An independent commission established by Congress to assess Iraq’s security forces will recommend remaking the 26,000-member national police force to purge it of corrupt officers and Shiite militants suspected of complicity in sectarian killings, administration and military officials said Thursday.The commission, headed by Gen. James L. Jones, the former top United States commander in Europe, concludes that the rampant sectarianism that has existed since the formation of the police force requires that its current units “be scrapped” and reshaped into a smaller, more elite organization, according to one senior official familiar with the findings. The recommendation is that “we should start over,” the official said.
The report, which will be presented to Congress next week, is among a number of new Iraq assessments — including a national intelligence estimate and a Government Accountability Office report — that await lawmakers when they return from summer recess. But the Jones commission’s assessment is likely to receive particular attention as the work of a highly regarded team that was alone in focusing directly on the worthiness of Iraq’s army and police force.
Friday, August 31, 2007
Panel Will Urge Broad Overhaul of Iraqi Police
Thursday, August 30, 2007
GAO Draft at Odds With White House
The draft provides a stark assessment of the tactical effects of the current U.S.-led counteroffensive to secure Baghdad. "While the Baghdad security plan was intended to reduce sectarian violence, U.S. agencies differ on whether such violence has been reduced," it states. While there have been fewer attacks against U.S. forces, it notes, the number of attacks against Iraqi civilians remains unchanged. It also finds that "the capabilities of Iraqi security forces have not improved."
"Overall," the report concludes, "key legislation has not been passed, violence remains high, and it is unclear whether the Iraqi government will spend $10 billion in reconstruction funds," as promised. While it makes no policy recommendations, the draft suggests that future administration assessments "would be more useful" if they backed up their judgments with more details and "provided data on broader measures of violence from all relevant U.S. agencies."
Moqtada al-Sadr announces ceasefire in Iraq
LinkSadr announced yesterday that an order to stand down had been distributed to his loyalists following the deaths of more than 50 Shia Muslim pilgrims during sectarian fighting in the holy city of Karbala on Tuesday.
The surprise statement regarding his notorious Mahdi army, which is responsible for much of Iraq's sectarian blood-letting, not only caught British and American commanders off-guard but appeared to have surprised Baghdad officials too. Mowaffak al-Rubbaie, Iraq's national security adviser, said Baghdad would only welcome the move if Sadr's lieutenants stop attacks and their attempts to "blow up" the Iraqi government.
"I will see on the ground what is going to happen," he said. "It is good news if it is true. If it happens it will reduce violence in the country a great deal."
The militia has waged factional battles with rival Shia groups across Iraq in recent weeks. The extent of Shia against Shia fighting has raised questions over the 34-year-old cleric's grip over his loyalists. Sadr acted to dispel tensions hours after Baghdad was forced to impose a curfew on Karbala and order hundreds of thousands of worshippers out of the city.
Tuesday, August 28, 2007
Iraq Chaos
The Iraqi refugee crisis continues.
A power struggle between rival Shiite groups erupted during a religious festival in Karbala today, as gunmen with machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades fought street battles amid crowds of pilgrims, killing 50 people and wounding 200, Iraqi officials said.
This year, for the first time, administration officials began publicly discussing the special dangers faced by Iraqis working with Americans here and acknowledging the need to grant them safe haven in the United States. To that end, the administration has set up a special program for a small number of Iraqis, which gives preferential treatment to full-time employees of the American Embassy, currently about 125 in Baghdad, and to 500 interpreters by allowing them to skip the lengthy United Nations refugee process once they leave Iraq.
But thousands more Iraqis work for the United States through contractors like Titan, a subsidiary of L-3 Communications; DynCorp International; Parsons Corporation; and Triple Canopy, or the subcontractors working for them. In all, 69,000 Iraqis work on contracts with the Department of Defense through Iraqi and foreign companies, according to the American military. They are cleaners, construction workers, drivers and security guards, to name a few, and though they face the same reprisals as anyone working more directly with the American government they do not fall into the special category.
A spokesman for the United States Embassy here said all Iraqis who had worked for the United States would have their refugee applications sped up once they fled Iraq and reached neighboring countries like Jordan or Syria.
“The big question mark is for those who can’t reach us here,” said Rafiq A. Tschannen, chief of the Iraq mission for the International Organization for Migration in Amman, Jordan.
“I am not gay, I never have been gay”
Mr. Craig, 62, apologized for “the cloud placed over Idaho” by his arrest and guilty plea to a misdemeanor charge. But his deepest regret, he said, is that he pleaded guilty when he had done nothing wrong.
The senator said he had chosen to plead guilty without consulting a lawyer, and before telling his family, in the hope that the incident would just “go away” somehow.
“That was a mistake, and I deeply regret it,” he said.
Senator, Arrested at Airport, Pleads Guilty
Senator Larry E. Craig, Republican of Idaho, was arrested in June by an undercover police officer in a men’s bathroom at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, and pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct in the case three weeks ago.
Mr. Craig, 62, was fined more than $500 and placed on unsupervised probation for a year. A 10-day jail sentence was suspended, according to a copy of a court document in the case. A second charge, interference with privacy, was dismissed.
Link
Iraq Orders Pilgrims to Leave After Violence
More than 1 million pilgrims were ordered to leave the Shiite holy city of Karbala on Tuesday and police imposed a curfew after two days of violence -- including raging gunbattles between rival militias -- claimed at least 35 lives during a religious festival.Nearly 200 people were wounded, security officials said, and the government sent reinforcements from Baghdad to quell growing unrest and help clear the city.
gunbattle between rival militias -- claimed at least 35 lives during a religious festival.
Nearly 200 people were wounded, security officials said, and the government sent reinforcements from Baghdad to quell growing unrest and help clear the city.
Sunday, August 26, 2007
Schools Fight for Teachers Because of High Turnover
The retirement of thousands of baby boomer teachers coupled with the departure of younger teachers frustrated by the stress of working in low-performing schools is fueling a crisis in teacher turnover that is costing school districts substantial amounts of money as they scramble to fill their ranks for the fall term.Superintendents and recruiters across the nation say the challenge of putting a qualified teacher in every classroom is heightened in subjects like math and science and is a particular struggle in high-poverty schools, where the turnover is highest. Thousands of classes in such schools have opened with substitute teachers in recent years.
Here in Guilford County, N.C., turnover had become so severe in some high-poverty schools that principals were hiring new teachers for nearly every class, every term. To staff its neediest schools before classes start on Aug. 28, recruiters have been advertising nationwide, organizing teacher fairs and offering one of the nation’s largest recruitment bonuses, $10,000 to instructors who sign up to teach Algebra I.
“We had schools where we didn’t have a single certified math teacher,” said Terry Grier, the schools superintendent. “We needed an incentive, because we couldn’t convince teachers to go to these schools without one.”
Guilford County, which has 116 schools, is far from the only district to take this route as school systems compete to fill their ranks. Kate Walsh, president of the National Council on Teacher Quality, a nonprofit policy group that seeks to encourage better teaching, said hundreds of districts were offering recruitment incentives this summer.
Officials in New York, which has the nation’s largest school system, said they had recruited about 5,000 new teachers by mid-August, attracting those certified in math, science and special education with a housing incentive that can include $5,000 for a down payment.
New York also offers subsidies through its teaching fellows program, which recruits midcareer professionals from fields like health care, law and finance. The money helps defer the cost of study for a master’s degree. The city expects to hire at least 1,300 additional teachers before school begins on Sept. 4, said Vicki Bernstein, director of teacher recruitment.
Los Angeles has offered teachers signing with low-performing schools a $5,000 bonus. The district, the second-largest in the country, had hired only about 500 of the 2,500 teachers it needed by Aug. 15 but hoped to begin classes fully staffed, said Deborah Ignagni, chief of teacher recruitment.
In Kansas, Alexa Posny, the state’s education commissioner, said the schools had been working to fill “the largest number of vacancies” the state had ever faced. This is partly because of baby boomer retirements and partly because districts in Texas and elsewhere were offering recruitment bonuses and housing allowances, luring Kansas teachers away.
“This is an acute problem that is becoming a crisis,” Ms. Posny said.
As China Roars, Pollution Reaches Deadly Extremes
BEIJING, Aug. 25 — No country in history has emerged as a major industrial power without creating a legacy of environmental damage that can take decades and big dollops of public wealth to undo.
But just as the speed and scale of China’s rise as an economic power have no clear parallel in history, so its pollution problem has shattered all precedents. Environmental degradation is now so severe, with such stark domestic and international repercussions, that pollution poses not only a major long-term burden on the Chinese public but also an acute political challenge to the ruling Communist Party. And it is not clear that China can rein in its own economic juggernaut.
Public health is reeling. Pollution has made cancer China’s leading cause of death, the Ministry of Health says. Ambient air pollution alone is blamed for hundreds of thousands of deaths each year. Nearly 500 million people lack access to safe drinking water.
Chinese cities often seem wrapped in a toxic gray shroud. Only 1 percent of the country’s 560 million city dwellers breathe air considered safe by the European Union. Beijing is frantically searching for a magic formula, a meteorological deus ex machina, to clear its skies for the 2008 Olympics.
Environmental woes that might be considered catastrophic in some countries can seem commonplace in China: industrial cities where people rarely see the sun; children killed or sickened by lead poisoning or other types of local pollution; a coastline so swamped by algal red tides that large sections of the ocean no longer sustain marine life.
China is choking on its own success. The economy is on a historic run, posting a succession of double-digit growth rates. But the growth derives, now more than at any time in the recent past, from a staggering expansion of heavy industry and urbanization that requires colossal inputs of energy, almost all from coal, the most readily available, and dirtiest, source.
“It is a very awkward situation for the country because our greatest achievement is also our biggest burden,” says Wang Jinnan, one of China’s leading environmental researchers. “There is pressure for change, but many people refuse to accept that we need a new approach so soon.”
China’s problem has become the world’s problem. Sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides spewed by China’s coal-fired power plants fall as acid rain on Seoul, South Korea, and Tokyo. Much of the particulate pollution over Los Angeles originates in China, according to the Journal of Geophysical Research.
More pressing still, China has entered the most robust stage of its industrial revolution, even as much of the outside world has become preoccupied with global warming.
Experts once thought China might overtake the United States as the world’s leading producer of greenhouse gases by 2010, possibly later. Now, the International Energy Agency has said China could become the emissions leader by the end of this year, and the Netherlands Environment Assessment Agency said China had already passed that level.
Friday, August 24, 2007
Iraqi Factions’ Self-Interest Blocks Political Progress
In part, of course, Iraq remains a place pocked by violence and fear, which makes compromise difficult. But more important, say Iraqi political commentators and officials, Iraq has become a cellular nation, dividing and redividing into competing constituencies that have a greater stake in continued chaos than in compromise.
In most areas, for most Iraqis, the central government today is either irrelevant or invisible. Provinces and even neighborhoods have become the stages where power struggles play out. As a result, Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds — or elements of each faction — have come to feel that they can do a better job on their own.
“No one can rely on the political participants who lack a common view of the public interest,” said Nabeel Mahmoud, an international relations professor at Baghdad University. “Such a concept is completely absent from the thinking of the political powers in Iraq’s government, so each side works to get their own quota of positions or resources.”
Generals Differ on the Timing of Troop Cuts
Among others, Gen. Peter Pace, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the Army chief of staff, are said to be leaning toward a recommendation that steep reductions by the end of 2008, perhaps to half of the 20 combat brigades now in Iraq, should be the administration’s goal.
Such a drawdown would be deeper and faster than Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top commander in Iraq, is expected to recommend next month, administration officials said.
“If you’re out in Baghdad you might have a different priority for where you want the troops,” an administration official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because the White House has not authorized public remarks on the options being considered.
It has been known since the spring that the White House was considering options for reducing combat forces in Iraq by almost half in 2008, which could bring overall troop levels below 100,000. But the shape of the debate is only beginning to emerge.
President Bush will have to weigh whether such steep reductions in 2008, even if cast only as a goal, would risk eroding what a new National Intelligence Estimate has described as measurable but fragile security gains achieved in Iraq in recent months.
Thursday, August 23, 2007
Iraq's 'Alamo' simmers
Well-Written piece by the LA Times that goes inside the Surge.
Across the walls of a neighborhood that has seen better days, Sunni Arab insurgents splash slogans in black Arabic letters: "Death to America" and "Long Live the Resistance." U.S. and Iraqi forces black out the words and replace them with slogans of their own: "Long Live Iraq" and "No to Sectarianism."
The graffiti war, with its echo of U.S. ganglands, is a manifestation of a deadly confrontation that has played out for months in the vast southwestern section of Baghdad known as Dora. Sunni militants have chosen to make a concerted stand in Dora against U.S. troops -- their Alamo, as one American military official put it.
Lessons of Vietnam War for Iraq?
In reminding Americans that the pullout in 1975 was followed by years of bloody upheaval in Southeast Asia, Mr. Bush argued in a speech on Wednesday that Vietnam’s lessons provide a reason for persevering in Iraq, rather than for leaving any time soon. Mr. Bush in essence accused his war critics of amnesia over the exodus of Vietnamese “boat people” refugees and the mass killings in Cambodia that upended the lives of millions of people.
President Bush is right on the factual record, according to historians. But many of them also quarreled with his drawing analogies from the causes of that turmoil to predict what might happen in Iraq should the United States withdraw.
“It is undoubtedly true that America’s failure in Vietnam led to catastrophic consequences in the region, especially in Cambodia,” said David C. Hendrickson, a specialist on the history of American foreign policy at Colorado College in Colorado Springs.
“But there are a couple of further points that need weighing,” he added. “One is that the Khmer Rouge would never have come to power in the absence of the war in Vietnam — this dark force arose out of the circumstances of the war, was in a deep sense created by the war. The same thing has happened in the Middle East today. Foreign occupation of Iraq has created far more terrorists than it has deterred.”
Militias Seizing Control of Iraqi Electricity Grid
Armed groups increasingly control the antiquated switching stations that channel electricity around Iraq, the electricity minister said Wednesday.That is dividing the national grid into fiefs that, he said, often refuse to share electricity generated locally with Baghdad and other power-starved areas in the center of Iraq.
The development adds to existing electricity problems in Baghdad, which has been struggling to provide power for more than a few hours a day because insurgents regularly blow up the towers that carry power lines into the city.
The government lost the ability to control the grid centrally after the American-led invasion in 2003, when looters destroyed electrical dispatch centers, the minister, Karim Wahid, said in a news briefing attended also by United States military officials.
Tuesday, August 21, 2007
Middle Class Income Growth
While incomes have been on the rise since 2002, the average income in 2005 was $55,238, still nearly 1 percent less than the $55,714 in 2000, after adjusting for inflation, analysis of new tax statistics show.
The combined income of all Americans in 2005 was slightly larger than it was in 2000, but because more people were dividing up the national income pie, the average remained smaller. Total adjusted gross income in 2005 was $7.43 trillion, up 3.1 percent from 2000 and 5.8 percent from 2004.
Tenet’s C.I.A. Unprepared for Qaeda Threat
“They did not always work effectively and cooperatively, however,” the team concluded, in what amounted in part to sharp criticism of Mr. Tenet’s management skills and style.
“The team found neither ‘a single point of failure’ nor a ‘silver bullet’ that would have enabled the intelligence community to predict or prevent the 9/11 attacks,” the inspector general’s office said. “The team did find, however, failures to implement and manage important processes, to follow through with operations, and to properly share and analyze critical data.”
Levin Comments on Maliki
"I hope that the Iraqi assembly, when it reconvenes in a few weeks, will vote the Maliki government out of office and will have the wisdom to replace it with a less sectarian and a more unifying prime minister and government," said Sen. Carl Levin, chairman of the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee.I assume Levin is trying to win Brownie points with some group out there, but who does he honestly think we can replace Maliki with? At best we are years away from an actual unifying Prime Minister and Government.
Muqtada al-Sadr Interview in the Independent
"The British have realised this is not a war they should be fighting or one they can win," Mr Sadr said. "The Mehdi army has played an important role in that." He also warned that Britain's involvement in the invasion of Iraq had made the UK a less safe place to live. "The British put their soldiers in a dangerous position by sending them here but they also put the people in their own country in danger," he said. "They have made enemies among all Muslims and they now face attacks at home because of their war. That was their mistake."
On Iran and the UN
Maliki"We are at war and America is our enemy so we are entitled to take help from anyone," he said. "But we have not asked for Iran's help." The cleric also said he "welcomed" a recent decision by the UN to expand its role in Iraq. "I would support the UN here in Iraq if it comes and replaces the American and British occupiers," he said.
"If the UN comes here to truly help the Iraqi people, they will receive our help in their work. I would ask my followers to support the UN as long as it is here to help us rebuild our country. They must not just be another face of the American occupation."
"Al-Maliki's government will not survive because he has proven that he will not work with important elements of the Iraqi people," the cleric said.
"The Prime Minister is a tool for the Americans and people see that clearly. It will probably be the Americans who decide to change him when they realise he has failed. We don't have a democracy here, we have a foreign occupation."
Link
Monday, August 20, 2007
As Democracy Push Falters, Bush Feels Like a 'Dissident'
The story of how a president's vision is translated into thorny policy is a classic Washington tale of politics, inertia, rivalries and funding battles -- and a case study in the frustrated ambition of a besieged presidency. Bush says his goal of "ending tyranny" will take many generations, and he aims to institutionalize it as U.S. policy no matter who follows him in the White House. And for all the difficulties of the moment, it may yet, as he hopes, see fruition down the road.
At this point, though, democracy promotion has become so identified with an unpopular president that candidates running to succeed him are running away from it. At a recent debate, they rushed to disavow it. "I'm not a carbon copy of President Bush," one said. Another ventured that "maybe going to elections so quickly is a mistake." A third, asked if he agreed with Bush's vision, replied, "Absolutely not, because I don't think we can force people to accept our way of life, our way of government."
And those were the Republicans.
Falluja’s Calm Is Seen as Fragile if U.S. Leaves
Nearly three years after invading and seizing Falluja from insurgents, the Marines are engaged in another struggle here: trying to build up a city, and police force, that seem to get little help from the Shiite-dominated national government.
Fallujans complain that they are starved of generator fuel and medical care because of a citywide vehicle ban imposed by the mayor, a Sunni, in May. But in recent months violence has fallen sharply, a byproduct of the vehicle ban, the wider revolt by Sunni Arab tribes against militants and a new strategy by the Marines to divide Falluja into 10 tightly controlled precincts, each walled off by concrete barriers and guarded by a new armed Sunni force.
Security has improved enough that they are planning to largely withdraw from the city by next spring. But their plan hinges on the performance of the Iraqi government, which has failed to provide the Falluja police with even the most routine supplies, Marine officers say.
The gains in Falluja, neighboring Ramadi and other areas in Anbar Province, once the most violent area in Iraq and the heart of the Sunni Arab insurgency, are often cited as a success story, a possible model for the rest of Iraq. But interviews with marines and Iraqi officials in Falluja suggest that the recent relative calm here is fragile and that the same sectarian rivalries that have divided the Iraqi government could undermine security as soon as the Marines leave.
Sunday, August 19, 2007
The War as We Saw It
Viewed from Iraq at the tail end of a 15-month deployment, the political debate in Washington is indeed surreal. Counterinsurgency is, by definition, a competition between insurgents and counterinsurgents for the control and support of a population. To believe that Americans, with an occupying force that long ago outlived its reluctant welcome, can win over a recalcitrant local population and win this counterinsurgency is far-fetched. As responsible infantrymen and noncommissioned officers with the 82nd Airborne Division soon heading back home, we are skeptical of recent press coverage portraying the conflict as increasingly manageable and feel it has neglected the mounting civil, political and social unrest we see every day. (Obviously, these are our personal views and should not be seen as official within our chain of command.)
Friday, August 17, 2007
Our response to 9/11 may have done more to further the interests of our jihadist opponents than our own, in that we have weakened an international system they view as illegitimate and destabilized the Middle East in a manner they now seek to exploit. Afghanistan aside, by attacking Iraq with meager international support, we weakened the fabric of the global order based on a system of states and international consensus. Friends and allies have been uneasy for years regarding the imbalance inherent in America’s comparatively excessive military spending.48 With Iraq, we have shown we too are capable of what some see as foolish aggression. A radical adjustment will be required if we are to regain international confidence. Perception of the inability of the United States to deliver global security (and unwilling to be constrained by international opinion and cooperative arrangements) will erode global confidence, contribute to economic and political instability, and encourage non-state insurgents. Within the Middle East region, our natural allies in this fight are strong, moderate states, even if some of those states espouse views that run counter to our own. To restore vitality to the system we must begin to reconcile with proto-democratic Iran and secular Syria.The End?
Our own history tells us states are most often forged in the crucible of violence. If we wish to see mature states in the Middle East, we must make way for violence there, reserving the exercise of force and subversion to those instances when vital U.S. interests are truly at stake, which, as U.S. tolerance for higher pump prices show, do not necessarily include oil. The U.S. and its allies apparently succeeded in tamping down one of Huntington’s fault-line wars51 in the Balkans, doing so in a manner that some hoped would appease Muslim discontent. Any such gains now lay in the ashes of an Iraq that, much like the Balkans before, appears to be coming apart. This clash of Islam is internal, reflecting a division within a religion. We have seen something like this in our own history. The bloody battle is on, but it is not ours. Our best hope is to contain and shape the conflict in ways that support the modern states system. Despite the fact states maturing in the Middle East diverge from our conceptual framework, we should avoid undermining upstart republics as the system develops. We have accepted a nuclear-armed religious state wrapped around democratic principles in Israel. We may have to accommodate one in Iran.
Thursday, August 16, 2007
Insight into the Iraq bombing blast
Conflict between Arab and Kurd, Sunni and non-Sunni has been rising sharply this year in northern Iraq. Arab-Kurdish friction has increased in and around the cities of Kirkuk and Mosul. In both places Arabs and Kurds are vying for control. In Mosul city, a total of 70,000 Kurds have fled persecution, according to Khasro Goran, the deputy governor.
Sectarian conflict between Yazidis and Muslims has escalated since a so-called "honour killing" earlier this year in which several thousand Yazidis stoned to death a Yazidi girl who had converted to Islam in order to marry her Muslim boyfriend. Her gruesome death was recorded on mobile phone cameras and later shown on websites. In revenge, 23 Yazidi textile workers were taken off a bus by gunmen and shot dead.
The attacks in Sinjar underline the inability of the government in Baghdad to control a series of very distinct battles for supremacy taking place in different parts of Iraq. This is not only between communities but also within them.
In the Shia city of Diwaniyah last Saturday, an expertly timed roadside bomb killed the governor, Khalil Jalil, and the provincial police chief, Maj-Gen Khalid Hassan. The assassinations may be part of a war for control of the province between the Mehdi Army militia of the radical Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and Iraqi government forces who are loyal to the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, of which Mr Jalil was a senior member.
The intra-Shia conflict has little to do with the US and British occupation and is primarily over the control of jobs and local resources. In cities such as Basra, control of oil products and the port are particularly valuable.
The struggle for power in northern Iraq is likely to escalate sharply in coming months because a referendum is scheduled at the end of 2007 in which people in Kirkuk and Mosul will vote on whether or not to join the semi-independent Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG).
Although the timing of the referendum is written into the constitution, the government in Baghdad has been very slow in reversing Saddam Hussein's ethnic cleansing of Kurds and holding a census to determine who can vote.
The Kurds are growing impatient about holding the referendum but might agree to a short delay. They would expect the result of a vote to show Kirkuk city and the surrounding oilfields joining the KRG but Mosul city staying out. On the other hand, the Kurds would hope to take over areas around Mosul city such as Sinjar, the site of this week's bombing, because it is also their link to the large Kurdish minority in northern Syria. Militant Sunni areas such as Hawaijaqh in western Tameem province would probably secede.
The US military has suggested the bombers are operating more ruthlessly in northern Iraq because they can no longer operate in Baghdad because of the success of the American "surge". In reality, the number of car bombings in Baghdad in July was 5 per cent higher than last December and civilian casualties in explosions have increased by about the same percentage.
Forced to Pick a Major in High School
Ninth graders often have trouble selecting what clothes to wear to school each morning or what to have for lunch. But starting this fall, freshmen at Dwight Morrow High School here in Bergen County must declare a major that will determine what electives they take for four years and be noted on their diplomas.
Driving to Work as a Tax Break
LinkThis week, the department announced $848 million in grants to help cities discourage people from driving, in many cases by imposing new tolls or fees.
But at the same time, another arm of the federal government seems to be sending a very different message. Congress provides a tax break to many of those same drivers to help them shoulder the costs of taking their cars to work.
Close to 400,000 commuters nationwide — about half of them in the New York City area — take advantage of a provision in the federal tax code that allows them to use up to $215 a month in pre-tax wages to pay for their parking at work, according to executives at corporate benefits firms that specialize in administering the tax break.
While some drivers use it to pay for parking at commuter rail stations or bus stops, most take advantage of it to pay for parking near their workplace, mostly in city centers, the executives said.
The tax savings can equal about $1,000 a year for some drivers. And the effect makes driving to work more desirable.
Tuesday, August 14, 2007
Our Lives, Controlled From Some Guy’s Couch
Until I talked to Nick Bostrom, a philosopher at Oxford University, it never occurred to me that our universe might be somebody else’s hobby. I hadn’t imagined that the omniscient, omnipotent creator of the heavens and earth could be an advanced version of a guy who spends his weekends building model railroads or overseeing video-game worlds like the Sims.
But now it seems quite possible. In fact, if you accept a pretty reasonable assumption of Dr. Bostrom’s, it is almost a mathematical certainty that we are living in someone else’s computer simulation.
This simulation would be similar to the one in “The Matrix,” in which most humans don’t realize that their lives and their world are just illusions created in their brains while their bodies are suspended in vats of liquid. But in Dr. Bostrom’s notion of reality, you wouldn’t even have a body made of flesh. Your brain would exist only as a network of computer circuits.
You couldn’t, as in “The Matrix,” unplug your brain and escape from your vat to see the physical world. You couldn’t see through the illusion except by using the sort of logic employed by Dr. Bostrom, the director of the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford.
Dr. Bostrom assumes that technological advances could produce a computer with more processing power than all the brains in the world, and that advanced humans, or “posthumans,” could run “ancestor simulations” of their evolutionary history by creating virtual worlds inhabited by virtual people with fully developed virtual nervous systems.
Some computer experts have projected, based on trends in processing power, that we will have such a computer by the middle of this century, but it doesn’t matter for Dr. Bostrom’s argument whether it takes 50 years or 5 million years. If civilization survived long enough to reach that stage, and if the posthumans were to run lots of simulations for research purposes or entertainment, then the number of virtual ancestors they created would be vastly greater than the number of real ancestors.
There would be no way for any of these ancestors to know for sure whether they were virtual or real, because the sights and feelings they’d experience would be indistinguishable. But since there would be so many more virtual ancestors, any individual could figure that the odds made it nearly certain that he or she was living in a virtual world.
The Beam of Light That Flips a Switch That Turns on the Brain
It sounds like a science-fiction version of stupid pet tricks: by toggling a light switch, neuroscientists can set fruit flies a-leaping and mice a-twirling and stop worms in their squiggling tracks.
But such feats, unveiled in the past two years, are proof that a new generation of genetic and optical technology can give researchers unprecedented power to turn on and off targeted sets of cells in the brain, and to do so by remote control.
These novel techniques will bring an “exponential change” in the way scientists learn about neural systems, said Dr. Helen Mayberg, a clinical neuroscientist at Emory University, who is not involved in the research but has seen videos of the worm experiments.
“A picture is worth a thousand words,” Dr. Mayberg said.
Some day, the remote-control technology might even serve as a treatment for neurological and psychiatric disorders.
These clever techniques involve genetically tinkering with nerve cells to make them respond to light.
One of the newest, fastest strategies co-opts a photosensitive protein called channelrhodopsin-2 from pond scum to allow precise laser control of the altered cells on a millisecond timescale. That speed mimics the natural electrical chatterings of the brain, said Dr. Karl Deisseroth, an assistant professor of bioengineering at Stanford.
“We can start to sort of speak the language of the brain using optical excitation,” Dr. Deisseroth said. The brain’s functions “arise from the orchestrated participation of all the different cell types, like in a symphony,” he said.
Sweatology
Sweat is our interior coolant, part of a uniquely human biologic machine. The machine drips and occasionally stalls: long waits on torpid platforms can inspire glum reflections on how it will hold up as the planet heats up. But experts counsel optimism: the system is sturdy, adjustable and even reproducible by engineers working to make our future sweaty selves more comfortable.
Humans operate in a tiny range of preferred internal temperatures. We can tolerate overcooling, routinely recovering from long periods of hypothermia with body temperatures diving 20 or more degrees below normal.
But we have little tolerance for even brief overheating: the brain malfunctions with six or seven degrees of fever, and an internal temperature of 110, barely a dozen degrees above normal, is often cited as the upper limit compatible with life. So a good internal air-conditioner is essential, both to dissipate the heat generated by the body’s metabolism and to relieve the heat absorbed from miserable summer weather.
“It is plain old unglamorous sweat that has made humans what they are today,” writes the evolutionary anthropologist Nina G. Jablonski in her recent book “Skin.” “Without plentiful sweat glands keeping us cool with copious sweat, we would still be clad in the thick hair of our ancestors, living largely apelike lives.”
Thursday, August 9, 2007
British Criticize Air Attacks in Afghan Region
A senior British commander in southern Afghanistan said in recent weeks that he had asked that American Special Forces leave his area of operations because the high level of civilian casualties they had caused was making it difficult to win over local people.What the Locals thinkOther British officers here in Helmand Province, speaking on condition of anonymity, criticized American Special Forces for causing most of the civilian deaths and injuries in their area. They also expressed concerns that the Americans’ extensive use of air power was turning the people against the foreign presence as British forces were trying to solidify recent gains against the Taliban.
LinkBut while some of the victims and local people blame the Taliban for bringing violence to Helmand, hostility and bitterness toward the foreign forces remains.
“The Americans are killing and destroying a village just in pursuit of one person,” said Mahmadullah, 24, referring to Osama bin Laden. “So now we have understood that the Americans are a curse on us, and they are here just to destroy Afghanistan. They can tell the difference between men and women, children and animals, but they are just killing everyone.”
A trained mullah from the village of Kutaizi, half an hour from Sangin, Mahmadullah reacted with sarcasm to the idea that reconstruction and assistance could change the minds of the people.
“First they kill me, and then they rebuild my house?” he said. “What is the point when I am dead and my son is dead? This is not of any worth to us.”
Minorities Now Form Majority in One-Third of Most-Populous Counties
In a further sign of the United States’ growing diversity, nonwhites now make up a majority in almost one-third of the most-populous counties in the country and in nearly one in 10 of all 3,100 counties, according to an analysis of census results to be released today.
The shift reflects the growing dispersal of immigrants and the suburbanization of blacks and Hispanics pursuing jobs generated by whites moving to the fringes of metropolitan areas.
From July 1, 2005, to July 1, 2006, metropolitan Chicago edged out Honolulu in Asian population, and Washington inched ahead of El Paso in the number of Hispanic residents. In black population, Houston overtook Los Angeles.
“The new wave of immigration, along with its continued dispersal to the suburbs and Sun Belt, is transforming the places which are now being classified as multiethnic and majority minority,” said William H. Frey, a demographer with the Brookings Institution.
“The new melting pots are not large international gateways,” Professor Frey said, adding, “Rather, many are fast-growing suburbs themselves.”
Tough Times for Papa Bush
There are times in the life of George Herbert Walker Bush, the 41st president of the United States and father of the 43rd, that people, perfect strangers, come up to him and say the harshest things — words intended to comfort but words that wind up only causing pain.“I love you, sir, but your son’s way off base here,” they might say, according to Ron Kaufman, a longtime adviser to Mr. Bush, who has witnessed any number of such encounters — perhaps at a political fund-raiser, or a restaurant dinner, a chance meeting on the streets of Houston or Kennebunkport, Me. They are, he says, just one way the presidency of the son has taken a toll on the father.
“It wears on his heart,” Mr. Kaufman said, “and his soul.”
These are distressing days for the Bush family patriarch, only the second former president in American history, after John Adams, to see his son take the White House. At 83, he finds it tough to watch his son get criticized from the sidelines; often, he likens himself to a Little League father whose kid is having a rough game. And like the proud and angry Little League dad who cannot help but yell at the umpire, sometimes he just cannot help getting involved.
Cash For Good Test Scores
LinkSuzanne Windland, a homeowner raising three children in a placid enclave of eastern Queens, doesn’t think so. Her seventh grader, Alexandra, she said, had perfect scores last year. But she doesn’t want New York City’s Department of Education to hand her $500 in spending cash for that achievement. That’s what Alexandra would earn if her school was part of a pilot program that will reward fourth and seventh graders with $100 to $500, depending on how well they perform on 10 tests in the next year.
Mrs. Windland wants Alexandra to do well for all the timeless reasons — to cultivate a love of learning, advance to more competitive schools and the like. She has on occasion bought her children toys or taken them out for dinner when they brought home pleasurable report cards, but she does not believe in dangling rewards beforehand.
“It’s like giving kids an allowance because they wake up every morning and brush their teeth and go off to school,” she said. “That’s their job. That’s what they’re supposed to be doing.”
Tuesday, August 7, 2007
Clinton's Foreign Policy Balancing Act
Clinton advisers say they see her rising on parallel tracks: among liberals who believe her when she says she would end the war, and among centrists who believe she is "tough enough" to defend the country. A recent Washington Post-ABC News poll showed Clinton ahead among Iowa voters on four key attributes: her ability to handle the situation in Iraq, strength as a leader, experience to be president and having the best chance to win in November.
Advisers to Clinton believe that her recent foreign policy moves have only made her more competitive, and they point to substantive steps she has taken, including introducing legislation requiring the Pentagon to report on its planning, co-sponsoring legislation to deauthorize the war and challenging Undersecretary of Defense Eric Edelman to explain whether the Pentagon had a strategy to withdraw troops.
Perhaps most impressed by Clinton's ability to balance running in a Democratic primary and looking ahead to competing against a Republican are Republicans themselves.
Basara Now a Mess as British Continue Pullback
The chaos continues as Basra can hardly function
They are abandoning their former headquarters at Basra Palace, where a recent official visitor from London described them as "surrounded like cowboys and Indians" by militia fighters. An airport base outside the city, where a regional U.S. Embassy office and Britain's remaining 5,500 troops are barricaded behind building-high sandbags, has been attacked with mortars or rockets nearly 600 times over the past four months.
Three major Shiite political groups are locked in a bloody conflict that has left the city in the hands of militias and criminal gangs, whose control extends to municipal offices and neighborhood streets. The city is plagued by "the systematic misuse of official institutions, political assassinations, tribal vendettas, neighborhood vigilantism and enforcement of social mores, together with the rise of criminal mafias that increasingly intermingle with political actors," a recent report by the International Crisis Group said.Cheney's thoughts.....
As recently as February, Vice President Cheney hailed Basra as a part of Iraq "where things are going pretty well."Reality for the rest of Iraq
But "it's hard now to paint Basra as a success story," said a senior U.S. official in Baghdad with long experience in the south. Instead, it has become a different model, one that U.S. officials with experience in the region are concerned will be replicated throughout the Iraqi Shiite homeland from Baghdad to the Persian Gulf. A recent series of war games commissioned by the Pentagon also warned of civil war among Shiites after a reduction in U.S. forces.Washington Post Reporting
Monday, August 6, 2007
Sub-Prime Problems Continue
In 2003, Dianne Brimmage refinanced the mortgage on her home in Alton, Ill., to consolidate her car and medical bills. Now, struggling with a much higher interest rate and in foreclosure, she wants to modify the terms of the loan.
Lenders have often agreed to such steps in the past because it was in everyone’s interest to avoid foreclosure costs and possibly greater losses. But that was back when local banks held the loans and the bankers knew the homeowners, as well as the value of the properties.
Ms. Brimmage got her loan through a mortgage broker, just the first link in a financial merry-go-round. The mortgage itself was pooled with others and sold to investors — insurance companies, mutual funds and pension funds. A different company processes her loan payments. Yet another company represents the investors as the trustee.
She has gotten nowhere with any of the parties, despite her lawyer’s belief that fraud was involved in the mortgage. Like many other Americans, Ms. Brimmage is a homeowner stuck in foreclosure limbo, at risk of losing the home she has lived in since 1998.
Afghan President Bringing Bush a Gloomy Report on Security
“The security situation in Afghanistan over the past two years has definitely deteriorated,” Mr. Karzai said on the CNN program “Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer,” in an interview that was taped Saturday in Kabul. It was broadcast Sunday while Mr. Karzai was en route to Camp David for a two-day meeting with President Bush.
“The Afghan people have suffered,” Mr. Karzai said. “Terrorists have killed our schoolchildren. They have burned our schools. They have killed international helpers.”
Saturday, August 4, 2007
Role of Art in Schools
When two researchers published a study a few years ago concluding that arts classes do not improve students’ overall academic performance, the backlash was bitter.
Some scholars argued that the 2000 study’s authors, Ellen Winner and Lois Hetland of Project Zero — an arts-education program at the Harvard Graduate School of Education — had failed to mention some beneficial effects of arts classes that their research had revealed. Others cited findings that reached the opposite conclusion, indicating that students who take high-quality art classes indeed do better in other courses. Some even accused the authors of devaluing arts education and the arts in general.
But Ms. Winner, Ms. Hetland and two other collaborators are pushing back. In a new book due out this month, they argue forcefully for the benefits of art education, while still defending their 2000 thesis.
In their view art education should be championed for its own sake, not because of a wishful sentiment that classes in painting, dance and music improve pupils’ math and reading skills and standardized test scores.
“We feel we need to change the conversation about the arts in this country,” said Ms. Winner, a professor of psychology at Boston College and a senior research associate at Project Zero. “These instrumental arguments are going to doom the arts to failure, because any superintendent is going to say, ‘If the only reason I’m having art is to improve math, let’s just have more math.’ “
“Do we want to therefore say, ‘No singing,’ because singing didn’t lead to spatial improvement?” Ms. Winner added. “You get yourself in a bind there. The arts need to be valued for their own intrinsic reasons. Let’s figure out what the arts really do teach.”
A Tough Situation
Gates offers some comments on the instability and poor progress with the Iraqi government.Large areas in the western parts of Baghdad were without running water on Thursday, in 120-degree summer heat. Officials blamed their inability to keep the water-purification and pumping stations going for the electricity shortages.
Many Baghdad residents complain that they have water for only a few hours a day, and sometimes no electricity at all.
“We probably all underestimated the depth of the mistrust and how difficult it would be for these guys to come together on legislation, which, let’s face it, is not some kind of secondary issue.”Link
Thursday, August 2, 2007
Sunni bloc bolts Iraqi Cabinet
Iraq's main Sunni Arab political bloc withdrew from the government Wednesday, blaming Shiite Muslim leaders for not addressing sectarian issues, as explosions in the streets killed at least 70 people around Baghdad.Link
Six Cabinet members with the Iraqi Accordance Front, Tawafiq in Arabic, had suspended participation in the government in June and threatened last week to pull out permanently. The Sunni bloc took the action after its demands that Sunni detainees be released and that Shiite militias be addressed were not met.
The pullout reduces Iraq's Shiite-dominated government to little more than caretaker status. Barring a major political realignment, it also makes it less likely that Prime Minister Nouri Maliki's regime will be able to reach significant compromises on legislative benchmarks sought by the Bush administration to help quell sectarian strife.
Bridge Rescue Efforts Slowed by Concerns Over Safety
Chief Tim Dolan or the Minneapolis Police Department said that an estimated 20 to 30 people were missing. Sheriff Stanek said that about 12 cars could be seen submerged in the river, though there may be more that cannot be seen. More than 60 people were injured, news services reported.Recovery efforts were suspended last night at midnight because strong and unpredictable currents, debris in the water and the instability of the collapsed bridge endangered rescue workers.
Officials said that the recovery operation could take three to five days, and the bridge was being treated as a crime scene, though indications are that it collapsed.
Link
A Teacher Grows Disillusioned After a ‘Fail’ Becomes a ‘Pass’
Several weeks into his first year of teaching math at the High School of Arts and Technology in Manhattan, Austin Lampros received a copy of the school’s grading policy. He took particular note of the stipulation that a student who attended class even once during a semester, who did absolutely nothing else, was to be given 45 points on the 100-point scale, just 20 short of a passing mark.
Mr. Lampros’s introduction to the high school’s academic standards proved a fitting preamble to a disastrous year. It reached its low point in late June, when Arts and Technology’s principal, Anne Geiger, overruled Mr. Lampros and passed a senior whom he had failed in a required math course.
That student, Indira Fernandez, had missed dozens of class sessions and failed to turn in numerous homework assignments, according to Mr. Lampros’s meticulous records, which he provided to The New York Times. She had not even shown up to take the final exam. She did, however, attend the senior prom.
Through the intercession of Ms. Geiger, Miss Fernandez was permitted to retake the final after receiving two days of personal tutoring from another math teacher. Even though her score of 66 still left her with a failing grade for the course as a whole by Mr. Lampros’s calculations, Ms. Geiger gave the student a passing mark, which allowed her to graduate.
Ms. Geiger declined to be interviewed for this column and said that federal law forbade her to speak about a specific student’s performance. But in a written reply to questions, she characterized her actions as part of a “standard procedure” of “encouraging teachers to support students’ efforts to achieve academic success.”
The issue here is not a violation of rules or regulations. Ms. Geiger acted within the bounds of the teachers’ union’s contract with the city, by providing written notice to Mr. Lampros of her decision.
No, the issue is more what this episode may say about the Department of Education’s vaunted increase in graduation rates. It is possible, of course, that the confrontation over Miss Fernandez was an aberration. It is possible, too, that Mr. Lampros is the rare teacher willing to speak on the record about the pressures from administrators to pass marginal students, pressures that countless colleagues throughout the city privately grumble about but ultimately cave in to, fearful of losing their jobs if they object.