown on immigration. At the same time, immigration opponents have accused a leading Danish imam, Ahmed Abu Laban, of stoking outrage over the cartoons by spreading anti-Danish propaganda in the Middle East. Some Muslims accused Europeans of a double standard on freedom of expression. "Would these newspapers draw cartoons presenting the Jewish Holocaust?" asks Mushtaq Yossef, 29, a Baghdad mobile-phone salesman. "Of course not." Marco Incerti, a research fellow at the Center for European Policy Studies in Brussels, argues that some European newspapers printed the cartoons to show they won't succumb to Muslim intimidation Ч saying, in effect, "We like to do things a certain way, and we're going to blow it in your face." Politicians had their own goals The protests served different ends in different places, according to Ahmed, the American University professor. In Afghanistan and Pakistan, they were organized by foes of U.S.-backed governments. In Syria and Iran, they couldn't have happened without government approval, as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Sunday on ABC's This Week. "Iran and Syria bring protesters into the streets when they wish, to make a point," she said. Mohsen Rezaie, a top official in Iran's hard-line government, was one of several leading officials who blamed Israel for the cartoons Ч even though none was published there. "Do you know of any place that doesn't have Zionists?" Rezaie asked in an interview in Tehran with USA TODAY. "We think this confrontation between Muslims and Christians is a premeditated attack by Zionists." He said the aim was to turn the Christian world against Muslims and build European support against Iran and its nuclear program. Struggle over Islam's future The cartoons clearly struck at something sacred. "Muslims, both secular and devout, have enormous love for the prophet," Ahmed says. "They go berserk when he's attacked." Even so, one of the protesters' central contentions Ч that the image of the prophet should never be depicted Ч is challenged by many scholars of Islam, including John Woods, a University of Chicago historian. They say such a strict interpretation is not mandated by the Quran or by Mohammed's sayings. Instead, it is a prohibition asserted by modern-day fundamentalists favoring a rigid Islamic doctrine. Holland Taylor is an American businessman who heads LibForAll Foundation, a non-profit advocacy group based in Winston-Salem, N.C., that supports moderate Islam, especially in Indonesia. He says controversies like the one over the cartoons are opportunities for radicals to try to hijack the religion. "Something we're doing will always offend (fundamentalist Muslims') sensibilities," he says. "Islamic radicals will always find something that causes an emotional charge. And they will jump on it."

Daniel Pearl maintained his dignity until the end 02/15/2006 Canadian Jewish Week, The Kramer, Lauren		Return to Top
Tamara Pearl VANCOUVER Ч This month marks four years since the brutal murder of Daniel Pearl, a reporter with the Wall Street Journal who was kidnapped and killed while on assignment in Pakistan. Tamara Pearl, DanielТs older sister, delivered a talk titled УThe Alchemy Of HopeФ at VancouverТs King David High School recently. She spoke movingly about the kind of person her brother was, of her total desolation of spirit in the years following his death and of how she came to reconcile her grief and anger. Pearl tried to introduce the audience to the Danny she knew, a man who found life fascinating and had a wonderful sense of humour. She read a humorous excerpt from one of his articles, recalling the time he had dressed as a woman in order to report on a striptease show exclusively for women. He was a determined man but was fairly confident of his safety in Afghanistan, promising Pearl heТd be careful and withdraw from any situations he thought might be dangerous. On January 23, 2002, he went missing, throwing the Pearl family into what would be a month-long nightmare leading to his assassination in February 2002. УI was paralyzed with fear,Ф Tamara recalled. УWe waited in anguish in that month, sometimes receiving false news. And we implored the broadcasters not to mention the fact that he was Jewish and that his parents are Israeli.Ф After news of his death, Pearl found herself in a spiritual quandary. УI wrestled with whether life was good or not,Ф she said. УHow could I still embrace this world after seeing so much suffering? I talked to people, read all the books and walked around with lots of questions.Ф To this day, she cannot bring herself to watch the recorded footage of her brotherТs murder. His memory, however, inspired her to find a way out of the darkness of mourning, grief and constant questioning. УDanny always had complete faith in reality, despite the tragic things he witnessed as a journalist,Ф Pearl said. УHe valued people and friendships, and built bridges through his writing. And he was very open and accepting of other cultures, wanting to understand them as best he could.Ф Even in his last words, Daniel maintained his dignity and strength. УHe said СI am JewishТ with such inner strength and conviction, never losing his connection to that which is life affirming,Ф Pearl said. УHe transformed the hatred that surrounded him in his final hours into his life-affirming identity, and that was inspiring to me.Ф The Pearl family channelled their sadness into a humane response, establishing the Daniel Pearl Foundation, a non-profit organization that aims to promote cross-cultural understanding, combat geographical and religious hatred, encourage responsible and creative journalism and unite people through the universal language of music. All these goals were inspired by Daniel, a reporter who travelled with his violin and mandolin, using music to bring people together. The foundation has an array of programs and initiatives. ThereТs Daniel Pearl Music Days, a week-long network of concerts that take place worldwide in October, dedicated to promoting tolerance and humanity. There are journalism initiatives such as the annual Daniel Pearl Fellowship, which brings mid-career journalists from South Asia and the Middle East to a U.S. newsroom for six months, where they can experience a free press environment. And thereТs the Daniel Pearl Dialogue for Muslim-Jewish Understanding, in which professors Akbar Ahmed and Judea Pearl discuss contentious issues that divide the two faiths. Ahmed and Pearl have so far brought the dialogue to 11 cities in the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada. УIТve discovered that being Jewish gives us the tools we need to perform alchemy, and ultimately repair the world,Ф Pearl said. УBy creating this foundation, weТre using DannyТs legacy to help bring people together. In this way, heТs still alive.Ф

Can anything be done to limit future culture clashes? 02/15/2006 USA Today - New York City Bureau Hampson, Rick		Return to Top
If many Muslims are outraged by what many Westerners consider free speech, what can be done to resolve disputes when they arise? Ahmed, of American University, says leaders must act quickly when they see a crisis. The United States "can score points simply by saying to Muslims, 'We understand your feelings. We don't approve, either.' " However shocking the images and rhetoric unleashed by the controversy, violent protest was the exception, not the rule. Consider Jakarta, capital of Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim country. Residents said that they were offended by the caricatures, but opposed to violence. Only 14 people showed up for a protest organized by students outside the presidential palace Wednesday. "Most of our members couldn't come because they didn't want to miss classes," explains organizer Muhammad, 22, who like many Indonesians uses one name. Asked about the cartoons, Rizan Chandra, 46, a marketing director in Jakarta, says, "I don't give a damn. The caricature won't be able to discredit the prophet. ... Actually, the violence done by Muslims around the world is also quite stupid and will only worsen the perception of Islam." In London, Shazad Shah, a 28-year-old Pakistani studying engineering, says he wasn't that angry, because the prophet Mohammed "is in my heart. Nobody, no cartoons, can take that away." Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi bemoans the "huge chasm that has emerged between the West and Islam." It is, he says, largely because of Muslim frustrations at Western policies on Iraq, Afghanistan and the Palestinians. Westerners "think Osama bin Laden speaks for the religion and its followers. Islam and Muslims are linked to all that is negative and backward." The impact of the blowup is unclear. Ahmed and Zahid Bukhari, director of Georgetown's American-Muslim Studies program, outline two scenarios that could emerge: Westerners could become more sensitive to what angers Muslims, and thus less provocative; Muslims could become more aware that freedom of speech is a cherished Western value, not a weapon against Islam. It's also possible, they say, that Westerners Ч outraged by having their flags shredded and embassies burned Ч will be more determined to confront Islam. And Muslims, who already feel under attack, could become even more sensitive. Joseph Braude, a Middle Eastern analyst and magazine columnist, says he feared a third possibility: "Legitimate expression (in the West) will be stifled for fear of provoking another response like this." Nearly every Muslim outside the United States interviewed by USA TODAY favored some controls on speech, especially when the subject is religion. As Shah, the Pakistani studying in London, puts it: "Freedom is good. But not too much freedom ..." Stinson reported from London, Hampson from New York. Contributing: Rick Jervis in Baghdad; Barbara Slavin in Tehran; Michael Kuser in Istanbul; Nicholas Blanford in Beirut; Rhonda Roumani in Damascus; Tom McCawley in Jakarta.

Nigeria oil report 02/17/2006 PRI's The World - Public Radio International Bell, Matthew		Return to Top
Nigeria oil report (3:45) Rebel groups in the oil rich Niger River delta declare "total war" on foreign oil companies. The World's Matthew Bell looks at what's at stake.

Resident is on red hot seat for TV's 'Millionaire' 02/18/2006 Bucks County Courier Times Katalinas, Theresa		Return to Top
All JoAnn Gigliotti wanted was a chance to visit her 20-year-old son, Joseph, in Russia as he studies abroad this summer. A new business owner and single mother of two, Gigliotti, 45, of Morrisville realized having enough cash to take the trip would be no small feat. So she rolled the dice and took a chance at a less-traveled moneymaking route. Her shot at success? One in a million. Or, 22,000 to be more precise. That's how many people take the online test for the syndicated game show "Who Wants to be a Millionaire" each year. Of those, between 200 and 300 are selected as contestants for the half-hour multiple choice question-and-answer show, according to spokeswoman Trisha Miller. After taking the 30-question test for the second time last summer, Gigliotti made the cut. In November, she traveled to New York for two days of taping. "The experience was really exciting and terrifying. It's a big studio. I got a chance to meet Tony Danza when I was going to the bathroom," Gigliotti said with a laugh while manning Red Hot Momma's, a New Hope boutique that carries cooling clothes for menopausal women. "You have to be escorted to and from the bathroom. Tony Danza was walking into his show. I shook his hand." On Friday afternoon, Gigliotti, clad in black pants and a red button-front blouse, made her TV debut from the show's "hot seat" alongside "Millionaire" host Meredith Vieira. "You are a red hot momma," Vieira said in greeting Gigliotti. "You look good." And, if looks are measured in cash winnings, the beaming brunette looked great after finishing Friday's show $25,000 richer. Gigliotti will appear on "Millionaire" again on Feb. 27 at 12:30 p.m. on ABC to finish her quest for $1 million. Until it airs, Gigliotti said she's prohibited from revealing how much she won. Regardless, the gamer-at-heart said she would saddle up in the contender's seat again, if given the opportunity. "I raised [my children] on Monopoly and Scrabble and Bingo," Gigliotti said. "I know a lot of useless stuff, I think." On Friday, a final question valued at $25,000 stumped Gigliotti. When Vieira asked her what "authoritarian ruler claimed he made the trains run on time," Gigliotti knew immediately which of her five at-home "phoner friends" to call - her son Joseph. And the American University senior who's majoring in international relations didn't even need to hear the multiple choices. "Mussolini," he answered upon hearing the question. "I'm just really glad I could be part of her support structure," Joseph Gigliotti said before the show aired. JoAnn Gigliotti's sister Kathryn Panzitta, a four-year Morrisville councilwoman, cheered Gigliotti on from her family and friends seat in the audience. "I know she has it in her," Panzitta said. "She knows all the trivia, all these fantastic facts." And, the fact of the matter is, with at least $25,000, a trip to Russia this summer just got easier. Theresa Katalinas can be reached at 215-269-5081 or tkatalinas@phillyBurbs.com.

THIRD TERM RUMORS SPARK POLITICAL DEBATE IN NIGERIA 02/21/2006 NewsHour with Jim Lehrer - Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) Nwazota, Kristina		Return to Top
Nigerian officials are denying rumors that have swept through that nation's media that President Olusegun Obasanjo may be trying to amend the country's constitution in order to seek a third term in office. Obasanjo and his supporters have been careful to neither publicly announce their desire for a third term, nor deny the rumors, a point that has sparked an increasingly heated national debate and led to widespread speculation among journalists, politicians and regional watchers. "This embassy is not aware of any third-term agenda," a political affairs officer for the Nigerian embassy in Washington, D.C. who refused to speak on the record about the subject said. "We have no information or briefing. All we know is that an election is scheduled for 2007 to change the presidency and the parliament." But, regional experts watching the political situation in the newly democratic country disagree. "The reality is that we see very definite, tangible initiatives by the president and the people around him to try to float the idea of extending term limits," Peter Lewis, a professor of African politics at American University said. "It's not just rumor, it's an actual campaign." Fueling the debate Several recent actions have fueled the speculation that Obasanjo, voted into power in the country's first democratic election in 1999, and the leadership of the ruling People's Democratic Party have aspirations to remain in power. In January, as part of a national political conference aimed at reviewing several provisions of the country's constitution -- a document written under military rule in 1999 -- a Nigerian Senate subcommittee proposed the idea of an amendment that would allow the president to run for a third term, the BBC reported. The recommendation was opposed by the National Political Reform Conference, a group formed after the 1999 election to oversee democratic reforms in the country. Then, last week, a group of senators and representatives from the Nigerian parliament launched a campaign in opposition to a tenure extension, the country's Daily Sun reported. "For some time, there has been speculation in our polity concerning the reality or otherwise of a third term agenda by President Olusegun Obasanjo and some governors," the paper quoted Sen. Uche Chukwumerije as saying. "We want Nigerians not to accept any longer the half-truths, lies, deception and manipulations of the presidency on this issue." Hearings scheduled by the PDP for Wednesday and Thursday of this week to gauge public support for changes to the constitution also have angered many Nigerians. In Katsina, a northern Muslim city where Obasanjo, an ethnic Yoruba and Christian from the South, has failed to gain popularity, riots broke out in opposition to the third term "plot," Reuters reported. Diplomats told the news organization Obasanjo planned the hearings in six provincial capitals rather than in major cities in order to prevent larger protests. The uncertainty and protests have sparked editorial writers in multiple newspapers to call for an answer either way from Obasanjo. And, a poll of 2,400 Nigerians in Nigeria taken by Afro Barometer -- a research network run by the University of Capetown in South Africa, the Center for Democracy and Development in Ghana and Michigan State University -- reported that while 13 percent of the people surveyed believe Obasanjo should be allowed to serve as many terms as he wishes, 84 percent oppose a third term extension. Obasanjo's track record The same research organization showed Obasanjo's popularity and trust ratings among the nation's voters sagging badly, particularly among Muslims from the North who themselves want more autonomy from the central government and those who feel that widespread corruption common under 45 years of military leadership still is prevalent. Residents of the oil-rich Niger Delta, where poverty abounds despite Nigeria's status as the world's eighth largest oil producer, also condemn the country's leadership. Should Obasanjo mount a campaign again, it is those groups who pose the greatest danger to a possible victory. "There are definite achievements that Obasanjo can point to in my view," Lewis said. "He has been very effective in asserting civilian control of the military. ... In the last three or four years, he's been relatively effective in putting together a competent team to manage the economy ... [and] he's started a vigorous anti-corruption campaign and there have been a lot of high-profile arrests, investigations and even some convictions." Lewis pointed to a stabilizing, growing economy and to a pending deal between Nigeria, the International Monetary Fund and the Paris Club that would virtually wipe out the country's $33 billion debt with the government paying off $12 billion and the rest being canceled. The Nigerian public remains skeptical. A second Afro Barometer poll showed the president's approval rating at 32 percent and a Feb. 10 editorial in the country's Vanguard newspaper blasted the PDP for its failure to improve quality of life. "Life in Nigeria, outside Abuja, is becoming increasingly unbearable. In Lagos, the commercial hub of Nigeria, electric power is as rare as two hours a day. The informal sector, which has been the backbone of the ailing economy is badly threatened by power outages ... [and] the roads are washing away." U.S. response Any effort by the Nigerian PDP to keep Obasanjo in power would also face widespread opposition from key members of the international community. U.S. State Department officials have condemned the idea of amending the Nigerian constitution to allow for a third term. Arguments that keeping Obasanjo in power longer would allow the president to continue on the path to ending corruption and would help stabilize a country that has seen 13 leaders -- many of them military -- since independence in 1960 have fallen on deaf ears. Obasanjo's reputation as an international statesman and peacekeeper also holds little sway among American officials who view any threat to term limits as a threat to democracy. "Our view is very clear that term limits should be respected," Assistant Secretary of State Jendayi Frazer said in a state department briefing in December after being asked about the rumored intentions of Obasanjo and Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni. "It's extremely important in Africa to respect term limits because it allows for the grooming of new leadership, it supports the rule of law and it demonstrates that ... most of these countries ... haven't developed under those 20- or 30-year presidents," she said. According to Frazer, term limits protect against coups and violent rebellions by those who see few alternatives to a lifetime president. Government response Nigerian officials maintain Obasanjo has not made any statement asserting his desire for a third term. "Nobody has ever heard the president say he is going to run a third term," the embassy official said. Any changes to the constitution are purely legitimate, the embassy asserts. "There is absolute need to amend the Nigerian constitution and it's not motivated by any third term extension," the official said. "It was the departing military government that imposed that constitution. It's really a military document, which was to serve as a transitional, constitutional framework and there are a lot of contradictory provisions." The embassy said the Independent National Electoral Commission is preparing for the 2007 election, though observers say no one has formerly announced a candidacy, including the country's Vice President Atiku Abubakar, reportedly at odds with Obasanjo over the third term debate because of his own presidential aspirations. Regardless of the speculation and who will run, amending the constitution to allow for a third term would require a two-thirds majority from the federal legislature. "To amend the Nigerian constitution is a very rigorous process," the embassy official said. "If it happens then that must be the will of the people, not of one person and we should not be afraid of this." -- By Kristina Nwazota, Online NewsHour

Ghareeb CNN 02/21/2006 Insight - Cable News Network International (CNNII)		Return to Top
Edmund Ghareeb CNN Insight program on the Danish Cartoons and their impact.

Ghareeb UPI 02/21/2006 United Press International		Return to Top
Edmund Ghareeb UPI on the Iraqi media and on Iraqi TV channels agreement with JUMP TV .

Ghareeb BBC 02/21/2006 BBC America		Return to Top
Edmund Ghareeb BBC Arabic and English sections on Iraq, Abu Ghraib and US policies toward Lebanon, Iran and Hamas.

Ghareeb Al Jazeera etc. 02/21/2006 Al Jazeera - Washington DC Bureau		Return to Top
Edmund Ghareeb Al Jazeera and Al Arabiyya, LBC, Nile TV on US and relations with Hamas, Iran and Syria, on the US reactions to the Congressional report on Katrina and the UN report on Guantanamo.

SIS Professor Peter Lewis on WAMU Kojo Nnamdi Show 02/22/2006 Kojo Nnamdi Show - WAMU-FM, The Nnamdi, Kojo		Return to Top
Peter Lewis, associate professor in the Division of Comparative and Regional Studies (SIS) and director of the Council for African Studies was a guest on the Wednesday, Feb 22, Kojo Nnamdi Show in the 1:00 - 1:30 pm hour. He'll discuss the recent unrest in Nigeria's delta region, its impact on oil exports and reforms leading up to the country's 2007 elections.

Some American Evangelicals Call for Action to Stop Global Warming 02/22/2006 Voice of America Rodgers, Bill		Return to Top
Evangelical Christians number in the tens of millions and represent a significant voting bloc Some prominent American evangelical leaders have launched a campaign to persuade their congregants that more needs to be done to stop global warming. By embracing a cause normally advocated by environmental groups, these evangelical leaders have broken with many of their colleagues and the Bush administration on the global warming issue. America's evangelical Christians number in the tens of millions, and traditionally have embraced causes like the fight against abortion and gay marriage. But now, some evangelical leaders are warning their congregations about the dangers of global warming. In full-page newspaper ads, 86 prominent evangelicals pledged to work to help solve the global warming crisis. Robert Andringa, who heads the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities, was among those who signed the statement. "God created the universe and gave us responsibility to be stewards of it,Ф he said. УAlso that we are to love God but also our neighbor. Who is our neighbor? Well, among the things that Jesus taught us is the poor and the disenfranchised. And on this particular issue, it hits the poorer hardest." Some scientists think climate change is responsible for the rise of stronger hurricanes, like last year's Hurricane Katrina, and fiercer and more destructive typhoons in Asia. Recent studies show glaciers, such as those on Greenland, are melting faster and this could significantly raise sea levels, causing flooding in low-lying countries like Bangladesh. Despite some dissenters, most climate scientists believe human activity, especially the increased emissions of greenhouse gases caused by burning fossil fuels, is making the Earth warmer. On its web site, the Evangelical Climate Initiative calls for pressing the U.S. government to curb carbon emissions. "Many Christians don't want to look to government first, but in this case we believe that the issue is big enough and significant enough that individual action alone cannot work. I'm convinced that we need government action," said Mr. Andringa. President Bush, a devoutly religious man who regularly presides over prayer breakfasts, has a strong constituency among evangelicals. On the issue of global warming, he and his administration oppose mandatory limits on carbon emissions. He explained why early in his first term in office. "We will not do anything that harms our economy, because first things first are the people who live in America and that's my priority," said Mr. Bush. President Bush supports solutions other than mandatory limits on carbon emissions and favors more research into the causes of global warming. Evangelical leaders, such as Richard Land, agree and have criticized those who are calling for government intervention. "A significant portion of my constituency does not think global warming is a settled issue. They don't think that human impact on global warming is a settled issue." Yet pressure may build for more active measures, as evidence grows of global warming's effects on the environment. Paul Wapner of American University says the move by some evangelicals to press for change is significant. "I actually think this is a big deal. I think that to have this voice which speaks to many people who have either said to themselves, СMy religious life is a private matter, it is not a matter of public engagement.Т This call to action, I think, speaks to some of those people to say, Сhold on, I have a public responsibility hereТ." Yet it may take some time to convince most conservative Christians, as Robert Andringa acknowledges. "It just takes a long time for people to understand issues that are sort of abstract or too technical, and we're trying to bring it home, not as technical experts but as followers of Christ and ask, 'What is our responsibility?' It's to care for the creation and to care about those who are poor." Even if Andringa and others persuade most evangelicals to join their cause, affecting such a vast and complex phenomenon as global warming will be difficult.

Hamas' win muddles Rice's pitch 02/23/2006 Chicago Tribune Simpson, Cam		Return to Top
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia -- On previous tours of the Middle East, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice placed two Bush administration goals at the top of her agenda. She asked autocratic regimes long allied with America to embrace Washington's brand of "spreading freedom," often at their own peril, while trying to persuade the same leaders to boost financial aid for the Palestinians. But after Palestinian parliamentary elections last month in which a designated terrorist organization committed to Israel's destruction swept to power, Rice seems like a very different diplomat on both fronts. She's in the Middle East this week--her first trip to the region since elections in the Gaza Strip and West Bank--trying to persuade the same Arab leaders that it's a good idea for the world to cut off funding for a democratically elected Palestinian government led by Hamas, at least until the militant group rejects its long-held stance on Israel. In the process of trying to gain the support of regional strongmen on that front, she also seems to have lowered the volume on her familiar calls for freedom. Rice rejected the notion Wednesday that administration principles were waning in the face of new regional realities. "The one thing that you can be certain of is that wherever we are, under whatever circumstances, we will continue to raise the issues [of democracy]," Rice said. "We will continue to press the case forward." Late Wednesday in Riyadh, Prince Saud bin al-Faisal, the foreign minister, made it clear that his government would be the latest ally to flatly reject the American strategy of isolating Hamas. Saudi aid "We wish not to link the international aid to the Palestinian people to [any] consideration other than their dire humanitarian needs," Saud said. He also suggested Saudi dollars would continue to flow unabated to all Palestinian channels. "How do we distinguish between humanitarian and non-humanitarian aid, infrastructure project or a humanitarian aid project?" he asked. "They need both." The story was much the same a day earlier in Cairo. The images that emerged from Rice's visit to the Egyptian capital might also have left a troubling impression for democracy proponents. In many ways Cairo has been the central front in the Bush administration's drive for democracy in the Arab and Muslim world. Not long after Rice settled into her new quarters at the State Department early last year, she did the previously unthinkable. She canceled a trip to Egypt, a crucial Washington ally in the Middle East for years. Her cancellation followed the Egyptian government's detention of activist politician Ayman Nour, one of the administration's favorite proponents of democratic reform in Egypt. She took a bolder step four months later, coming to Cairo to declare a fundamental change in the calculus underlying American foreign policy in the Middle East. In a speech at the American University, she said mutual self-interest would no longer be enough to sustain relationships like the one the U.S. had long enjoyed with President Hosni Mubarak. Now everything would take a back seat to the spread of freedom, she said. But her first meeting in the Middle East this week--and certainly one of her longer--was with Omar Suleiman, Mubarak's chief of intelligence and perhaps his closest adviser. The logic behind the meeting was simple. Suleiman is said to have impeccable intelligence on political machinations inside the Palestinian territories and on crucial developments among Islamic fundamentalists throughout the region. What Washington needs now is solid information, something Rice and Bush lacked in failing to foresee the ascent of Hamas. A peculiar coziness Yet it would be hard to imagine a clearer image of Washington's old-style relationships in the region than seeing the American secretary of state step off an airplane and head straight into a cozy meeting with the intelligence chief for one of the Middle East's autocratic leaders. The intelligence chief has undoubtedly played some role in the ongoing saga with Nour, who is serving a 5-year prison term in Egypt. Rice did not utter Nour's name as she spoke publicly in Egypt. Her meeting with Suleiman, originally scheduled to last 75 minutes, went so well that it stretched for almost two hours, according to two senior officials traveling with Rice. On Wednesday, Rice said the administration's zeal for democracy here has not abated, even in the face of electoral successes for Islamic fundamentalists in the Palestinian territories, Lebanon, Iraq and Egypt. Nor has it abated because the Bush administration now seems to need its old secular allies more than ever.

Roots of violence found in disrespect 02/23/2006 Christian Science Monitor, The Lampman, Jane		Return to Top
Perplexing violence overseas and in America seems to have a common thread - the yearning for respect. In the ongoing controversy over the Danish caricatures of the prophet Muhammad, people on both sides agree that the strongest spark for the protests in the Muslim world is the message the cartoons send of disrespect for Islam and its followers. In several cities in the United States, police report a disturbing pattern of rising violence - including homicides - linked to disputes in which people say they were "disrespected." "We're seeing a very angry population," one police chief recently told The New York Times. Respect is one of the most widely shared yearnings among human beings, and it touches the emotional core of people in profound ways. Respect given can be powerful and transformative. The results of respect withheld can be painful or even explosive. At a time when civility seems to be diminishing, some see the power of mutual respect as a way to break through cultural stereotypes and religious prejudices. "Cultures are rubbing against each other more than ever before in history," says Akbar Ahmed, professor of Islamic studies at American University in Washington. "We need to be sensitive to ... respect, honor, dignity, and how they are viewed in different societies." The prime ministers of Turkey and Spain, nations at the crossroads of East and West, have proposed a major initiative of structured dialogue to explore differing values and what Islamic and Western societies consider sacred. "We have to have a deeper conversation about why Western democracies came to this place of tolerance of offensive language; and what we can do, not in the realm of the law, but of decency, to be more aware of what each other's [hot] buttons are," says Marc Gopin, director of the Center for World Religions, Diplomacy and Conflict Resolution at George Mason University in Arlington, Va. Rabbi Gopin has engaged in discussions among enemies in the Middle East. Because of his belief in the "power of gestures of respect," he visited Damascus last year at some risk to himself as a Jew, and faced tough questions about America and Israel from more than 300 Syrians. The 90-minute session was televised nationally. While people give lip service to the idea that everyone is created in the image of God or that everyone has human rights, he says, they often act as if others aren't human beings. "So when you cut through that and demonstrate enormous respect for a person who is an enemy, it's a shock. It brings that deeper truth, buried under suspicion and hatred, to the surface, and evokes honesty from the other parties," he adds. "Respect can have remarkable effects." The controversy is also spurring deeper discussion on international rights. Muslim leaders from 57 countries are pressing for the new UN human rights body to take steps to prevent the defamation of religions and prophets. That will likely raise issues of where Muslim countries stand on questions of religious freedom and persecution - and practices of disrespect in their societies. The Iranian president's recent questioning of the Holocaust is one provocative example. Yet finger-pointing is not the way out of what many see as an increasingly dangerous state. "We are losing a lot of the Muslim world. We must have Muslim allies on our side," says Dr. Ahmed. "This is possible through the language of respect." He says symbolic gestures by US officials could help defuse the situation, such as ambassadors in various Muslim countries visiting mosques, as President Bush did right after Sept. 11. Respect needs to be taught Of deep concern to some people, however, is the growing devaluation of respect itself, including in American culture. "We have dropped the ball," says Carl Taylor, a professor at Michigan State University in East Lansing, who conducts research among families and youths in urban and suburban areas. "Young people today are not being taught what respect is, and that is true in the middle class as well," says the African-American criminologist. Nor is it being modeled enough for them. "When young people feel they aren't respected by law enforcement, by teachers, by others, they respond in kind," he says. He recalls one youth in trouble telling him, "If they talked with me the way you do, I'd never have done those things." After lengthy study of violent criminals, James Gilligan of Harvard Medical School concluded that warding off disrespect, shame, and humiliation constitutes the basic psychological motive, or cause, of violent behavior. Street culture, he says, often evolves around a desperate search for respect. At the same time, entertainment and media industries are promoting distorted ideals of manhood and womanhood, Dr. Taylor says, from rappers to video games that glorify violence and disrespect, to reality shows that are steeped in humiliation. "Uncivilized behavior is celebrated and applauded like never before," he says. Peter Yarrow's classroom solution Others share those concerns, and one group tackling them through education is starting with the early years. "Elements in our culture are promoting disrespect, but there's a strong yearning for respect in the human spirit, and our work makes us hopeful," says Mark Weiss, education director for Operation Respect (OR), which provides curricula to help build respectful school environments. Founded in 2000 by Peter Yarrow of the folk trio Peter, Paul, and Mary, OR makes strong use of music to engage children on how they treat one another. Kristin Krycia, a school counselor and teacher in Alexandria, Va., says the music evokes an immediate response in students. "I had tried everything for several years and nothing worked," she says. "With this program, the changes were fast and monumental." She tells of several bullies whose behavior turned around, and a sixth-grader who was always pointing a finger at people and laughing. "Kids started to hate him because he was always ridiculing," she says. When she played the song, "Don't Laugh at Me," in the class, the boy "came up afterward and said, 'That song is about me. Can you help me stop?' " He not only succeeded in changing, but began helping other kids do the same. "The word 'respect' has power," says Jeff Edmondson, OR's interim director, who previously worked in Washington, D.C., public schools. "The No. 1 thing you could say to a student to stop a fight ... was 'Listen, it's about respect, me and you. What's up?' And it would just defuse the situation." More than 125,000 sets of their curricula have been distributed in several countries, and OR is currently giving workshops for teams from every elementary school in New York City. The program is about "harnessing the power of respect so the beast that might result from disrespect doesn't happen," Mr. Edmondson says. But students spend only 12 percent of their time in a school environment, he adds. "If we all start demonstrating respect for them and each other, we can turn the tide on some of the headlines we see on a daily basis." It sometimes seems to feel good to bully or beat up on others - we seem to get something from this negative stuff, Mr. Weiss says. "But it's like junk food - there's instant gratification, but in the long run, it's unhealthy and doesn't get us very far."

Ghareeb on C-SPAN's Washington Journal 02/25/2006 Washington Journal - C-SPAN		Return to Top
Ghareeb, Edmund, Professor, American University, International Relations appeared on C-SPAN's Washington Journal on 2/25/06 to discuss the situation in Iraq.

Edmund Ghareeb Discusses Violence in Iraq 02/28/2006 KQED-FM		Return to Top
Station: KQED-FM-PBS RADIO SAN FRANCISCO-OAKLAND-SAN JOSE, CA Program: FORUM Edmund Ghareeb, Mustafa Barsani Scholar of Global Studies at the Center for Global Peace at American University, examines the recent violence in Iraq, and the possibility of civil war in the region.