WEEKLY REVIEW

Another weekly review...

In talking to Niel, Dru, and Bijan today, I realized that
putting together the Weekly Review is a lot of work, and would be more fun and less work if it were a collaborative thing.

So, we're starting a regular Friday IRC meeting, which
anyone is free to attend (irc server: monkeyfist.com; irc
channel: #mf). We'll be working on the new weekly review
each Friday. If you want to help out, bring your favorite
news items from the week and lend a hand.

Kendall Clark


WEEKLY REVIEW
By Kendall Clark

Tom Ridge, chief of "homeland security", said that terrorism may force the
federal government to use the military in domestic law enforcement, a
violation of the Posse Comitatus Act (1878); he said that it "goes against
our instincts as a country to empower the military with the ability to
arrest" and that the government is "wise to examine the law". A new study
was release which suggests that US military has killed as many as 800
civilians in Afghanistan because, in trying to shield US ground forces from
harm, it has relied on faulty intelligence from Afghan warlords. Secretary
of Defense Rumsfeld disputed the report, saying that the air campaign in
Afghanistan has been the "most precise in history". Slobodan Milosevic
denied a cover-up of war crimes, telling a U.N. tribunal that ethnic
Albanians whose bodies were packed into a freezer truck and dumped into the
Danube River were victims of human traffickers, not Serb army troops. The US
failed to block a U.N. vote on a plan to strengthen a treaty on torture, and
was widely criticized by allies for trying to do so. A jury held two retired
Salvadoran generals responsible for atrocities committed during El
Salvador's civil war two decades ago and ordered them to pay $54.6 million
to three torture victims.

Unnamed White House officials are concerned that Dick Cheney, owing to the
investigation into his activities at Halliburton, has become a liability in
the administration's efforts to distance itself from the wave of corporate
scandal, privately admitting that the Vice President could lose his spot as
Bush's running mate in the 2004 election. President Bush, then an outside
director of Harken Energy, had confidential information about financial
troubles facing the firm months before he sold his stock in 1990. Bush has
repeatedly said that the SEC exonerated him of any wrongdoing, but the SEC's
investigation report explicitly stated that it did not exonerate him.

The Attorney General of Israel said that it was legal for Israel to deport
relatives of West Bank suicide bombers to the Gaza Strip. It claims the
expulsions would respond to the benefits Hamas pays to relatives of suicide
bombers, and the $25,000 the government of Iraq donates to the family. Sen.
Joseph Biden, chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said that
President Bush would be authorized to invade Iraq if a link between Saddam
Hussein's government and al-Qaida could be demonstrated. A Secret Service
agent, who's admitted scrawling "Islam is Evil" and "Christ is King" on a
Muslim prayer calendar while searching a Muslim man's home, was suspended
from active duty.

The USDA ordered the recall of 19 million pounds of ConAgra beef, the second
largest recall of beef in history, after dozens of people fell ill from
eating E.-coli tainted meat in Colorado. Inmates of a state prison in Buena
Vista, Colorado, were knowingly served meals made from tainted ConAgra beef.
In Lima, Peru, 24 people were killed and 100 were injured in an unlicensed
night club fire started by bartenders doing fire tricks; the fire spread
when customers tried to extinguish it with their drinks. A lion and tiger
were also killed in the fire. The Bush administration said it will
reconsider whether to allow airline pilots to carry guns, according to
Transportation Secretary Mineta. In Williamsburg, Virginia, a man fired an
AR-15 assault rifle at a helicopter which tried to land near his house;
"Maybe I overreacted", the man said, "but I did feel this was terrorism at
its utmost".

Scientists said that the African famine of 1970 to 1985, from Senegal to
Ethiopia, which killed 1.2 million people may have been caused in part by
sulfur dioxide pollution from industrial nations. The government of Sudan
and the southern rebels agreed to a framework with which to commence final
peace negotiations next month, including the freedom of Sudanese in the
south to practice religions other than Islam. The civil war in Sudan has
gone on since 1983 and was intensified by foreign oil companies drilling
along the line which separates north and south Sudan.

President Bush refused to pay $34 million which was approved in January for
the United Nations Population Fund, which pays for international family
planning programs, under pressure from conservative, anti-abortion
activists. Secretary of State Powell said last year that the fund "provides
critical population assistance to developing countries". Peter Kirsanow, a
Bush appointee to the U.S. Civil Rights Commission said, he could imagine
circumstances in which a "groundswell of public opinion" demanded internment
camps for Arab Americans, especially if Arab terrorists were to attack the
US again. He added that Arab and Muslim Americans should "accept the
country's new antiterrorism laws and complain less about infringements to
their civil rights".

The Bush administration abandoned efforts to work with Iranian President
Mohammad Khatami and his reformist allies and is turning its attention to
direct appeals supporters of democracy among the Iranian people, a policy
shift which reverses a five-year effort to encourage Khatami and a reform
agenda in Iran. Hamid Karzai, president of Afghanistan, replaced his Afghan
bodyguards with US military personnel because of serious threats to his
safety, including some thought to imminent from members of his own cabinet.
At least 12 people were killed in clashes between rival Afghan factions
fighting for control of the Sheen Dend district in the western province of
Herat. Surgeons reattached a seven year old Moroccan boy's penis after it
was bitten off by a donkey.

An Israeli flown, US-made F-16 fighter dropped a one-ton bomb on the Gaza
Strip home of Salah Shehada -- founder of the military wing of Hamas --
killing Shehada, 14 others, including nine children, and wounding 150.
Israeli PM Ariel Sharon greeted the news of the attack as "one of our
biggest successes"; the White House called the attack "heavy handed". The
attack took place hours after Ahmad Yassin, the spiritual leader of Hamas,
said that it would consider stopping attacks if the Israel military would
withdraw form West Bank towns. Israel announced it would withdraw troops
from some West Bank cities and had released millions of dollars in frozen
tax money in concessions to Palestinians after the air strike. Palestinians
killed a Jewish settler and wounded another in what was described as the
"first and simple answer" to the attack. Israeli tank forces subsequently
entered the Gaza Strip. The US said it would take part in a UN Security
Council debate on the attack, but it would do reluctantly and would oppose
any UN resolution: "we've opposed resolutions on things like this", senior
officials said.

The House of Representatives voted 420-1 to expel James Traficant, Democrat
of Ohio, for taking bribes and kickbacks. Yale University reported to the
FBI that admissions officials at Princeton hacked into a Yale Web site that
was set up for prospective students. Civil rights leader Al Sharpton said
that an FBI surveillance tape, aired by the cable network HBO, showing him
allegedly discussing a cocaine deal was part of a government plot to
sabotage his campaign for the presidency. Sharpton filed suit against HBO
for $1 billion, claiming it defamed him by selectively editing the
surveillance tape. Alan Lomax, arguably the most important archivist of
American folk music, died in Tampa, Florida, at the age of 87. He will be
remembered for "giving a voice to the voiceless". Leo McKern, star of the
BBC comedy, "Rumpole of the Bailey", died.



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Posted on Monkeyfist at http://monkeyfist.com/articles/822