December 2009

Obama plan could limit records hidden from public

Posted Sun, 12/20/2009 - 14:01 by admin

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama plans to deal with a Dec. 31 deadline that automatically would declassify secrets in more than 400 million pages of Cold War-era documents by ordering government-wide changes that could sharply curb the number of new and old government records hidden from the public.
In an executive order the president is likely to sign before year's end, Obama will create a National Declassification Center to clear up the backlog of Cold War documents. But the order also will give everyone more time to process the 400 million pages rather than flinging them open at year's end without a second glance.
The order aimed at eliminating unnecessary secrecy also is expected to direct all agencies to revise their classification guides — the more than 2,000 separate and unique manuals used by federal agencies to determine what information should be classified and what no longer needs that protection. The manuals form the foundation of the government's classification system.
Two of every three such guides haven't been updated in the past five years, according to the 2008 annual report of the Information Security Oversight Office, which oversees the government's security classification.
The anticipated timing of Obama's order was disclosed by a government official familiar with the planning who requested anonymity in order to discuss the order before its release. A draft of the order leaked last summer.
The still-classified Cold War records would provide a wealth of data on U.S.-Soviet relations, including the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the fall of the Berlin Wall, diplomacy and espionage. A Soviet spy ring in the Navy led by John Walker headlined 1985, which became known as "The Year of the Spy."
It took 19 years and a lawsuit for the National Security Archive, a private group that obtains and analyzes once-secret government records, to get documents on the 1959 crisis when the United States and the Soviet Union faced off over control of West Berlin. For nearly two decades, the contested documents were shuttled back and forth among various offices in the Defense Department, then on to the State Department and an unnamed intelligence agency, each conducting a separate declassification review, before the government finally gave some of them up.
Obama's executive order will follow on the president's inauguration day initiatives on open government. On his first day in office, Obama instructed federal agencies to be more responsive to requests for records under the Freedom of Information Act and he overturned an order by President George W. Bush that would have enabled former presidents and vice presidents to block release of sensitive records of their time in the White House.
William J. Bosanko, director of the Information Security Oversight Office, says the classification policies in place under executive orders signed by Bush and President Bill Clinton have protected national security and enabled increased declassification.
But Obama's review is necessary to enhance security and increase declassification "to a level that our open society expects and deserves," Bosanko said.
Obama's executive order "is an experiment, but it just might work," said Steven Aftergood, director of the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists. "By changing the rules about what gets classified, this could lead to a dramatic reduction in secrecy throughout the government." Aftergood obtained a leaked copy of an early draft of the executive order last summer.
The government spent more than $8.21 billion last year to create and safeguard classified information, and $43 million to declassify it, according to the oversight office, part of the National Archives and Records Administration. The figures don't include data from the principal intelligence agencies, which is classified.
"What we're seeking to do is come up with a system that refocuses the finite resources available," says Bosanko.
"Serial reviews" are among the requirements causing declassification delays that can take years to resolve. When a classified document contains secrets from multiple agencies, each agency must review its part, a process that can add years to the declassification process.
In 2000, Clinton gave agencies a three-year extension to complete a review of multiple-agency classified records. When it became clear that the deadline wouldn't be met, Bush in 2003 gave federal agencies a six-year extension.
Declassification spending was cut from an average of $224 million annually in the last four years of the Clinton administration to only $47 million a year during the last four years of the Bush administration.
Today, the problem is not much closer to being solved than it was in the 1990s. Under the terms of Bush's extension, sensitive information in hundreds of millions of pages of historical documents will be declassified automatically on Dec. 31 unless Obama acts.
"If the agencies haven't found the sensitive old documents after nine years, that's some indication those records don't deserve being secret anymore," said Tom Blanton, director of the National Security Archive.

Obama's order probably will centralize the review process for old records, having all agencies look at the same classified documents at the same time through the new National Declassification Center. Michael Kurtz, who has been with the National Archives for the past 35 years, has been chosen as the center's acting director.

Much of the work of a National Declassification Center probably would be conducted at the National Archives facility in College Park, Md., where many of the documents are housed and many of the agency declassifiers already spend a great deal of time.

Critics say Obama should do more than the upcoming executive order is likely to. They note that Clinton ordered a "bulk declassification" of millions of records from World War II and before; they want Obama to do the same with Cold War-era records.

The premise of bulk declassification is that "we're not going to spend taxpayer dollars to go through these records one by one," said William Leonard, Bosanko's predecessor as Information Security Oversight Office director.

And the planned National Declassification Center, said Leonard, should have authority to decide the status of millions of classified records on its own.

"We shouldn't need multiple opinions from multiple agencies," said Leonard.

But intelligence agencies have resisted surrendering their authority over secrets to an interagency group.

___

On the Net:

Information Security Oversight Office: http://www.archives.gov/isoo/

Project on Government Secrecy: http://www.fas.org/sgp/

National Security Archive: http://tinyurl.com/a8dwh

White House background: http://tinyurl.com/ylap898

Hollywood adds money, talent to made-for-Web shows

Posted Sun, 12/20/2009 - 12:23 by admin

LOS ANGELES – Web sites that buy original video clips often pay so little that "The Bannen Way," a flashy crime thriller debuting online, looked destined to be made poorly if it could be made at all.
Yet budding filmmakers Jesse Warren and Mark Gantt managed to hire 40-odd staff, including a boom operator, camerapeople — yes, more than one — and even production assistants on hand to offer sunscreen and sandwiches. And the production had actors familiar to some TV and movie audiences, including Michael Ironside, Robert Forster and Vanessa Marcil.
The secret to their success? Treat the Internet run like a TV or movie release, which often loses money on its on-screen debut, but can make healthy profits when issued on DVD or Blu-ray and later sold for reruns on cable or overseas.
With that in mind, major movie studios are now getting behind such productions, giving them a lift in budgets and quality — a far cry from the shaky camerawork and dubious special effects prevalent when Web video became a new phenomenon a few years ago.
For Warren and Gantt, who wrapped up shooting in October, a snazzy trailer they produced helped snag Sony Pictures Television as a partner.
"We came up with this idea," said Warren, 31. "There's no limit to how many episodes there can be in a Web series. So why don't we design it as a (feature-length movie) so we can sell it as a DVD feature at the end?"
Sony executives, it turns out, had the same idea.
The studio picked up the project in April and gave it a budget of around $1 million. That's nowhere near the $30 million-plus budgets of many Hollywood movies, but more than the producers were told they could sell it for. Web sites typically pay up to $5,000 for a short clip of original video; with 16 episodes, other Web sites might have paid around $100,000 for "The Bannen Way."
"This money buys more lights and more production value," said Gantt, 40.
Warren appeared to bask in the fullness of his crew: "We can afford extras rather than having our friends come in."
One quirk of the Web is that each episode must have a cliffhanger to keep online viewers coming back. In one scene, the audience learns for the first time that Neal Bannen, the title character, had been working for his mob boss uncle. Bannen's father is the chief of police, and viewers realize the son is about to be entangled in a cops-and-robbers struggle between father and uncle.
"It moves pretty well," Warren says, snapping his fingers. "We had breaks that would naturally lend itself to the Web."
Sony Pictures Television hopes the release will gain buzz and a few advertising dollars when it begins to debut in increments in January on the Sony-owned Crackle.com, a site targeted at males aged 18-34. Then, it will stop running for free online and get repackaged for sale to TV outlets, on iTunes and elsewhere.
Editing finished this month on the feature-length project. There's no substantial difference between the whole or spliced versions — just that the Web version has episodic breaks at certain climaxes.
Although the main goal is to drive traffic to Crackle.com, which Sony Corp. acquired when it was called Grouper for nearly $60 million in 2006, made-for-Web productions are expected to make a profit by themselves.
Thus, studios scrutinize projects before approving them and committing funding — green-lighting in industry speak. In this case, studio input during the production was also part of the process.
"We go through a very similar green-light process as we would for any piece of content in the studio," said Eric Berger, senior vice president of digital networks for Sony Pictures Television, which is planning to make 15 Web productions annually. "How and why we make them and where we will make money is conceived with every project."
Paramount Pictures's digital arm is also backing made-for-Web productions that can make additional money in other formats. Paramount spent $1 million to $3 million making a horror movie, "Circle of Ei8ht," which began showing on MySpace in installments in October in an initial run through Dec. 8. The series had generated nearly 5 million views online — which would rank it among the most-watched shows if it were on cable TV.

To help pay for production, Viacom Inc.'s Paramount lined up a key product-integration deal with PepsiCo Inc.'s Mountain Dew and sold rental and on-demand rights for one month exclusively to Blockbuster Inc. MySpace, which is owned by News Corp., kicked in marketing support.

"I don't think there's been a more expensive piece of content made for the Web," said Thomas Lesinski, president of Paramount Digital Entertainment, which has two other Web projects in the works.

He added that hiring professional talent and crew and paying for an original score will help sell "Circle of Ei8ht" when it makes it onto other platforms such as iTunes, DVD and video-on-demand.

"The stuff that we're creating could easily play on television," he said.

Brady Brim-DeForest, the co-founder of research and news site Tubefilter.tv, calls the renewed activity "the second coming of original programming online."

He cited the recent success of "Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog," which "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" creator Joss Whedon made during the writers strike last year.

He estimates "Dr. Horrible" cost $220,000 to make but brought in about $2.4 million within a year, after sharing advertising revenue on Hulu.com and selling the movie and soundtrack on iTunes, as well as DVDs and merchandise. It went on to win an Emmy.

Internet shows have also made the transition to television. After a one-episode flirtation on NBC, "quarterlife" found a home on the NBC Universal-owned Bravo network last year. Sci-fi Web series "Sanctuary" made it on Syfy, and "Secret Girlfriend" ran on Comedy Central this fall.

Yet for every Web series that is made with a modest budget and high-profile directors such as "The O.C." creator Josh Schwartz — who made "Rockville CA" for The WB's site — there are about 20 made independently on a shoestring, Brim-DeForest said.

"What's so spectacular is they are all drawing an audience, finding a niche," he said. "That's the power of the Internet as a distribution medium. It's very compelling."

In October, Michael Eisner's Web production startup Vuguru got a multimillion-dollar capital injection from a unit of Canada's Rogers Communications Inc. in a deal that gives Rogers the right to use Vuguru content on television, the Web or even its rental video stores in Canada.

Vuguru had already made several sales internationally. Its "Prom Queen" hit from 2007 was translated, recast and reshot for the Web in Japan. A dubbed version ran on cable TV in France and it ran as-is on Yahoo's Australian site.

Rogers' minority investment will ensure Vuguru can ramp up its production to some 15 projects a year, compared with a half dozen over the last two years combined, said Andy Redman, chief operating officer of The Tornante Company LLC, which owns a majority of Vuguru. The plan is to boost the staff to 30 in a few years, up from two people who currently work on Web projects full-time, he said.

Redman compared the growth of the new platform to cable television in the 1980s, when networks like ESPN, CNN and MTV were just getting going, reaching focused audiences at first and then growing.

Today, cable networks like AMC put on some of the most critically acclaimed series on TV, such as its Emmy-winning "Mad Men," and have largely cast off their reputation as being a receptacle for reruns or shows that failed on broadcast TV.

"It was the platform to be joked about," he said. "Five years later, they've realized this whole new medium passed me by."

___

On the Net:

The Bannen Way: http://bit.ly/8pI4Ky

Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog: http://bit.ly/8D6Wjm

Rockville CA: http://bit.ly/6HRmCk

Vuguru: http://bit.ly/7IE3Ee

Major volcanic eruption feared in Philippines

Posted Sun, 12/20/2009 - 06:27 by admin

LEGAZPI, Philippines – The Philippines' most active volcano could have a huge eruption within days, officials warned Sunday after detecting a drastic surge in earthquakes and eerie rumbling sounds in surrounding foothills. Tens of thousands of villagers have been evacuated as a precaution.
Scientists raised the alert level for the Mayon volcano after 453 volcanic earthquakes were detected in a five-hour span Sunday, compared to just over 200 Saturday, said Renato Solidum, chief of the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology.
The five-step warning system was raised to level four, meaning a hazardous eruption "is possible within days." Level five is when a major eruption has begun.
Army troops and police will intensify patrols to enforce a round-the-clock ban on villagers moving within a five-mile (eight-kilometer) danger zone around the 8,070-foot (2,460-meter) mountain, said Gov. Joey Salceda of Albay province, about 210 miles (340 kilometers) southeast of Manila.
More than 40,000 villagers have been moved to school buildings and other emergency shelters, but some have still been spotted checking on their farms in the prohibited zone. Salceda said about 5,000 more villagers were being evacuated away from the volcano.
The cone-shaped volcano began emitting red-hot lava and puffing columns of ash last week. It belched a plume of grayish ash half a mile (nearly a kilometer) into the sky Sunday, and lava has flowed about 2.8 miles (4.5 kilometers) down the mountainside, Salceda said.
A major eruption can trigger pyroclastic flows — superheated gas and volcanic debris that can race down the slopes at very high speed, vaporizing everything in their path. There can be more extensive ejections of ash, which can drift toward nearby townships.
In Mayon's major eruptions in recent years, such pyroclastic flows have reached up to four miles (six kilometers) down from the crater on the volcano's southern flank — a farming region where most residents have been evacuated, Salceda said.
Army checkpoints have been set up and patrols have been intensified to ensure residents will not sneak back to check on their homes and farms, as some have done in recent days, Salceda said.
"I have set a very high bar, which is zero casualty," Salceda told The Associated Press. "If there's a lull and you step back into the danger zone, you'll immediately be escorted out."
The evacuations were unfortunate, coming so close before Christmas, but authorities will find ways to bring holiday cheer to displaced villagers in emergency shelters, he said.
He said residents are used to playing a "cat and mouse" game with Mayon, a popular tourist attraction because of its near-perfect cone shape.
Residents who briefly returned to their homes within the danger zone Sunday morning to check on their belongings reported hearing eerie rumbling sounds. Some were seen by journalists tending to their farms within the prohibited zone near Guinobatan township.
In 1991, Mount Pinatubo exploded in the northern Philippines in one of the world's biggest volcanic eruptions of the 20th century, killing about 800 people.
Mayon last erupted in 2006, when about 30,000 people were moved. Another eruption in 1993 killed 79 people.
The first recorded eruption was in 1616 but the most destructive came in 1814, killing more than 1,200 people and burying a town in volcanic mud. The ruins of the church in Cagsawa have become an iconic tourist spot.
___
Associated Press writer Jim Gomez contributed to this report from Manila.

Headwind slows Bode Miller in Val Gardena

Posted Sun, 12/20/2009 - 05:06 by admin

VAL GARDENA, Italy – Bode Miller's conditioning is strong and his sprained ankle is getting better. It's the wind and the light, however, that have been slowing the two-time overall World Cup winner.
Miller finished ninth Sunday as the Saslong downhill marked its 40th year. His performance was affected by a strong headwind that whipped up just as he and the other contenders took the course.
Manuel Osborne-Paradis won in 2 minutes, 1.27 seconds to give the injury-hit Canadian team a boost. Mario Scheiber of Austria was second, 0.13 seconds behind. Ambrosi Hoffmann of Switzerland and Johan Clarey of France shared third, 0.25 seconds behind the Canadian.
Osborne-Paradis, Hoffmann and Clarey each started before the wind shift.
"Take nothing away from the guys in the lead because they skied well," Miller said. "But there's two ingredients you need besides your skiing to win here.
"You're skis have to be fast on that day and you need to have the right start position and it's hard to predict what that start position is going to be because the wind moves around and the clouds come and then go away, but it was clear those guys had some favorable conditions."
Miller was an early starter in Friday's super-G and struggled with bad light to place fifth.
This time, Miller could at least console himself with the fact that his skiing was competitive with the likes of two-time defending champion Michael Walchhofer and Didier Cuche, who also had to deal with the wind.
Walchhofer placed fifth and Cuche — skiing with a broken rib — came 10th.
"Cuche said he skied well, I skied error-free, Walchhofer said he couldn't have skied any better and all of us are back a ways, so we just didn't have the luck today," Miller said.
Miller debated retirement over the summer and did virtually no offseason training. Then he injured his ankle during a team volleyball game in Val d'Isere, France, last week. But he's stopped taking painkillers and anti-inflammatory medicine for his ankle.
"That made it a little bit worse. But to recover between races I have to be off that stuff, otherwise I can't race four races in a row," he said. "It was sore but in the race it didn't seem to make much difference."
There has been an unusually high number of skiers injured this season but the Canadian team has been particularly hard hit, already losing downhill world champion John Kucera, Jean-Philippe Roy, Larisa Yurkiw and Kelly Vanderbeek before its home Olympics in Vancouver from Feb. 12-28.
Another Canadian, Francois Bourque, pulled up with a suspected torn ligament in his left knee Friday, and will probably also miss the rest of the season.
Osborne-Paradis was joined in the top 10 by teammate Robbie Dixon (sixth). Another Canadian, Erik Guay, was 11th.
"We know what our job is and what we have to do, and we're not letting what's going on around us to change that," Osborne-Paradis said.
It was the third victory of Osborne-Paradis' career and second this season, having also taken a super-G on home snow in Lake Louise, Alberta, last month.
Last season, a record five Americans finished in the top 10 of this downhill. This year it was six in the top 24. Marco Sullivan placed 12th, Steven Nyman was 18th, Erik Fisher 19th, Scott Macartney 23rd and Andrew Weibrecht 24th.

Nyman won at this course three years ago and this was his best downhill finish since he took ninth a year ago on the Saslong. The Sundance, Utah, resident started skiing again only last month after surgery on both knees.

"I'm back in the points, so I'm OK with that," said Nyman, who dropped down to the Nor-Am circuit and won two downhills in Lake Louise last week.

Ted Ligety skipped this stop to prepare for giant slalom and slalom races in nearby Alta Badia on Sunday and Monday. Miller will also race on the Gran Risa, having won the giant slalom in 2002.

"The GS I'm excited for. I made a change in my boots I'm pretty excited to try out," he said. "The slalom will be tough on my ankle."

Democrats gain 60th vote on health bill

Posted Sun, 12/20/2009 - 01:46 by admin

WASHINGTON (Reuters) –
Senate Democrats reached a compromise on Saturday with the last holdout senator that secured the 60 votes they need to pass a broad healthcare overhaul sought by President Barack Obama.

A marathon negotiating session on Friday clinched an agreement with Democrat Ben Nelson ensuring federal funds would not be used to pay for abortions and providing extra Medicaid funds for his home state of Nebraska.

Nelson, a strong abortion rights opponent, had been the elusive 60th vote for the sweeping revamp, Obama's top legislative priority and the subject of intense political brawling for months.

"Today is a major step forward for the American people," Obama said at the White House. "After a nearly century-long struggle we are on the cusp of making healthcare reform a reality in the United States of America."

Nelson's backing should secure victory for Democrats in the first of a series of crucial procedural votes scheduled to begin at 1 a.m. (0600 GMT) on Monday and possibly conclude with final Senate passage on Christmas Eve.

"It seems that way," Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid said when asked if Democrats had the 60 votes they need to muscle the bill through the Senate against unified Republican opposition.

If the Senate approves the bill, it must be melded with a version passed on November 7 by the House of Representatives and both chambers must approve it again before sending it to Obama for his signature.

Reid introduced a 383-page amendment on Saturday making changes aimed at securing the last votes, including the abortion compromise and the dropping of a government-run public insurance option to appease moderates like independent Joe Lieberman.

The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office gave the revised bill a rosy review, saying it would cost $871 billion over 10 years and cut the federal deficit by $132 billion in the same period -- meeting Obama's cost target and goal of deficit reduction.

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, who has vowed to use every tool possible to delay the bill, forced the public reading of Reid's amendment. That took more than seven hours on Saturday.

Afterward, Reid filed a series of procedural motions to bring debate to a close and set up a string of closing votes to begin early Monday. The moves came during a rare Saturday session as a huge snowstorm slammed the U.S. capital, shutting down traffic.

'MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT'

"If they were proud of the bill they wouldn't be doing it this way," McConnell told reporters. "They wouldn't be jamming it through in the middle of the night on the last weekend before Christmas."

Obama has asked the Senate to finish by year's end to prevent the issue from spilling into the campaign for November 2010 congressional elections. Opinion polls show the bill losing public support, with majorities now opposed to it.

The Senate bill would extend coverage to 30 million uninsured Americans, provide subsidies to help them pay for the coverage and halt industry practices like refusing insurance to people with pre-existing medical conditions.

Reid's amendment incorporates a variety of changes, from dropping the government-run public insurance option to adding non-profit health plans offered by private insurers and administered by a federal agency.

Other revisions take aim at insurance industry margins and taxes, including a cap on profits. Still, insurers would see a delay to the bulk of new taxes and now they would be phased-in over time.

Health insurance plans for large groups would have to spend at least 85 cents of every dollar on medical costs under the revisions, potentially crimping their profits. The amendment dropped the bill's tax on elective cosmetic surgery and added a 10 percent tax on indoor tanning, a potential cause of cancer.

Also included is an increase in the bill's Medicare payroll tax from 0.5 percent to 0.9 percent on income over $200,000 for individuals and $250,000 for couples.

But much of Reid's focus had been on winning Nelson's support. He and other abortion rights opponents feared the federal subsidies could be spent on plans covering abortion.

Nelson said the agreement would allow states to prohibit abortion coverage in the new insurance exchanges created under the bill and mandate that every state exchange include an insurance plan that does not cover abortion.

It would require payments for abortion coverage be made separately with private funds.

"The plan that we've put together here, that we have agreement on, in fact walls off that money in an effective manner," Nelson told reporters. "I would not have voted for this bill without these provisions."

He said he could drop his support if the abortion deal was altered in negotiations with the House of Representatives.

Reid defended the additional federal funds for Nebraska that will permanently pay for the bill's expansion of the Medicaid health program for the poor -- all other states have to start picking up the tab in 2017.

"That's what legislation is all about," Reid said. "It's compromise."

Democratic Senator Barbara Boxer, a strong supporter of abortion rights, told reporters she believed the compromise would adequately separate public and private funds for abortion coverage under the bill.

Advocates on both sides condemned the abortion deal.

Planned Parenthood called it "a sad day when women's health is traded away for one vote."

Douglas Johnson, the legislative director for the National Right to Life Committee said, said the compromise "solves none of the fundamental abortion-related problems with the Senate bill."

The House version of the healthcare bill includes stricter anti-abortion language. The Senate rejected an amendment incorporating the language last week.

(Additional reporting by Susan Heavey, editing by Eric Beech and Jackie Frank)

Iran acknowledges prisoners were beaten to death

Posted Sun, 12/20/2009 - 01:28 by admin

TEHRAN, Iran – After months of denials, Iran acknowledged Saturday that at least three people detained in the country's postelection turmoil were beaten to death by their jailers.
The surprise announcement by the hard-line judiciary confirmed one of the opposition's most devastating and embarrassing claims against authorities and the elite Revolutionary Guard forces that led the crackdown after June's disputed presidential vote.
There was no immediate public reaction from the opposition, but some activists asserted that authorities under pressure over abuse claims were merely seeking to punish low ranking staff while shielding senior level officials who the opposition says are most to blame.
Still, the statement offered some rare vindication for the government's critics, who had rejected earlier explanations from the police and the judiciary that the detainees' deaths were caused by illnesses like meningitis, not physical mistreatment.
"The coroner's office has rejected that meningitis was the cause of the deaths and has confirmed the existence of signs of repeated beatings on the bodies and has declared that the wounds inflicted were the cause of the deaths," the judiciary statement said, according to the Web site of Iran's state TV.
The judiciary also said it has charged 12 officials at Kahrizak prison — three of them with murder, but it did not identify them. The prison, on the southern outskirts of the capital, Tehran, was at the center of the opposition's claims that prisoners were tortured and raped in custody.
Anger over the abuse claims, which emerged in August, extended far beyond the reformist camp, with influential conservative figures in the clerical hierarchy condemning the mistreatment of detainees.
The outrage forced Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to order the immediate closure of the Kahrizak facility.
The opposition says at least 72 protesters were killed in the postelection crackdown, but the government puts the number of confirmed dead at 30.
Authorities initially tried to repel the abuse claims by accusing the opposition of running a campaign of lies against the ruling system. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had even accused Iran's enemies of being involved in the crimes, a claim the opposition rejected as ridiculous.
Iran's police chief, Gen. Ismail Ahmadi Moghaddam, said in August that protesters were beaten by their jailers at Kahrizak, but he maintained at the time that the deaths were not caused by the abuse.
The opposition's criticism was implicitly aimed at the country's most powerful military force, the Revolutionary Guard, which operates with some autonomy from the ruling clerics and led the harsh crackdown and detention of protesters in the tense weeks after the election.
The unrest broke out after pro-reform candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi claimed he was robbed of the presidency through massive fraud in the vote.
Pressure around the abuse claims accelerated in early August.
One of the other pro-reform candidates defeated in the election, Mahdi Karroubi, said then that he had received reports from former military commanders and other senior officials that some detainees, male and female, were raped in custody to the point of physical and mental injury.
It also emerged that one of the detainees who had died in custody was the son of Abdolhossein Rouhalamini, a top aide to conservative presidential candidate Mohsen Rezaei. That was a central factor in raising anger among government supporters.
His son, Mohsen Rouhalamini, was arrested during a July 9 protest and taken two weeks later to a hospital where he died within hours.
Saturday's judiciary announcement named him as one of the three people it had found to be victims of abuse. The other two were identified as Amir Javadi and Mohammad Kamrani.

Further adding to the outcry, prosecutors said this month that a doctor who exposed the torture of jailed protesters died of poisoning from a delivery salad laced with an overdose of blood pressure medication.

Their findings fueled opposition suspicions that he was killed because of what he knew.

The 26-year-old doctor, Ramin Pourandarjani, had testified to a parliamentary committee, reportedly telling them that one of the protesters he treated was the younger Rouhalamini and that he died from severe torture. He said he was also forced by security officials to list the cause of death as meningitis, according to opposition Web sites.

Pourandarjani died on Nov. 10 in mysterious circumstances, and authorities initially gave conflicting explanations, saying he was in a car accident, had a heart attack or committed suicide. Forensic tests later showed that the doctor died of "poisoning by drugs" that matched doses of propranolol found in a salad that was delivered to him, Tehran prosecutor Abbas Jafari Dolatabadi said early this month.

The government's rivals did not immediately respond directly to the judiciary's statement Saturday.

One prominent reformist voice, former President Mohammad Khatami, told an audience of academics in western Iran on Saturday that the use of force against protesters demonstrates the government has little regard for human rights.

"A majority of the people are dissatisfied with the way the country is being administered," his Web site quoted him as saying.

He added that "a considerable portion of society" has objections over the official election results.

"These must be heard. They (people) must be convinced that the elections were really fair. Such convincing can't be achieved through jail, crackdowns and restrictions," Khatami said.

Iran's judiciary has also had a central role in authorities' efforts to silence the opposition. Since August, it has brought to trial more than 100 protesters, activists and pro-reform opposition leaders, accusing them of fueling the protests and being part of a plot to overthrow the government.

Democrats Said to Agree to Drop Full Public Option

Posted Wed, 12/09/2009 - 14:44 by admin

Dec. 9 (Bloomberg) -- Senate Democrats tentatively agreed
to abandon a full government-run insurance program in a bid to
remove one of the biggest obstacles to health-care legislation.

Lawmakers instead backed a proposal to establish a program
modeled on the U.S. government employee-insurance system under
which private companies would provide coverage under federal
oversight to millions of uninsured Americans, senators and aides
said. They also want to lower the eligibility age for the
Medicare program for the elderly to 55 from 65 now.

The deal, which needs backing by 60 senators to get into
the final bill, was negotiated by 10 Democrats seeking an
alternative to the government-run program. While most Democrats
support that so-called public option, the idea has drawn fire
from party members in the Senate and all Republicans.

“We are on the brink of a final breakthrough,” Senator
Kent Conrad told reporters today. The plan to offer consumers
choices like the federal employee system is “a very
constructive proposition,” the North Dakota Democrat said.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said in a statement last
night that Democrats reached “a broad agreement” on the issue,
yet he offered no details.

Reid is pushing the Senate to pass health-care legislation
before the end of the month, paving the way for a House-Senate
compromise early next year. The 10-year, $848 billion Senate
bill is designed to cover 31 million uninsured Americans and
curb medical expenses.

‘Several’ Alternatives

The dispute over the government-run insurance plan
threatened to derail any agreement, with Republicans and
centrist Democrats saying it would provide unfair competition to
insurers such as Hartford, Connecticut-based Aetna Inc.

Reid, seeking to break an impasse, encouraged the group of
Senate Democrats to meet behind closed doors and come up with an
alternative to his original plan to set up a government program
that would allow states to opt out.

He said last night the “consensus” is still for a public
option. Jim Manley, his spokesman, said the proposal by the
senators to allow the federal Office of Personnel Management to
administer insurance plans could be construed as a public
option.

Medicare Solvency

Reid sent several alternative proposals to the
Congressional Budget Office, which must offer a cost estimate
for the legislation, Manley said.

Conrad said he wanted to see an analysis of “the effect on
Medicare solvency” and whether it would hurt hospitals in North
Dakota, which already has one of the lowest rates for Medicare
reimbursements.

“If you add a whole new cohort at lower age levels that
threatens my hospitals,” he said.

The American Hospital Association’s executive vice
president, Rick Pollack, warned that if more patients were
reimbursed at Medicare’s levels, it will be harder to maintain
hospital services “that communities depend upon.”

In addition to the plan drawn up by the senators, Reid also
sent to the budget office a proposal that would start a public
option up only if private insurers failed to keep costs down.
That so-called trigger idea is being pushed by Maine Senator
Olympia Snowe, one of the few Republicans being courted to
support the bill.

Long Path Ahead

The White House applauded what it called “great progress”
by the senators. “We’re pleased that they’re working together
to find common ground toward options that increase choice and
competition,” Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer said in a
statement.

The plan agreed to last night would let private companies
sell insurance to businesses throughout the U.S.

Lawmakers have cautioned that there is a long way to go
even if an accord holds.

For one thing, the analysis by the nonpartisan budget
office may set back Reid’s timetable. And at least one of the
Democrats involved in the negotiations, Wisconsin Senator Russ
Feingold, said his support isn’t guaranteed.

“I do not support proposals that would replace the public
option in the bill with a purely private approach,” Feingold
said in a statement.

The steering committee for the Health Care for America Now
coalition, whose members include the NAACP, United Auto Workers
and the AFL-CIO, yesterday said a public option has to be part
of the new insurance exchanges.

‘Won’t Work’

“Using nonprofits to replace a public option won’t work,”
the committee said. “In fact, with half of people in private
insurance currently enrolled in nonprofit plans, they are part
of the problem.”

Like the $1 trillion measure passed by the House on Nov. 7,
the Senate legislation would require Americans to get health
coverage or pay a penalty. It would expand Medicaid, set up new
online purchasing exchanges to get insurance and provide
subsidies for those who need help buying policies.

Last night’s deal followed a vote in which the Senate
refused to add stricter limits on abortion funding to the bill.

The lawmakers voted 54-45 to reject an amendment by
Nebraska Democrat Ben Nelson. Nelson said his proposal would
preserve the ban on federal funding of abortion; opponents
argued it would discourage insurance companies from covering the
procedure.

The loss means Reid may have to find a compromise to gain
Nelson’s backing for the broader measure.

“This is not the right place for this debate,” Reid said
before the vote.

To contact the reporters on this story:
Laura Litvan in Washington at
llitvan@bloomberg.net ;
Nicole Gaouette in Washington at
ngaouette@bloomberg.net

Letters to the editor (The Christian Science Monitor)

Posted Wed, 12/09/2009 - 02:02 by admin

Iraq and women policeRegarding John Hughes's column "Female cops in Iraq? Arab women are seizing freedom.": To lump Iraq in with Saudi Arabia and compare women's experiences in the two countries makes it seem as if Iraq is as restrictive as one of the most conservative Islamic states in the world. This is false. Women in Iraq under Saddam Hussein (yes, Saddam) enjoyed posts in government, academia, and health services. They often worked outside the home. The state of women's rights around the Middle East is vastly different, and journalists, American military leaders in Iraq, and the American public should recognize this.
We must begin to understand the complexities of the region in order to develop better and more appropriate policies for US-Middle East relationships and joint development goals.
Heather McGann
Charlotte, N.C.
Right-wing rhetoric Regarding "The dangers of revolutionary right-wing rhetoric" , Walter Rodgers should research and write an article on "The dangers of revolutionary left-wing rhetoric." He might start with the threats on Sarah Palin's life and the vicious attacks on her and her family. I know he will find a treasure-trove of contemporary material to work with. Though Mr. Rodgers does express a valid concern for racial relations in our country, he shows a mind-set that is the underlying source of our residual racial problem today.
We have taken many steps to help improve the opportunities for our black community, but have overlooked the one thing that could rapidly bring about the change we all desire and eliminate the need for most of the other programs: education.
Studies have shown that education can eradicate the differences in income between blacks and whites in our society, which would in turn lead to the elimination of other disparities.
Ironically our black population votes overwhelmingly for the political left that keeps them locked in a lifestyle of permanent subservience and dependence.
Meanwhile, the overriding lust for power in Washington trumps all other concerns. This is what I "rage" against.
Frank Keeney
Littleton, Colo.
Thank you for Walter Rodgers's commentary. I attended a tea party and was shocked at the call to refight the Civil War! I was also disturbed that many of the people I spoke with, the same people who carried flags and the Constitution, were unaware of the 16th Amendment. Too many Americans dismiss Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh, and the teabaggers as the fringe. The calls for the president's death are an immoral misuse of religion from the likes of the Rev. Wiley Drake or Steven Anderson. Religious leaders need to speak out against the incitement of violence.
Steve Jozefczyk
Franklin, Wis.
Iran's realpolitikRegarding the opinion piece "The real reason Iran can't be trusted" by Mamoun Fandy: Iran is probably lying about its intent to build nuclear weapons, but it has nothing to do with its dominant religion.
First, every major religion allows lying under certain circumstances. Second, what country developing a nuclear weapons program hasn't concealed it? Third, the international system is anarchic, each state answers only to itself, forcing state leaders to act similarly in the ways they manipulate other states to maximize strategic interest.
Mr. Fandy also underestimates realpolitik by concluding that only when Iran "feels safe will it negotiate in good faith." In high stakes negotiations, skilled leaders use all the tools in their diplomatic arsenal, including "brinkmanship" and "mad dog diplomacy."
When my students choose to research a topic like "Islam causes terrorism," I advise them that it is extraordinarily difficult to tie religion to something as contemporary and practical as political activity, and unless they are theological experts, they run the risk of writing an ignorant paper based on stereotypes. That, unfortunately, is what Fandy has done.

Mike Lebson

Gettysburg, Pa.

Iran's foreign-policy decision-making is a very complex process, where different nodes of power debate and vie for influence with the supreme leader, Ali Khamenei. The continued political struggle in Iran over the June election is more to blame for a lack of a breakthrough than religiously instructed deception.

Daniel Robinson

Haverford, Pa.

Pressure to win Brooke Williams's insightful commentary essay, "Let a child lose a game and learn to cope with failure" was welcome in this day when it seems our society is reluctant to let anyone – especially children – ever feel pain or even disappointment.

With the kind of pressure that's placed on winning in our society today it's no wonder that kids are afraid to lose. The current trend to shield them from failure is, perhaps, a reaction to this imbalance, which is also harmful.

Are they being taught that it's not whether we win or lose, but how we play the game? Or is our outlook now the famous "Winning is not the most important thing. It's the only thing"? Is that true for us, as adults? Is that how we are living? You can bet that the children are picking it up, regardless of what we say. If winning in life is more important to us than how we are playing the game of life, then the children are going to be terrified of losing.

We must begin to address these issues, and then we can also let kids fail on their own terms and learn to deal with it at their level – they can handle it.

Martin Wolf

New Milford, N.J.

Kurdistan caresThe article "In the Iraq war, Christians pushed to the brink" is right to highlight the plight of Iraqi Christians at the hands of terrorists and extremists. However, the accusations against the KRG are misleading.

In fact, the KRG has done more for the protection of minorities than any other entity in Iraq. Pope Benedict XVI praised our commitment to tolerance and peaceful coexistence when he met with Kurdistan Region President Masoud Barzani earlier this year.

The Monitor cites the KRG's "warm welcome" for Christians as a threat and a way of ensnaring vulnerable Christians. This ignores the fact that the majority of people from the ethnic and religious minorities in Ninevah Province welcome the presence of the Kurdish security forces and are grateful for the assistance provided by the KRG, especially during periods of intense sectarian violence and repeated intimidation.

The real problems in Ninevah governorate are the terrorists and the extremists, who are intent upon marginalizing minorities and also wish to marginalize the Kurds. If the KRG has intimidated and threatened Christians as the article implies, why would tens of thousands of Christian families flee to the Kurdistan Region to find refuge?

The article cites Christian resentment about a lack of jobs in one village of refugees in Dohuk. We acknowledge that internally displaced persons need jobs and healthcare as well as refuge, and this is a challenge that faces every government dealing with an influx of refugees.

The KRG is ready to look into every allegation made by HRW [Human Rights Watch], and to work on them under the legal framework of both the Kurdistan Region and Iraq, with the help of HRW and other reputable human rights organizations.

The Kurdistan Re­gion­al Government has welcomed thousands of Christians to its cities and provided humanitarian aid and other support in Ninevah Province, which is outside our direct administration.

Bayan Sami Abdul Rahman

High representative to the United Kingdom, Kurdistan Regional ­government

[Editor's note: The KRG's response to the HRW report came after the story in question was sent to press (the Monitor obtained an advance copy of the report). However, we could have mentioned it when we posted the story online Nov. 10, and we regret the omission.]

Women can jumpRegarding the Nov. 8 article, "Why women can't ski jump in the Winter Olympics": I was shocked to hear that there is still such gender discrimination [in ski jumping], especially at the Olympic Games. The Olympics should be an event where everyone is equally given the opportunity to display their talents.

Lucy Harris

Statesboro, Ga.

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Iran Guards say detained five Britons in Gulf

Posted Tue, 12/01/2009 - 01:07 by admin

TEHRAN (Reuters) –
Iran's Revolutionary Guards said Tuesday their naval forces had detained five Britons in the Gulf, the semi-official Fars News Agency reported.

British Foreign Secretary David Miliband said Monday that five Britons had been detained in Iran and said their racing yacht might have inadvertently strayed into Iranian waters.

(Reporting by Ramin Mostafavi and Parisa Hafezi; writing by Fredrik Dahl; editing by Tim Pearce)