Every year since the war ended in Bosnia in 1995, I have tried to return to Sarajevo, a city in which I passed some of the saddest years of my life. I was there during the war, in those days of no water or electricity. I was there the night Slobodan Milosevic was carted off in his slippers from Belgrade to The Hague. I drove all night down to Sarajevo just to be with my wartime friends. I arrived at dawn, thinking people would be dancing in the streets. Instead there was a sombre air. I met one of my closest friends, a former sniper, and he shrugged: “What’s done is done. Is Slobo in jail going to bring back my father? My best friend? My grandmother?”

All of them were killed in the war. As proof, we went for a walk through Lion’s cemetery, once a football pitch and now littered with graves. The dead hang around Sarajevo: it is a haunted place. Most of the headstones were marked with dates in the 70s and 80s. I stopped to visit some women I knew, a group whose sons and husbands had been among the 7,500 who died in Srebrenica in July 1995. They weren’t celebrating either, they were crying. “There will be no justice until they catch Karadzic and Mladic,” they said, referring to the chief architects of the war - Radovan Karadzic, the bad poet, psychiatrist, football fan and nationalist leader who gave the orders to shell Sarajevo to the verge of madness; and General Ratko Mladic, the “Butcher of Bosnia” (still at large), his henchman, who carried out his orders with methodical, chilling skill.

It took more than a decade to find Karadzic. More than a decade of rumours that he was disguised as a woman, living in the remote mountains of Montenegro. Or that he was still in Pale, where his creepy daughter Sonya ran a radio station and once chased me off her property with dogs. But in fact Karadzic was usually hidden by Serb nationalists who refused to give up their forgotten hero. And now, 13 years after the tragedy of Srebrenica, 16 years after the siege of Sarajevo began, and almost on the exact day that British troops were deployed to Sarajevo, he is found.

So what now? In the aftermath of any war or genocide, healing and reconciliation are ultimate aspirations. But in a country where neighbour turned on neighbour, where rape became an instrument of war, where Pale - Karadzic’s tinpot headquarters in his self-proclaimed country, the Republika Srpksa - became the centre of evil, it is hard to imagine that healing happening at any time over the next few generations.

Yes, Karadzic behind bars is a triumph of sorts. It’s true I had tears seeing the celebrations in Sarajevo. But I still think that none of this would have happened if we had managed to corner this despot early in 1992, when the war would have been easy to contain - and had David Owen not cynically said: “Don’t dream dreams that the west is going to come in and save you.” Lord Owen was right. We left the Bosnians to rot.

Hatred lingers. I still get letters from teenagers who grew up without their fathers, mothers, sisters, cousins, brothers - among the 250,000 killed in a senseless war. Ethnic hatred is what fuelled Balkan wars in the past and, sadly, I am sure it will in the future. But for now, the world needs to focus on Mladic. He and Karadzic acted as tweedledum and tweedledee, and one cannot sit in jail while the other is free, wandering around Belgrade restaurants. It’s true Serbia wants to join the EU, and it’s also true that it finally wants to give in and help us. So go and get him, boys.

As I raise a glass to celebrate Karadzic’s capture, I will make a toast, ziveli, Bosnian for “to life”, and I will remember those thousands upon thousands of people in the Lion’s cemetery whose lives were far, far too short.

Janine di Giovanni is the author of Madness Visible: A Memoir of War.

© Guardian News and Media Limited 2008

Barack Obama’s Afghanistan and Iraq policies are mirror images of each other. Obama wants to send 10,000 extra U.S. troops to Afghanistan, but wants to withdraw all American soldiers and Marines from Iraq on a short timetable. In contrast to the kid gloves with which he treated the Iraqi government, Obama repeated his threat to hit at al-Qaida in neighboring Pakistan unilaterally, drawing howls of outrage from Islamabad.

But Obama’s pledge to defeat the Taliban in Afghanistan will not be easy to fulfill. While coalition troop deaths have declined significantly in Iraq, NATO casualties in Afghanistan are way up. By shifting emphasis from Iraq to Afghanistan, would a President Obama be jumping from the frying pan into the fire?

During the Baghdad stop of his ongoing overseas tour, the convergence between the worldview of the presumptive Democratic nominee and that of his Iraqi hosts provided some embarrassing moments for the Bush administration. Obama and his traveling companions, Senate colleagues Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., and Jack Reed, D-R.I., issued a statement Tuesday after a day of consultations with Iraqi politicians and U.S. military commanders, affirming the need to respect Iraqi aspirations for a “timeline, with a clear date, for the redeployment of American combat forces.” By then, in an interview with Germany’s Der Spiegel, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki had already expressed support for Obama’s proposal to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq within 16 months of his inauguration next January.

Although al-Maliki’s spokesman, Ali al-Dabbagh, attempted to soothe ruffled GOP feathers by suggesting the Der Spiegel interview was mistranslated, al-Dabbagh came clean while Obama was in Baghdad on Monday. He confirmed that the Iraqi government hoped U.S. troops would be withdrawn within two years. Obama was thus able, in his joint statement with Reed and Hagel, to cite Iraqi attitudes for his own stance: “The prime minister … stated his hope that U.S. combat forces could be out of Iraq in 2010.”

In general, Obama’s policies toward Iraq synchronize neatly with the aspirations of the Shiite-dominated elected Iraqi government, with an affirmation of the need to gain the consent of the Iraqis for any status-of-forces agreement with the U.S., and with a far greater emphasis on addressing the humanitarian crisis provoked by the U.S. invasion. On leaving al-Maliki’s office, Obama was able to call his consultations with the prime minister “very constructive.”

By comparison, Obama’s criticisms of Bush administration policy toward Afghanistan and Pakistan, and his determination to make those countries the centerpiece of his foreign policy, are more problematic. Obama’s determination to put down the tribal insurgencies in northwestern Pakistan and in southern Afghanistan reveals basic contradictions in his announced policies. His plans certainly have the potential to ruffle Afghan and Pakistani feathers, and have already done so in Pakistan.

On July 13, Obama criticized Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai on CNN, saying, “I think the Karzai government has not gotten out of the bunker and helped organize Afghanistan and [the] government, the judiciary, police forces, in ways that would give people confidence.” Although the remark had the potential to make for awkward moments between Karzai and Obama during their meeting Sunday, it was welcomed by the independent Afghan press, which applauded the senator for bucking the “self-centered” policies of Bush and his knee-jerk support of Karzai.

After Obama met with Karzai, reporters asked his aide, Humayun Hamidzada, if the criticism had come up. He tried to put the best face on issue, saying the Afghan government did not see the comment as critical, but as a fair observation, since it had in fact been tied down fighting terrorism.

Less forgiving were the politicians in Pakistan, who reacted angrily to Obama’s comments on unilaterally attacking targets inside that country. The Democratic presidential hopeful told CBS on Sunday, “What I’ve said is that if we had actionable intelligence against high-value al-Qaida targets, and the Pakistani government was unwilling to go after those targets, that we should.” He added that he would put pressure on Islamabad to move aggressively against terrorist training camps in the country’s northwestern tribal areas.

Pakistan, a country of 165 million people, is composed of six major ethnic groups, one of them the Pashtuns of the northwest. The Pakistani Taliban are largely drawn from this group. The more settled Pashtun population is centered in the North-West Frontier province, with its capital at Peshawar. Between the NWFP and Afghanistan are badlands administered rather as Native American reservations are in the U.S., called the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, with a population of some 3 million. These areas abut Pashtun provinces of Afghanistan, also a multiethnic society, but one in which Pashtuns are a plurality.

The tribal Pashtuns of the FATA no man’s land, a third of which is classified as “inaccessible” by the Pakistani government, have sometimes given shelter to al-Qaida or Afghan Taliban militants. Some of the Pashtun tribesmen themselves have turned militant, and have been responsible for suicide bombings at police checkpoints inside Pakistan. They are also accused of attacking targets across the border in Afghanistan and of giving refuge to Afghan Taliban who conduct cross-border raids.

The governor of the North-West Frontier province, Owais Ghani, immediately spoke out against Obama, saying that the senator’s remarks had the effect of undermining the new civilian government elected last February. Ghani warned that a U.S. incursion into the northwestern tribal areas would have “disastrous” consequences for the globe.

The governor underlined that a “war on terrorism” policy depended on popular support for it, and that such support was being leeched away by U.S. strikes on the Pakistan side of the border and by statements such as Obama’s. A recent American attack mistakenly killed Pakistani troops who had been sent to fight the Pakistani Taliban at American insistence. The Pakistani public was furious. Ghani complained, “Candidate Obama gave these statements; I come out openly and say such statements undermine support, don’t do it.”

The NWFP governor is responsible for Pakistani counterinsurgency efforts in his province and in the neighboring tribal regions. He is well thought of in Pakistan because of his successes in Baluchistan province, which he governed for five years prior to January of this year, where he combined political negotiations with militants and targeted military action when he felt it necessary. He firmly subordinated the military strategy to civilian politics and negotiations. That is, Ghani is a politician with long experience in dealing with tribal insurgencies.

Obama’s aggressive stance, on the other hand, could be counterproductive. The Illinois senator had praised the Pakistani elections of last February, issuing a statement the next day saying, “Yesterday, a moderate majority of the Pakistani people made their voices heard, and chose a new direction.” He criticized the Bush administration, saying U.S. interests would be better served by “advancing the interests of the Pakistani people, not just Pakistan’s president.”

Yet the parties elected in February in Pakistan are precisely the ones demanding negotiations with the tribes and militants of the northwest, rather than frontal military assaults. Indeed, it is the Bush administration that has pushed for military strikes in the FATA areas. Obama will have to decide whether he wants to risk undermining the elected government and perhaps increasing the power of the military by continuing to insist loudly and publicly on unilateral U.S. attacks on Pakistani territory.

Nor is it at all clear that sending more U.S. troops to southern Afghanistan can resolve the problem of the resurgence of the Taliban there. American and NATO search-and-destroy missions alienate the local population and fuel, rather than quench, the insurgency. Resentment over U.S. airstrikes on innocent civilians and wedding parties is growing. Brazen attacks on U.S. forward bases and on institutions such as the prison in the southern city of Kandahar are becoming more frequent. To be sure, Obama advocates combining counterinsurgency military operations with development aid and attention to resolving the problem of poppy cultivation. (Afghan poppies are turned into heroin for the European market, and the profits have fueled some of the Taliban’s resurgence.) Stepped-up military action, however, is still the central component of his plan.

Before he jumps into Afghanistan with both feet, Obama would be well advised to consult with another group of officers. They are the veterans of the Russian campaign in Afghanistan. Russian officers caution that Afghans cannot be conquered, as the Soviets attempted to do in the 1980s with nearly twice as many troops as NATO and the U.S. now have in the country, and with three times the number of Afghan troops as Karzai can deploy. Afghanistan never fell to the British or Russian empires at the height of the age of colonialism. Conquering the tribal forces of a vast, rugged, thinly populated country proved beyond their powers. It may also well prove beyond the powers even of the energetic and charismatic Obama. In Iraq, he is listening to what the Iraqis want. In Pakistan, he is simply dictating policy in a somewhat bellicose fashion, and ignoring the wishes of those moderate parties whose election he lauded last February.

Salon contributor Juan Cole is a professor of modern Middle Eastern and South Asian history at the University of Michigan and the author of “Napoleon’s Egypt: Invading the Middle East.”

Copyright ©2008 Salon Media Group, Inc

WASHINGTON - House Judiciary Committee Chairman Rep. John Conyers said his panel will explore a variety of George W. Bush controversies, including manipulation of prewar Iraq intelligence.

Rebuffing Dennis Kucinich’s calls for impeachment hearings on George W. Bush, the House Judiciary Committee instead will hear testimony about Bush’s “imperial presidency” and several of his administration’s scandals.

In a press release issued Thursday, Rep. John Conyers, House Judiciary Committee chairman, said his panel will explore a variety of Bush controversies, including manipulation of prewar Iraq intelligence, politicization of the Justice Department, and refusal to cooperate with congressional investigations.

But the Michigan Democrat also left little doubt that the committee’s review was meant to fend off demands from Rep. Kucinich that Conyers initiate impeachment proceedings against Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney.

With impeachment ruled out, it’s unclear how much the Judiciary Committee’s inquiry can accomplish, given Bush’s broad assertion of executive privilege when his subordinates are faced with congressional questions about criminal and other wrongdoing.

Conyers’s committee faced just that dilemma earlier Thursday when former Attorney General John Ashcroft refused to answer an array of questions about his role in decisions regarding warrantless wiretaps and harsh interrogations of detainees in the “war on terror.”

In effect, President Bush keeps broadening his claims of executive privilege - even citing it Wednesday to cover testimony that Cheney gave in 2004 to a federal prosecutor about his role in exposing a covert CIA officer.

Bush knows that Democratic leaders, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Judiciary Committee Chairman Conyers, have long ago rejected impeachment proceedings, the one instrument included in the Constitution for Congress to wield against a President who has abused his powers.

With only six months left in his term, Bush can easily wait out any court challenges to his privilege claims, cases that might take years to litigate.

Nevertheless, in announcing the July 25 hearing, Conyers said his committee would address “possible legal responses” to Bush’s “imperial presidency.”

“As Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, I believe it is imperative that we pursue a comprehensive review commensurate to this constitutionally dangerous combination of circumstances. Next Friday’s hearings will be an important part of that ongoing effort,” Conyers said.

Abuses on display

Among the topics cited by Conyers for the hearing are:

• The forced resignation of nine U.S. attorneys allegedly because some balked at politically motivated prosecutions.
• The misuse of the “unitary executive” theory, which involved Bush’s presidential signing statements to negate laws passed by Congress.
• The abuse of the government’s powers to investigate and detain U.S. citizens and to harm administration critics, including disclosing the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame after her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, challenged Bush’s use of bogus intelligence to justify invading Iraq.
• The assertion of executive privilege to prevent Congress and the public from overseeing the administration’s actions and decisions.

Kucinich, D-Ohio, cited those issues and others, such as sanctioning torture and invading Iraq under false pretenses, as part of his 35 articles of impeachment, which were introduced in June.

The House sidetracked Kucinich’s resolution by voting - 251-166 - to send it to the House Judiciary Committee. At the time, Kucinich said he expected Conyers to hold hearings within a 30-day deadline Kucinich had imposed, but Conyers chose not to act.

Kucinich rankled Democratic leaders last week when he stated that he would reintroduce impeachment articles if Conyers and other top Democrats tried to derail his efforts.

Last week, Conyers told Congressional Quarterly that his committee’s actions will be limited to a public hearing.

“We’re not doing impeachment, but [Kucinich] can talk about it,” Conyers told CQ.

While continuing to rule out any attempt to oust Bush, Conyers said Thursday he was alarmed by many of the President’s actions.

“Over the last seven plus years, there have been numerous credible allegations of serious misconduct by officials in the Bush administration,” Conyers said. “At the same time, the administration has adopted what many would describe as a radical view of its own powers and authorities.”

Responding to questions about Kucinich’s impeachment resolution, House Speaker Pelosi told reporters that “this is a Judiciary Committee matter, and I believe we will see some attention being paid to it by the Judiciary Committee. …

“Not necessarily taking up the articles of impeachment because that would have to be approved on the floor, but to have some hearings on the subject.”

Before Election 2006, Pelosi declared impeachment “off the table,” in part, to avoid alarming centrist voters. Now, with Democrats hoping to gain additional seats in Election 2008, a similar political calculation applies, fearing a backlash against a last-minute drive to impeach Bush and Cheney.

It wasn’t disclosed who would appear before the Judiciary Committee, but Kucinich said one interested party is an unidentified foreign official.

“I’ve been contacted by representatives of a U.S. ally who are seeking an opportunity to appear before the Judiciary Committee,” Kucinich told CQ.

“Legislative leaders of a foreign capital” have a “new angle that I haven’t thought of before but is relevant,” he said. “This interest in whether we’ve been told the truth has extended to other countries.”

Copyright © 2008 Pakistan Daily

PETERBOROUGH, New Hampshire - The most important number on the planet is 350, according to writer and environmentalist Bill McKibben.

At a Monadnock Summer Lyceum lecture at the Peterborough Unitarian Universalist Church Sunday, McKibben said research has shown 350 parts per million is the amount of carbon dioxide scientists agree is safe to have in our atmosphere. Beyond 350, the human race is in trouble.

As of 2008, we’re already over the line at 387, he said.

“Over the past 20 years, global warming has gone from a hypothesis to a consensus among scientists and into a kind of panic,” he said.

McKibben, whose first book, “The End of Nature,” appeared in 1989, has been writing about global warming and climate change for those same 20 years.

Crunching the numbers

Numbers made up a theme of McKibben’s talk. America’s population — 4 percent of the world population — is producing 25 percent of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions, he said.

On a recent trip to Bangladesh, McKibben contracted dengue fever, a mosquito-borne illness on the rise as a result of an increase in the mosquito population in the warmer global climate. While in his hospital bed among others suffering from the epidemic, it was sobering for him to realize that in some way Americans were responsible for one in four of the people in the beds beside him, he said

Thirty is the number of years the polar ice caps have been slowly melting away, until last summer when California-sized chunks were melting each week. According to McKibben, four is the number of weeks a northwest passage between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans opened during that summer, a route blocked to explorers by ice for hundreds of years.

Among all the others, however, the number McKibben asked the audience to remember is 350 parts per million in the atmosphere of carbon dioxide. In this number is safety, he said, but with continually increasing carbon dioxide emissions around the world, it will be difficult to reach.

“Reaching 350 parts per million involves ceasing to pour carbon into the air, which means ceasing to burn oil and coal,” McKibben said. “We must move away from fossil fuels faster than is comfortable or easy.”

McKibben likened the situation to a patient in a doctor’s office who had just learned his cholesterol level is too high, and without a change in lifestyle a heart attack or stroke could be imminent.

Even for the very optimistic, McKibben said, sustaining the current energy system seems difficult to imagine, a system that involves defending thousands of miles of pipeline through the Middle East.

Hope through community

According to McKibben, rising gas prices over the past six months have done what environmentalists have attempted to do over the past several decades: revitalize an interest in local community.

Americans are driving less and are flying less. McKibben said that by next year, business experts project there will be 20 percent fewer airline seats available because of a decreasing demand.

Americans are also buying more local food. According to McKibben, the business at farmers’ markets has been growing at a rate faster than Wal-Mart over the past few years. “Though they’re not caught up yet,” McKibben added humorously.

Food generally travels 2,000 miles before reaching the mouth of the person who eats it, destroying its nutrition and flavor, he said. “It has been effectively marinated in crude oil.”

McKibben said these changes are having the effect of strengthening the community. Studies show shoppers have an average of 10 times more conversations at a farmer’s market than at a supermarket, he said.

“Cheap fossil fuels have made us too self-reliant,” McKibben said. “They have allowed us to have no practical need for our neighbors.”

The number of Americans who said they led happy lives peaked in 1956 and has gone down steadily since, even though the standard of living has become three times as expensive, he said.

The American Dream since then has been to have bigger houses farther apart, McKibben said. As a result, statistics show Americans now have half as many close friends as Americans did in 1956. “That is a fact no amount of iPods in the world can make up for,” he said.

There is a great deal to be said for relocalizing and becoming more community oriented, he said, noting the changes he has witnessed over the past six months have made him optimistic.

The symbolic over the practical

The problem, as McKibben sees it, is that there is extremely little time to correct the problem before the planet takes over warming itself without our help.

“It turns the practical response upside-down,” he said.

The usual method of starting small and building will not be sufficient. Rather than employ practical solutions to the energy issue, such as replacing light bulbs, Mc-Kibben advocates for symbolic action.

“We need rapid change at the top,” McKibben said. “We need to set an appropriate price for carbon emission at the government level and hope the markets work the way they are supposed to work.”

McKibben said the $1 change in gas prices had the effect of turning SUVs from a status symbol among Americans to something nobody wants.

Along with five Middlebury students and faculty, McKibben started a march to Burlington through Vermont which came to include 1,000 people. When they arrived, politicians from both parties met them and signed a petition pledging to reduce carbon emissions by 80 percent by 2050.

Following a speech given by former Vice President Al Gore earlier this year, both democratic candidates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama pledged to the same goal or 80 percent carbon reduction.

Spreading the word (or number)

McKibben’s goal is to make the number 350 ubiquitous around the world, and he has begun by getting involved with a Web site called 350.org. He asked audience members to visit the Web site and also to take action.

James Hansen, who works for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and as Gore’s science advisor, published the paper stating 350 is the safe number of parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Hansen is also known for his testimony on climate change he delivered to congressional committees in the 1980s, which helped raise awareness of the global warming issue.

Projects involving the number 350 have included 350 bicycles circling capital buildings, 350 trees being planted, and in Massachusetts, 350 churches ringing bells 350 times throughout the year.

“In a democracy, you don’t need 51 percent to make change,” Mc-Kibben said. “You need 5 percent to become active.”

Coincidentally, one of the organizers of the Monadnock Summer Lyceum lecture series reported the attendance for the day’s lecture was 350.

During the question-and-answer period following the speech, an audience member asked Mc-Kibben if he is worried that he was only preaching to the choir about climate change.

McKibben said 70 percent of Americans agree climate change is an issue.

“I’m not worried about preaching to the choir because the choir is large enough,” McKibben said. “I worry about the choir not singing loudly enough.”

2008 © Monadnock Ledger-Transcript

With the House Judiciary Committee planning a hearing Friday on the Bush administration’s use of executive privilege, public pressure is building to urge the committee to jail Karl Rove, the Bush White House political maestro.

A coalition of organizations gathered 80,000 signatures on a petition calling on the committee to hold Rove in contempt for his refusal to obey its subpoena. Brave News Films, author of an earlier Internet effort to kick Joseph Lieberman out of the Democratic Party after his endorsement of Republican John McCain, released its petition, Send Karl Rove to Jail, in hopes of compelling Rove

to testify under oath about his involvement in the prosecution of former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman.

As Countdown reported here Monday, Democrat Siegelman was investigated by a Republican U.S. attorney with ties to Rove. She later recused herself from his case, but allegations of partisan influence in the case persist. Siegelman’s conviction on political corruption charges is on appeal.

For his part, Rove has refused to testify before Congress, citing executive privilege.

© 2008 The Los Angeles Times

“Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves,” says Proverbs 31:8. Scripture and teachings throughout the world call us to act with caring and justice for the vulnerable. Today “vulnerable” includes the Earth — and people, plants and animals threatened by climate change.

Concern for this threat has led diverse groups and people to join hands for the common good. We are one example of such cooperation: evangelical and conservation leaders coming together. Protecting people and biological diversity from the effects of climate change is becoming an increasing priority for both our communities.

Along with ethical reasons, we are moved to act by the world’s wonder: Mountain goats that scale heights impossible for others. White beluga whales dubbed “sea canaries” because their songs travel for miles and make boat hulls vibrate. Tiny monarch butterflies that journey 2,000 miles every winter in search of a few mountaintops in the forests of Mexico. Sugar maples that grace the fall with their vibrant colors. How fortunate we are to have a world with such marvels. How important it is to leave this for our children.

Another awe-inspiring part of our world is the dedication and resourcefulness of people who care about each other and the environment. With their commitment, we can reduce greenhouse gas emissions and identify adaptations to help humans and wildlife hurt by global warming.

Each of our traditions provides ways to fulfill this commitment as we speak up for others. In the world of faith, we spread the word about Bible-based and moral obligations to care for creation. Then we roll up our sleeves and engage in service for God’s Earth. And at times we raise our voices for acting as a community through public policy.

In conservation law, we use the power of the courts to ensure a voice for people, places and species that need protective laws: People, from Inuit in Alaska with towns eroded by rising seas, to salmon fishermen in Washington who stand to lose their livelihoods, are vulnerable to global warming. So are tiny “rock rabbit” pikas covered year-round with heavy fur that can die quickly when temperatures climb above 75 degrees.

Mountain goats losing forage as less snow allows more trees to colonize the meadows on which they depend. Polar bears that struggle with loss of sea ice needed for hunting and exhaust themselves swimming long distances to land. These, and many more, need our help through both individual steps and action we take together under our nation’s laws. And when we protect the web of life, we also protect ourselves.

Science is telling us we dare not wait. In its acceptance of the Nobel Peace Prize in December 2007, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change noted that global warming jeopardizes people’s access to food and clean water; poses health threats due to extreme weather, malnutrition, higher ozone levels and changes in infectious disease patterns; and prompts major migrations.

The IPCC also has found that 20 to 30 percent of animal and plant species could be at an increased risk of extinction, with up to 60 percent species loss in some areas, if global warming continues as predicted.

And, finally, the Environmental Protection Agency last week released a scientific report stating that climate change will pose “substantial” threats to human health. It predicts extremely hot periods (heat waves), more powerful hurricanes, shrinking water in the West, and increased spread of diseases contracted through food and water. The poor, young, elderly and those in inner cities will be most at risk.

Thus, people in the faith, science, conservation, artistic and other communities are coming together now to make a difference. Examples mentioned above are taken from a new exhibit designed by these communities, “Irreplaceable: Wildlife in a Warming World,” that just opened at the Burke Museum.

Washington is also fortunate to have people working to find solutions to climate change and its impacts, such as local sponsors of “Irreplaceable”: Earthjustice, Earth Ministry, People for Puget Sound, Restoring Eden, Save Our Wild Salmon and the Woodland Park Zoo.

Climate change calls us to be innovative, courageous and compassionate. Inspired by our beliefs, informed by science, and using our intellect, we can answer this call to care.

Richard Cizik is VP of National Association of Evangelicals. Trip Van Noppen is president of Earthjustice. Cizik will speak on a panel at 7 p.m. Wednesday at the Burke Museum.

©1996-2008 Seattle Post-Intelligencer

BAGHDAD - Welcomed at first after the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, most NGOs have run into scepticism and mistrust. Few remain to help.

Hundreds of local and foreign NGOs became active in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, after decades of restrictions under the regime of former dictator Saddam Hussein.

“The former Iraqi regime did not trust NGOs, and always thought them to be spies,” Muath A’raji of the National Societal Organisation, a human rights NGO based in Baghdad told IPS. “Iraqis used to think the regime was wrong, but now they have changed their minds because of the many false foreign NGOs that look more like contracting companies than humanitarian and human rights organisations.”

Iraqis expected NGOs to ease the agonies caused by both the U.S. occupation and corruption of the Iraqi government. But now most appear to believe that NGOs work for money and personal interests, if not for intelligence and missionary purposes.

Talk of NGOs now often inspires fear rather than hope. “I was terrified when I heard of French organisations smuggling children from Chad to sell in Europe,” says Um Yassen, whose six-year-old son was injured by a U.S. bomb in Fallujah. “I have applied for many NGOs to take him for treatment abroad. We do not know who to trust any more.”

But there is still the occasional NGO genuinely assisting Iraqis in need.

“Dozens of organisations took my niece’s medical reports and pictures; only one came back to take her for treatment abroad,” Anwer Abdul Hameed from Hit, just west of Baghdad, told IPS. “Our five-year-old Nora was shot in the head by an American sniper in 2005. Her father took her to many Iraqi hospitals. Doctors did their very best, but with the hospitals practically not working and medicines not available, Nora’s head remained broken until an organisation called No More Victims appeared and took her to Amman on way to America.”

No More Victims is a Los Angeles based organisation that takes Iraqi children injured by occupation forces to the United States for treatment.

The hundreds of Iraqi NGOs spread all over the country seem to have lost credibility too, along with most foreign NGOs.

People in Fallujah, 69km west of Baghdad, told IPS that some associations that helped them during the 2004 sieges disappeared after some of their activists were detained by the U.S. military.

“The good men who served the city were either detained or forced to flee the country under threat of detention or even termination by secret police squads,” an Iraqi doctor in Fallujah, speaking on terms of anonymity, told IPS. “Most of the ones who are active now belong to parties in power or people who know nothing about organised work. The Iraqi Red Crescent, for example, is totally dominated by Iraqi Prime Minister (Nouri al) Maliki’s Da’wa Party.”

A member of the Iraqi Red Crescent IRC in Fallujah denied that the Da’wa Party controls the organisation, but refused to answer IPS questions about the way they work.

Danger is clearly an inhibiting factor as well. The NGO Coordination Committee in Iraq (NCCI), an independent initiative launched by a group of NGOs in Baghdad in April 2003, now comprises a network of about 80 international NGOs and 200 Iraqi NGOs.

The group does not provide a list of NGOs operating in Iraq because of “security concerns”, according to their website. “With the high risks taken by aid workers on the ground, at least 94 aid workers have been killed in Iraq since 2003 (updated on 27th of September 2007),” the group says.

NCCI adds: “Our data takes in consideration incidents reported to NCCI. As aid workers face the same difficulties as any civilians in Iraq, the figure could certainly be higher, particularly regarding local NGO staff.”

Ali, our correspondent in Baghdad, works in close collaboration with Dahr Jamail, our U.S.-based specialist writer on Iraq who travels extensively in the region.

© 2008 Inter Press Service

BOGOTA - The body of trade unionist Guillermo Rivera, who was missing since April, was finally found after 84 days of desperate searching by his family and friends.

The forensic experts reported that the body showed “clear signs of torture,” Jorge Gómez, the widow’s lawyer, told IPS.

The 52-year-old Rivera was last seen when he took his daughter to her bus stop on the morning of Apr. 22. A witness said she saw him arguing with the police as they handcuffed him and shoved him into a police car. “Why are you taking me?” she heard him ask the officers.

Security cameras located near Rivera’s home on the south side of Bogotá “showed that several police cars were present at the time and place where the gentleman disappeared,” a source at the Attorney General’s Office told IPS.

IPS was able to confirm that there were four police cars and several motorcycles.

The day after he went missing, Rivera’s wife, Sonia Betancur, received a call from the cell-phone of her husband, who worked for the city government, was the president of a Bogotá trade union and was a member of the Communist Party.

“The phone call was very confusing, she didn’t understand a thing,” said Gómez.

A week later, the Attorney General’s Office reported that the call had been made from San Martín, 159 km south of Bogotá, a town that is a centre of operations of the far-right paramilitaries in the province of Meta.

The National Commission for the Search for Disappeared Persons, created by law in 2006, finally located Rivera’s body.

His corpse had originally been found on Apr. 24 in a dump along a road near the city of Ibagué, 215 km east of the capital, and was buried in an unidentified grave in that city on Apr. 28.

When it was exhumed by the Commission, forensic exams and fingerprinting showed that the body belonged to Rivera, who was given a funeral on Jul. 17 in Bogotá, amidst protest demonstrations over his death.

“The search was marked by negligence and ineffectiveness on the part of the Attorney General’s Office,” but in addition, “it can almost be said that there was complicity of all kinds by several state institutions in this disappearance,” said Gómez, who served as ombudsman in the conflict-ridden region of Magdalena Medio between 2002 and 2006, “where 100 percent of forced disappearances have gone uninvestigated and unpunished.”

“There is a series of elements that make it possible to say that he was ‘disappeared’ by the police,” added another source, who clarified however that it was not the Metropolitan Police but “another state structure.”

Rivera was the 28th trade unionist killed this year in Colombia, which has become the most dangerous country in the world for labour activists.

Another serious aspect of the case is that Rivera was tortured before he was killed.

Victims of murder or arbitrary detention are frequently tortured, according to the 2007 report on Torture and Cruel, Inhumane or Degrading Treatment in Colombia, presented last week in Bogotá by the Colombian Coalition Against Torture.

But torture in such cases is rarely mentioned, and is relegated to the category of a mere side effect, said lawyer Jahel Quiroga, director of Reiniciar, a group that forms part of the Coalition. “You often hear it said about a victim that ‘they killed him,’ but not that he was previously tortured,” she added.

In fact it took IPS more than 24 hours to confirm that the forensic report on Rivera’s death showed that he had been tortured. The sources consulted invariably first mentioned his alleged arbitrary detention and extrajudicial execution.

The Coalition is also made up of the Association of Relatives of the Detained-Disappeared (ASFADDES), and five other local human rights groups, as well as the World Organisation Against Torture (OMCT) and the Italian chapter of Terre des Hommes.

Another member organisation, the Colombian Commission of Jurists, documented 346 cases of torture, in which 234 of the victims died, from July 2004 to June 2007. Last year alone, 93 cases were reported, in which 43 of the victims were killed.

Of the total number of torture victims documented by the human rights group, 18 were women and 11 were children.

The report blames 90 percent of the cases on the state - 70.4 percent for “direct perpetration” by state agents and 19.7 percent as a result of tolerance of, or support for, human rights abuses carried out by paramilitary groups.

Leftwing guerrilla groups were held responsible for 9.8 percent of the cases, the report adds.

The Coalition states that torture in Colombia is systematic, widespread and deliberate, and is used as a means of political persecution with the goal of sowing terror among individuals, communities and social movements.

The victims are frequently peasant farmers living in war zones, where state security forces are stronger than civilian authorities and officials. Other frequent victims are human rights defenders, social activists and trade unionists like Rivera.

An undetermined number of torture cases in rural areas end in extrajudicial executions that are later reported as “deaths in combat”, says the Coalition, which provides the figure of 955 victims presumably killed by the security forces in the five years up to June 2007 (including 236 murdered from July 2006 to June 2007 alone).

Torture is also often associated with forced disappearance. ASFADDES says signs of appalling torture have been found on the majority of human remains found in common graves and clandestine cemeteries, whose location has been revealed by members of paramilitary militias who have taken part in a demobilisation process negotiated with the government, in order to gain legal benefits and lenient sentences.

The Coalition also mentions 235 forced disappearances “directly attributable to the public forces” in the five years up to June 2007.

“Torture is a war crime. It is, precisely, one of the crimes contemplated in the system established by the International Criminal Court (ICC),” OMCT director Eric Sottas told IPS.

“It is clear that at some point, the ICC could exercise its jurisdiction over this” in Colombia, he added.

This civil war-torn country ratified the Rome Statute, which created the ICC, in August 2002.

The Coalition reports that no perpetrators have been identified or punished in nearly 90 percent of torture cases, principally because of the state’s refusal to acknowledge the persistence of this phenomenon.

Article 8 of the Rome Statute states that “The Court shall have jurisdiction in respect of war crimes in particular when committed as a part of a plan or policy or as part of a large-scale commission of such crimes.”

That makes particularly significant the Coalition report’s conclusion that “torture in Colombia is a systematic and generalised practice.”

The Coalition recommends that the rightwing government of Álvaro Uribe ratify the Facultative Protocol to the U.N. Convention Against Torture, which provides for the possibility of truth-finding visits to signatory countries.

It also urges the government to require demobilised paramilitary fighters to provide full confessions of their crimes, including torture, in order to be eligible for legal benefits.

In addition, it calls on the state to adopt a specific public policy aimed at preventing torture and putting an end to the impunity that surrounds such cases.

Copyright © 2008 IPS-Inter Press Service.

The World Bank and its partners need to do a far better job of considering the environmental effects of projects they finance in poor countries, its internal review group concludes in a new report.

The review, released on Tuesday, examined some of the $400 billion in investments in nearly 7,000 projects from 1990 to 2007. It found that recent commitments to environmental sustainability by the bank and sister institutions, including the International Finance Corporation, were often not matched by changes within the lenders’ bureaucracies or on the ground where dollars were turned into dams, pipelines, palm plantations and the like.

The report is online at worldbank.org/oed.

Authors of the 181-page environmental report, the first by the bank’s Independent Evaluation Group since 2002, said it was vital for the bank and its partners to intensify their focus on measurable environmental protection, given rising vulnerability to environmental risks and the increasing flow of financing for projects related to climate change.

“They need to begin to see the inextricable link bet sustaining environment and reducing poverty,” Vinod Thomas, the director-general of the evaluation group, said in an interview. “It is clear now from the Amazon to India that if environmental sustainability is not raised as a priority then all bets are off.”

The report by the internal group included a response from the bank’s management that acknowledged some of the gaps while asserting that in many areas it was already moving to improve its environmental accounting and find ways to make sure that beneficiaries - both developing countries and private banks and businesses - changed practices as well.Cheryl Gray, the director of the review group for the World Bank, said the lack of consistent internal tracking of the environmental facets of projects was an indicator of how much work needs to be done.

The World Bank Group approved its first set of common environmental standards in 2001, for the first time making environmental stewardship part of its core mission of reducing poverty.

But the new evaluation found a persistent lack of environmental focus in each step along the lending chain - from the priorities that shape development projects to the environmental standards and monitoring required in the field.

Environmental campaigners largely agreed with the findings of the internal group.

Korinna Horta, an economist at the Environmental Defense Fund, described how the International Finance Corporation, the World Bank’s private-sector arm, can promote the expansion of livestock herds, soy bean field and palm oil plantations, all of which tend to propel deforestation in the tropics, even as the World Bank simultaneously warns about the problems of forest loss and has created a fund to support avoided deforestation.

“Even now, the Bank does not have an appropriate accountability structure in place to ensure that its well-meaning environmental and social policies are actually implemented on the ground,” Horta said.

 Copyright © 2008 the International Herald Tribune

WASHINGTON - Disease spread to wild bees from commercially bred bees used for pollination in agriculture greenhouses may be playing a role in the mysterious decline in North American bee populations, researchers said on Tuesday.

Bees pollinate numerous crops, and scientists have been expressing alarm over their falling numbers in recent years in North America. Experts warn the bee disappearance eventually could harm agriculture and the food supply.

Scientists have been struggling to understand the recent decline in various bee populations in North America. For example, a virus brought from Australia has been implicated in massive honeybee deaths last year.

Canadian researchers studied another type of bee, the bumblebee, near two large greenhouse operations in southern Ontario where commercially reared pollination bees are used in the growing of crops such as tomatoes, bell peppers and cucumbers.

The researchers first observed that the commercial bumblebees regularly flew in and out of vents in the sides of the greenhouses, escaping from the facilities.

The researchers then devised a mathematical model to predict how disease might spread from this “spillover” of runaway commercial bees to their wild cousins.

The model predicted a relatively slow build-up of infection in nearby wild bumblebee populations over weeks or months culminating in a burst of transmission generating an epidemic wave that could affect nearly all of wild bees exposed.

The model also predicted a drop-off in infection rates as you get further from the greenhouses.

GREENHOUSE BUMBLEBEE PARASITES

The researchers then sampled wild bumblebee populations around the greenhouses, catching bees in butterfly nets, holding them in vials and taking them back to a laboratory to screen for pathogens, including testing their feces.

The patterns that had been predicted by their mathematical model were borne out by studying the wild bees, they said.

Most of the parasites in the wild bumblebees were found to be at normal levels except for one intestinal parasite known as Crithidia bombi that is common in commercial bee colonies but typically absent in wild bumblebees.

The researchers found that up to half of wild bumblebees near the greenhouses were infected with this parasite.

“All of the different species of bumblebees that we sampled around greenhouses showed the same pattern: really high levels of infection near greenhouses and then declining levels of infection as you moved out,” said Michael Otterstatter of the University of Toronto, one of the researchers.

“It was quite obvious that this was coming from the greenhouses and it was a general adverse effect on the bumblebees,” Otterstatter added in a telephone interview.

He said the parasite weakens and often kills bees. The “spillover” of disease from commercial colonies may be a factor in the decline of bee populations in North America, he added.

© Thomson Reuters 2008 All rights reserved

Washington -  Democrats are preparing next year to lift the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” ban on open gays in the military, an uneasy culture-war compromise instituted under the last Democratic administration, should Sen. Barack Obama win the presidency.

Rep. Ellen Tauscher, the Walnut Creek Democrat, said a hearing today by a House Armed Services subcommittee is aimed at educating Congress and the public in preparation for a full-scale push to end the policy, first imposed in 1993 under President Bill Clinton, in the next Congress. By then, Democrats expect to have won the White House and to have expanded their House and Senate majorities.

Tauscher introduced the Military Readiness Enhancement Act, which would repeal the ban and allow gays to serve openly in the military, along with 121 co-sponsors in 2006. But Democrats have not moved it forward under President Bush because they are certain of his veto. An additional 11 co-sponsors have since signed on to her bill, but so far only five Republicans have done so.

Obama supports repeal.

Should Republican Sen. John McCain, who opposes repeal, become president, Tauscher said Democrats might force the issue.

Polls show solid public support for lifting the ban, which passed its 15-year anniversary July 19. An ABC News/Washington Post poll shows that 75 percent favor repeal, a number that has climbed steadily since the start of the Iraq war.

Still, many Democrats are wary.

“Politicians are well known for not wanting to take a position until they have to,” Tauscher said. “But I’m confident that under the right political environment, with the right president … we’ll have all conditions that will be right for us to pass the repeal and have the president sign it.”

Memories of how the issue consumed the first months of Bill Clinton’s presidency remain seared in many minds on Capitol Hill. Having faced campaign accusations of draft dodging and Pentagon skepticism about his suitability as commander in chief, Clinton was hit by an intense backlash when he inadvertently made ending the military’s outright ban on homosexuals one of his first projects upon taking office.

The uproar led to the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” compromise between then-chairman of Senate Armed Services Committee, Sam Nunn, D-Ga, former Joint Chiefs Chairman Colin Powell and Clinton. It allowed men and women to serve in the military without being asked about their homosexuality, so long as they kept it secret.

Unlike the earlier ban that was formalized as a service-wide policy during World War II, “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” was enacted into law, requiring that any changes be made by Congress.

Since 1994, 12,342 service men and women have been discharged, according to Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, a gay rights group. Discharges peaked at 1,273 in 2001, then dropped by about half after the terrorist attacks of 2001.

“A lot of lawmakers seem scarred by Clinton’s war wounds in early 1990s,” said Nathaniel Frank, a senior researcher at the Palm Center policy research institute, an affiliate of UC Santa Barbara and author of a forthcoming book on the ban.

“It was a combination of the fact that it was poorly handled by (Clinton), they underestimated the resistance, and by allowing the country to pause and ’study’ the issue, that allowed opposition to fester,” Frank said.

Of all gay rights issues, lifting the military ban receives among the widest public support. Public opinion has nearly reversed since 1993, when only 44 percent believed homosexuals should serve.

Large majorities of active-duty military, however, oppose repeal, according to a survey by Military Times, which found 31 percent supporting repeal and 57 percent opposed.

“Public opinion in favor of allowing gays to serve in the military has risen steadily in the Bush years, in part because people feel in times of war anyone who wants to serve ought to be able to serve,” said Nathaniel Persily, a legal policy expert at Columbia University who follows gay issues.

At the same time, he said, “opposition to expansion of gay rights is often more intense than is support. That’s true of same-sex marriage, where most proponents are tepidly in favor, while those who oppose it strongly oppose.”

The Pentagon itself is deferring to Congress. No Pentagon officials will testify at today’s hearing, which will feature mainly retired officers on both sides.

Tauscher said Pentagon officials were not invited because, “They always have the same answer: It’s the law, and we do what the law says. It’s not informative.”

Retired officers have been more outspoken, including Gen. John Shalikashvili, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who reversed himself to support repeal last year. More than 50 high-ranking retired officers have signed a statement urging that the ban be lifted. Former Sen. Sam Nunn said last month that he was open to revisiting it.

The ban on homosexuals is based on the idea that they damage discipline, morale and trust, complicate assignments of personnel who work in close quarters and hinder recruitment.

Frank contends that studies have produced “no evidence that gays undermine military effectiveness” and that the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy itself has caused “enormous talent losses in occupational categories where the military is badly stretched,” including Arabic linguists. A General Accountability Office study in 2005 showed the military lost 800 service members in 161 occupations deemed mission critical.

The British and Israeli militaries do not ban homosexuals, he said, and studies have shown the ban “requires service members to be dishonest with one another and makes it difficult for them to bond with one another and makes it tough, in many documented cases, for gays and lesbians to access military support services that are taken for granted by straights, because you can’t speak openly with a military chaplain, psychologist or even a physician in many cases without risking their jobs.”

Given Clinton’s experience, Tauscher conceded that the gay ban might not be the first thing Obama would tackle, facing two wars and economic problems. “I would say that President Obama is going to be enormously busy the first few months,” Tauscher said. “This is important, and it’s going to be brought up in the first year, but the president makes these decisions in consultation with Congress.”

Obama suggested he would go slowly in an interview with Military Times this month in which he was asked if he could stand the political heat on the issue.

“Precisely because I have not served in uniform, I am somebody who strongly believes that I have to earn the trust of the men and women in uniform,” Obama said.

The candidates on ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’

Democrats promise to push for repeal of the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy for gays in the military next year under a new president. Republican Sen. John McCain opposes repeal. Sen. Barack Obama supports it.

McCain

” ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ unambiguously maintains that open homosexuality within the military services presents an intolerable risk to morale, cohesion, and discipline…I believe the polarization of personnel and breakdown of unit effectiveness is too high a price to pay for well-intentioned but misguided efforts to elevate the interests of a minority of homosexual service members above those of their units. Most importantly, the national security of the United States, not to mention the lives of our men and women in uniform, are put at grave risk by policies detrimental to the good order and discipline which so distinguish America’s Armed Services. For these reasons, which have nothing to do with my personal judgments about homosexual behavior, I remain opposed to the open expression of homosexuality in the U.S. military.”

Source: Letter to Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, April 16, 2007, links.sfgate.com/ZEGQ

Obama

“There are equity issues involved, but there are also effectiveness issues involved. And I think that at a time when we are pressed, we should have an attitude of ‘all hands on deck.’ If we can’t field enough Arab linguists, we shouldn’t be preventing an Arab linguist from serving his or her country because of what they do in private. I think [retired Army] Gen. John Shalikashvili’s assessment is right, that people’s attitudes have evolved. You’ve got our British counterparts and Israeli counterparts without this policy, and nobody would suggest that they have had problems on the ground.

“I want to make sure that we are doing it in a thoughtful and principled way. But I do believe that at a time when we are shorthanded, that everybody who is willing to lay down their lives on behalf of the United States, and can do so effectively, can perform critical functions, should have the opportunity to do so.”

Source: July 8 interview with Military Times, full transcript at links.sfgate.com/ZEGR

© 2008 Hearst Communications Inc.

A tiny rectangle superimposed on the vast expanse of the Sahara captures the seductive appeal of the audacious plan to cut Europe’s carbon emissions by harnessing the fierce power of the desert sun.

Dwarfed by any of the north African nations, it represents an area slightly smaller than Wales but scientists claimed yesterday it could one day generate enough solar energy to supply all of Europe with clean electricity.

Speaking at the Euroscience Open Forum in Barcelona, Arnulf Jaeger-Walden of the European commission’s Institute for Energy, said it would require the capture of just 0.3% of the light falling on the Sahara and Middle East deserts to meet all of Europe’s energy needs.

The scientists are calling for the creation of a series of huge solar farms - producing electricity either through photovoltaic cells, or by concentrating the sun’s heat to boil water and drive turbines - as part of a plan to share Europe’s renewable energy resources across the continent.

A new supergrid, transmitting electricity along high voltage direct current cables would allow countries such as the UK and Denmark ultimately to export wind energy at times of surplus supply, as well as import from other green sources such as geothermal power in Iceland.

Energy losses on DC lines are far lower than on the traditional AC ones, which make transmission of energy over long distances uneconomic.

The grid proposal, which has won political support from both Nicholas Sarkozy and Gordon Brown, answers the perennial criticism that renewable power will never be economic because the weather is not sufficiently predictable. Its supporters argue that even if the wind is not blowing hard enough in the North Sea, it will be blowing somewhere else in Europe, or the sun will be shining on a solar farm somewhere.

Scientists argue that harnessing the Sahara would be particularly effective because the sunlight in this area is more intense: solar photovoltaic (PV) panels in northern Africa could generate up to three times the electricity compared with similar panels in northern Europe.

Much of the cost would come in developing the public grid networks of connecting countries in the southern Mediterranean, which do not currently have the spare capacity to carry the electricity that the north African solar farms could generate. Even if high voltage cables between North Africa and Italy would be built or the existing cable between Morocco and Spain would be used, the infrastructure of the transfer countries such as Italy and Spain or Greece or Turkey also needs a major re-structuring, according to Jaeger-Walden.

Southern Mediterranean countries including Portugal and Spain have already invested heavily in solar energy and Algeria has begun work on a vast combined solar and natural gas plant which will begin producing energy in 2010. Algeria aims to export 6,000 megawatts of solar-generated power to Europe by 2020.

Scientists working on the project admit that it would take many years and huge investment to generate enough solar energy from north Africa to power Europe but envisage that by 2050 it could produce 100 GW, more than the combined electricity output from all sources in the UK, with an investment of around €450bn.

Doug Parr, Greenpeace UK’s chief scientist, welcomed the proposals: “Assuming it’s cost-effective, a largescale renewable energy grid is just the kind of innovation we need if we’re going to beat climate change.”

Jaeger-Walden also believes that scaling up solar PV by having large solar farms could help bring its cost down for consumers. “The biggest PV system at the moment is installed in Leipzig and the price of the installation is €3.25 per watt,” he said. “If we could realise that in the Mediterranean, for example in southern Italy, this would correspond to electricity prices in the range of 15 cents per kWh, something below what the average consumer is paying.”

The vision for the renewable energy grid comes as the commission’s joint research centre (JRC) published its strategic energy technology plan, highlighting solar PV as one of eight technologies that need to be championed for the short- to medium-term future.

“It recognises something extraordinary - if we don’t put together resources and findings across Europe and we let go the several sectors of energy, we will never reach these targets,” said Giovanni de Santi, director of the JRC, also speaking in Barcelona.

The JRC plan includes fuel cells and hydrogen, clean coal, second generation biofuels, nuclear fusion, wind, nuclear fission and smart grids. De Santi said it was designed to help Europe to meet its commitments to reduce overall energy consumption by 20% by 2020, while reducing CO² emissions by 20% in the same time and increasing to 20% the proportion of energy generated from renewable sources.

Backstory

High voltage direct current (HVDC) transmission lines are seen as the most efficient way to move electricity over long distances without incurring the losses experienced in alternating current (AC) power lines. HVDC cables can carry more power for the same thickness of cable compared with AC lines but are only suited to long distance transmission as they require expensive devices to convert the electricity, usually generated as AC, into DC. Modern HVDC cables can keep energy losses down to around 3% per 1,000km. HVDC can also be used to transfer electricity between different countries that might use AC at differing frequencies. HVDC cables can also be used to synchronise AC produced by renewable energy sources.

© 2008 The Guardian

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - Pakistan’s intelligence agencies and police have disappeared hundreds of Pakistanis, including children as young as 9, as part of the U.S.-led war on terrorism, Amnesty International charged Wednesday.

The missing Pakistanis frequently were tortured and have been moved among secret detention centers regularly so that they become impossible to trace, the human rights group said.

Amnesty said that allied countries, primarily the United States, had “benefited from this activity,” which began under the regime of President Pervez Musharraf. Some citizens were handed over to foreign intelligence agents for questioning in Pakistan or abroad, it said.

The human rights group was highly critical of Pakistan’s newly elected government for not taking firm steps to recover the apparent terrorism suspects, some of whom have been missing for up to seven years and never been charged.

Amnesty didn’t give a number of those missing but backed the claims of relatives groups’ that at least 563 people remain unaccounted for.

Amina Janjua, who leads one relatives’ group, told McClatchy that hundreds more haven’t been brought to the attention of human rights activists. She said that new cases were still coming to her, more three months after the new government took power.

Amnesty said that many of the missing were involved in nationalist movements from the smaller provinces of Baluchistan and Sindh, and it charged that the Musharraf regime had exploited the anti-terrorism agenda to crack down on political opponents.

It called for the government to compile lists of missing people and to shift detainees into official prisons and process them through the courts. “This is an easy and achievable step forward that would signal a very strong break with the policies of the government of General Musharraf,” said Sam Zarifi, the Asia Pacific director at Amnesty.

“It really is a nonpolitical issue, and the government should start showing some concrete results.”

Amnesty said there was little hope of progress on the missing persons until the new government reinstated the judges whom Musharraf fired last November when he put the country under six weeks of martial law. Those judges, led by deposed Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry, had hauled top officials into court and demanded that they produce the missing, a tactic that led to the recovery of dozens of people, some of whom were taken into court on stretchers.

But there’s no sign that the judicial crisis is about to be resolved, as the coalition government is bitterly divided on the issue.

(EDITORS: BEGIN OPTIONAL TRIM

Janjua has met the new prime minister and the head of the Interior Ministry.

“They (the government) talk a lot, but that is not enough,” said Janjua, whose husband, Masood, vanished three years ago and is thought to be in the custody of Pakistan’s notorious Inter-Services Intelligence agency. “We want our loved ones back at home. For them, the politicians, this is routine, but for us, it is a matter of life and death.”

Farhatullah Babar, a spokesman for the Pakistan People’s Party, told McClatchy that the missing-persons issue is “high on the agenda,” and that Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani had mentioned it to him several days ago.

Babar said that the Interior Ministry had been “tasked to call a meeting of the (intelligence) agencies and sort it out.” The law minister is compiling a list of missing persons for further action, he said.

The government has kept the Supreme Court judges whom Musharraf appointed in November, who, according to activists, have taken up no human-rights cases since they were installed.

The new government also has retained Malik Qayyum, the attorney general from the previous government, as well as Kamal Shah, the chief bureaucrat at the Interior Ministry, and Lt. Gen. Nadeem Taj, the head of Inter-Services Intelligence, the organization most accused of disappearing people.

Shah is a McClatchy special correspondent.

© 2008 McClatchy Newspapers

NEW YORK - Civil liberties advocates have lost no time in asking a federal court to stop the government from conducting surveillance under the new wiretapping law passed by Congress and signed by President George W. Bush last week.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and a coalition of other groups declared that the new law ‘gives the Bush administration virtually unchecked power to intercept Americans’ international e-mails and telephone calls.’

The ACLU coalition’s legal challenge, which was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, seeks a court order declaring that the new law is unconstitutional and ordering its immediate and permanent halt.

ACLU Executive Director Anthony D. Romero charged that the new law ‘not only legalises the secret warrantless surveillance programme the president approved in late 2001, it gives the government new spying powers, including the power to conduct dragnet surveillance of Americans’ international communications.’

He added, ‘Spying on Americans without warrants or judicial approval is an abuse of government power — and that’s exactly what this law allows. The ACLU will not sit by and let this evisceration of the Fourth Amendment go unchallenged.’

The wiretapping issue became the centre of a storm of criticism after the New York Times revealed that, following the Sep. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, President Bush had secretly authorised the National Security Agency (NSA) to eavesdrop on U.S. citizens and others inside the country to search for evidence of terrorist activity without the court-approved warrants ordinarily required for domestic spying, according to government officials.

Under a presidential order signed in 2002, the intelligence agency monitored the international telephone calls and international e-mail messages of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people inside the U.S. without warrants in an effort to track possible ‘dirty numbers’ linked to al Qaeda, the officials said.

Criticism at the time came from a wide variety of civil libertarians, including Bob Barr, a former conservative Republican congressman from Georgia and currently the Libertarian Party candidate for president. He told IPS that in 2000, Gen. Michael Hayden, then head of the NSA and currently director of the Central Intelligence Agency, told a congressional hearing on wiretap targets, ‘If that American person is in the United States of America, I must have a court order before I initiate any collection against him or her.’

Barr’s advice was, ‘If the president doesn’t like the law, the solution should be to amend, not violate it.’

The Bush administration then called on Congress to pass amendments to the original Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which was enacted in 1978. The 2008 version emerged as the result of a ‘compromise’ between Democrats and Republicans in the House and Senate. Among its other provisions, the new law granted retroactive immunity to the telephone companies that had assisted the government in the warrantless wiretaps.

The surveillance legal challenge was filed on behalf of a coalition of attorneys and human rights, labour, legal and media organisations whose ability to perform their work — which relies on confidential communications — will be greatly compromised by the new law, the ACLU said.

The FISA Amendments Act of 2008 declares that ‘Electronic surveillance must be conducted in a constitutional manner that affords the greatest possible protection for individual privacy and free speech rights.’ But the ACLU and its coalition claims the new wiretapping law ‘fails to provide fundamental safeguards that the Constitution unambiguously requires.’

Plaintiffs in the suit include The Nation magazine and two of its contributing journalists, Naomi Klein and Chris Hedges; Amnesty International USA; Global Rights; Global Fund for Women; Human Rights Watch; PEN American Centre; Service Employees International Union; the Washington Office on Latin America; the International Criminal Defence Attorneys Association; and several individual defence attorneys and journalists.

In its legal challenge, the coalition argues that ‘The new spying law violates Americans’ rights to free speech and privacy under the First and Fourth Amendments to the Constitution. The new law permits the government to conduct intrusive surveillance without ever telling a court who it intends to spy on, what phone lines and email addresses it intends to monitor, where its surveillance targets are located, why it’s conducting the surveillance or whether it suspects any party to the communication of wrongdoing.’

Nation magazine writer Naomi Klein said that ‘As a journalist, my job requires communication with people in all parts of the world — from Iraq to Argentina. If the U.S. government is given unchecked surveillance power to monitor reporters’ confidential sources, my ability to do this work will be seriously compromised.’

She added, ‘I cannot in good conscience accept that my conversations with people who live outside the U.S. will put them in harm’s way as a result of overzealous government spying. Privacy in my communications is not simply an expectation, it’s a right.’ Human Rights Watch programme director Iain Levine said the new legislation ‘will allow mass government interception of electronic communications, so long as the target is overseas, without meaningful judicial oversight or warrant identifying who or what is to be subject to surveillance.’

‘In the course of our work reporting on and defending human rights, we regularly need to be in contact with activists and human rights victims all over the world,’ he said. ‘Knowing that the U.S. government could be monitoring our calls and emails often inhibits our efforts, and causes us to take expensive and delaying measures to keep our communications secure.’

Internet privacy under the new law continues to be a concern to civil libertarians. For example, the San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has filed a number of Freedom of Information Act requests with the Federal Bureau of Investigation and other U.S. Justice Department offices, seeking the release of documents it says will reveal whether the government has been using the USA Patriot Act to spy on Internet users to collect secret information about their Internet habits without a search warrant.

Kevin Bankston, an EFF attorney, told IPS, ‘Although Internet users reasonably expect that their online reading habits are private, the department of Justice will not confirm whether it collects or believes itself authorised to collect URLs using pen-trap devices.’

Pen-traps collect information about the numbers dialed on a telephone but do not record the actual content of phone conversations. Because of this limitation, court orders authorising pen-trap surveillance are easy to get; instead of having to show probable cause, the government need only certify relevance to its investigation. The government is not required to inform people that they are or were the subjects of pen-trap surveillance.

Copyright © 2008 IPS North America.

Barack Obama is betraying his promise of change and is in danger of becoming just another political hack.

Yes, just like former maverick John McCain, who has refashioned himself as a mindless rubber stamp for the most inane policies of the miserably failed Bush administration. Both candidates are embracing, rather than challenging, the fundamental irrationality of Bush’s “war on terror,” which substitutes hysteria for rational analysis in appraising the dangers the country faces.

Terrorism is a social pathology that needs to be excised with the surgical precision of detective work, inspired by a high level of international cooperation, the very opposite of the unilateral war metaphor that recruits new generations of terrorists in the wake of the massive armies we dispatch. At a time when we desperately need a president to remind us we have nothing to fear but fear itself, we are increasingly being treated to a presidential campaign driven by fear.

Both candidates supported the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which has everything to do with violating the basic freedoms of our citizens and nothing to do with making them safer. There was no shortage of alarming intelligence warning the Bush administration of the impending 9/11 attacks, but rather an utter lack of competency in evaluating the abundance of evidence.

To use the failure of the president to pay attention to his daily-briefing warning of an impending attack as an excuse for shredding the fundamental rights of our citizens is appallingly illogical. Providing legal protection to the government and the telecommunications giants for unfettered spying on the people does not represent the change we desperately need.

Nor does the battle of the warmongers that has dominated the discussion of foreign policy in the past week. Obama has one-upped McCain’s bluff to win in Iraq by raising the prospect of an even more deadly quagmire in Afghanistan. If his goal was to remind us that Democrats have been more often the party of irrational wars than the Republicans, he has succeeded all too well.

Whereas Dwight Eisenhower refused to wage war against Vietnam and Cuba, it was John Kennedy, that charmer of change, who launched both of those military disasters. And then there was that crafty “progressive” Lyndon Baines Johnson, who in order to defeat Barry Goldwater, the right-wing menace of his day, lied about a nonexistent attack in the Gulf of Tonkin to justify escalating a war that killed almost 59,000 Americans and 3.4 million Indochinese.

Even less noticed is the responsibility of Democrats for the mess in Afghanistan, which provided the incubator for the 9/11 attacks. It was under Jimmy Carter, highly admired as an ex-president, that the specter of modern Islamic fanaticism erupted, largely as a monster of our own creation when we supported Muslim fanatics in Afghanistan against the Soviets.

Carter’s national security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, when asked in a January 1998 interview with the French magazine Le Nouvel Observateur whether he regretted “having given arms and advice to future terrorists,” replied: “What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the Cold War?”

I was reminded of that horrid stain on the record of Democratic stewardship of our foreign policy while cleaning out my garage last week. I came across a 1996 press release from the publisher of “From the Shadows - The Ultimate Insider’s Story of Five Presidents and How They Won the Cold War,” written by current Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, the ultimate insider, who was on Carter’s National Security Council staff. The publisher’s book promo boasts that thanks to Gates, who ran the CIA for many years, we learn of “Carter’s never-before-revealed covert support to Afghan mujahedeen-six months before the Soviets invaded.”

In short, the Democratic president baldly lied to us when he justified support for the Muslim fanatics in Afghanistan who were battling the secular government in Kabul as a necessary Cold War response to a Soviet invasion. That Gates’ account is accurate was affirmed in a blurb for the book by none other than Brzezinski, hailing it as “a most impressive achievement … especially pertaining to the U.S. policy on Afghanistan.”

It is hardly reassuring that Brzezinski has resurfaced in presidential politics, this time as an occasional adviser to Barack Obama, or that there is talk that Obama, in a burst of bipartisan enthusiasm, might ask Gates to stay on as defense secretary.

At this point, I throw up my hands and plead with the candidate who I hoped would be that much-needed agent of change: Please prove me wrong.

Robert Scheer is author of a new book, “The Pornography of Power: How Defense Hawks Hijacked 9/11 and Weakened America.”

Copyright © 2008 Truthdig, L.L.C.

WASHINGTON - Barack Obama’s plan to build up U.S. forces in Afghanistan while keeping perhaps 50,000 troops in Iraq has triggered a deep rift among antiwar activists, a reminder of the difficult tasking facing the presumptive Democratic nominee as he tries to broaden his appeal.

The Illinois senator wrapped up three days of tours and talks in the war-ravaged nations Tuesday, stressing in a news conference that the “situation in Afghanistan is perilous and urgent” and that “we should not wait any longer” to provide additional troops.

In Iraq, Obama won a tacit Iraqi endorsement of a plan to withdraw U.S. combat troops in 2010, but he also said that he backs leaving a residual force in Iraq to help train military personnel, provide security for U.S. interests and thwart terrorist threats. The residual force might total up to 50,000 troops, his campaign advisers have told reporters.

Some hailed Obama’s trip as an important breakthrough.

“So far the trip has been out of the park. It’s an enormous moment,” declared Eli Pariser, executive director of MoveOn.org, which supports Obama. He hedged about Obama’s troop commitments, however: He said he wasn’t fully aware of Obama’s call for a residual force in Iraq and was trying to get a sense from MoveOn members on their views about Afghanistan.

Sister Simone Campbell, executive director of NETWORK, the national Catholic social justice lobbying group, was less enthusiastic.

“It was a significant step forward,” she said, “but it was only a step.”

Others were simply annoyed.

Barbra Bearden, spokeswoman for Peace Action, called Obama’s comments about Afghanistan “a bit disheartening.”

Ian Thompson, lead organizer in Los Angeles for Act Now to Stop War & End Racism, an antiwar group, found Obama’s Afghanistan position similar to that of President Bush and presumptive Republican presidential nominee John McCain.

“What this shows is that Barack Obama does not really represent any policy shift,” he said.

Republicans thought that Obama supplied them with new political ammunition. Obama supports withdrawing U.S. combat forces within 16 months after becoming president, while McCain has called such fixed timetables artificial and unrealistic. He says troops should come home when conditions on the ground warrant it, and not before.

Rep. Heather Wilson, R-N.M., a McCain backer, charged Tuesday in a conference call with reporters organized by McCain’s campaign that Obama has shown he’s “frighteningly inexperienced. The difference is Senator Obama’s (view) is based on the calendar, while Senator McCain believes the decision should be based on conditions on the ground.”

The trip’s chief political goal has been to bolster Obama’s stature among voters. The 46-year-old first-term U.S. senator is running against an opponent with a lengthy national security resume, and a Pew Research Center poll taken June 18-29 found 55 percent of voters thought McCain could better defend the U.S. against terrorism, while only 31 percent preferred Obama.

And they thought, by a 47 to 41 percent margin, that McCain could make better judgments about Iraq.

Experts were cautious Tuesday in measuring the trip’s political impact.

Obama took on some risk by “looking like he’s being tutored,” said Harold Cox, professor emeritus of history at Wilkes College in Pennsylvania.

“Things seem to be going as planned, and he could be helping himself,” said Kareem Crayton, associate professor of law and political science at the University of Southern California. “But we have to wait and see; we don’t know the public reaction yet.”

After Obama met Monday with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said that while Iraq did not endorse a date certain for withdrawal, he hoped it could occur sometime in 2010.

Some thought Obama helped himself politically.

“The prime minister clearly supports Obama’s plan for exiting Iraq,” Pariser said. “This couldn’t really be better.”

The visit “appears to have given the Iraqis the courage to express some of what they’re thinking, without fear of the Bush administration reprisals,” said Campbell of NETWORK.

But Obama’s views troubled many peace activists.

Bearden of Peace Action said that “we’ve seen the results of these military actions. We create a power vacuum and try to create a government. We did that in Iraq, and now we’re talking about using the same failed strategy again in Afghanistan.”

Judith LeBlanc, organizing coordinator for United for Peace & Justice, said that “dealing with the threat of terrorism cannot be done on a military basis.” She and other activists wanted to hear more from Obama about a strategy for dealing with terrorism around the globe, including more use of diplomacy and economic aid.

The activists agreed on this much: They’re not going to vote for McCain.

But whether Obama generated new enthusiasm, let alone attracted fence-sitting independent voters as McCain continued to blast him as naive, remains an open question.

“I think it’s fair to say,” said Crayton, “that he hasn’t hurt himself.”

© McClatchy Newspapers 2008

It seems that executives from Blackwater Worldwide, the Bush administration’s favourite hired guns in Iraq and Afghanistan, are threatening to pack up their M4 assault rifles, CS gas and Little Bird helicopters and go back to the great dismal swamp of North Carolina whence they came. Or at least that’s how it is being portrayed in the media.

This story broke on Monday, when the Associated Press ran an article based on lengthy interviews with Blackwater’s top guns. Since then, the story has picked up considerable steam and generated a tremendous amount of buzz online and in the press. After all, Blackwater has long been a key part of the US occupation and has been at the centre of several high-profile scandals and deadly incidents. Add to that its owner’s ties to the White House and the radical religious right in the US and it is clear why this is news. On top of that, Barack Obama - a critic of Blackwater - just completed a tour of Iraq, where he was touting his withdrawal plan.

Among the headlines of the past 24 hours: “Blackwater plans exit from guard work“, “Blackwater getting out of security business“, “Blackwater sounds retreat from private security business“, and “Blackwater to leave security business“. One blogger slapped this headline on his post: “Blackwater, worst organisation since SS, to end mercenary work.”

Frankly, this is a whole lot of hype.

Anyone who thinks Blackwater is in serious trouble is dead wrong. Even if - and this is a big if - the company pulled out of Iraq tomorrow, here is the cold, hard fact: business has never been better for Blackwater, and its future looks bright. More on this in a moment.

Back to the matter at hand. Complaining that negative media attention and congressional and criminal investigations are hurting business and that the Blackwater name had become a catch-all target for anti-war protesters, the company’s brass told the AP that Blackwater was shifting its focus to its other areas of government contracting, like law enforcement and military training, as well as logistics.

”The experience we’ve had would certainly be a disincentive to any other companies that want to step in and put their entire business at risk,” said Erik Prince, Blackwater’s reclusive, 39 year-old founder and owner. Company president Gary Jackson said Blackwater has become like the “Coca-Cola” of war contractors, a brand representing all private companies servicing the Iraq occupation. Jackson charged the company had been falsely portrayed in the media, saying, ”If [the media] could get it right, we might stay in the business.”

All of this sounds a bit like whining on a children’s playground.

Shame on journalists for not recognising the noble work of the gallant heroes and patriots (who happen to be paid much more than US troops and have not been subjected to any system of law and who can leave the war zone any moment they choose) and forcing Blackwater to consider abandoning its (very profitable, billion-dollar) charitable humanitarian campaign in Iraq. Remember, according to Blackwater, it is not a mercenary organisation. It is a “peace and stability” operation employing “global stabilisation professionals“.

While they were at it, Jackson and Prince should have blamed those wretched 17 Iraqi civilians who had the audacity to step in front of the bullets flying out of Blackwater’s weapons in Baghdad’s Nisour Square last September. After all, following those killings, Erik Prince told the US Congress that the only innocent people his men may have killed or injured in Iraq died as a result of “ricochets” and “traffic accidents”. If that is true, Nisour Square might have been the most lethal jaywalking incident in world history.

As for the current hype, the day after the AP story broke, Blackwater’s long-time spokesperson Anne Tyrrell was quick to clarify the matter. Blackwater, she said, has no immediate plans to exit the security business. “As long as we’re asked, we’ll do it,” she said. Meanwhile, the US state department, which renewed Blackwater’s contract for another year in April, says it has received no communication from the company indicating it is not going to continue on in Iraq. “They have not indicated to us that they are attempting to get out of our current contract,” said undersecretary of state Patrick Kennedy.

As of 2005-2006, according to the company, about half of Blackwater’s business was made up of its security work in places like Iraq, Afghanistan and post-Katrina New Orleans. Today, Jackson says it is about 30%. ”If I could get it down to 2% or 1%, I would go there,” he said in the interview.

Blackwater, like all companies operating in US war zones, is following political developments very closely. The company may be bracing for a possible shift in policy should Obama win in November. Blackwater could be contemplating resignation before termination. On the other hand, Obama has sent mixed messages on the future of war contractors under his Iraq policy. While he has been very critical of the war industry in general - and Blackwater specifically - he has also indicated he will not “rule out” using private armed contractors at least for a time in Iraq.

Perhaps Blackwater has already gotten what it needed from Iraq: over a billion dollars in contracts and a bad-ass reputation, which has served it well. In May, Blackwater boasted of “two successive quarters of unprecedented growth.” Among its current initiatives:

• Erik Prince’s private spy agency, Total Intelligence Solutions, is now open for business, placing capabilities once the sovereign realm of governments on the open market. Run by three veteran CIA operatives, the company offers “CIA-type services” to Fortune 1000 companies and governments.

• Blackwater was asked by the Pentagon to bid for a share of a whopping $15bn contract to “fight terrorists with drug-trade ties” in a US programme that targets countries like Colombia, Bolivia, Afghanistan and Uzbekistan. The New York Times said it could be the company’s “biggest job” ever.

• Blackwater is wrapping up work on its own armoured vehicle, the Grizzly, as well as its Polar Airship 400, a surveillance blimp Blackwater wants to market to the Department of Homeland security for use in monitoring the US-Mexico border.

On top of this, Blackwater affiliate Greystone Ltd, registered offshore in Barbados, is an old-fashioned mercenary operation offering “personnel from the best militaries throughout the world” for hire by governments and private organisations. It also boasts of a “multi-national peacekeeping programme,” with forces “specialising in crowd control and less than lethal techniques and military personnel for the less stable areas of operation.” Greystone’s name has been conspicuously absent in this current news cycle.

At the end of the day, maybe this is just a story, a whole lot of a hype and a dash of misdirection from a pretty savvy company. Safe money would dictate that Blackwater plans on continuing to be, well, Blackwater.

Consider this. The other day Blackwater president Gary Jackson told the AP: “Security was not part of the master plan, ever.”

Interesting claim. It was in fact Jackson himself who, back at the beginning of the Iraq occupation, described his goal for Blackwater as such: “I would like to have the largest, most professional private army in the world.”

Jeremy Scahill is the author of Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army.

© Guardian News and Media Limited 2008

Dear McCain presidential campaign:

You know what’s funny and cute and just a little bit sad? Wacky old pre-industrial war-hungry guys admitting they don’t know a computer from a microwave oven, a hyperlink from a heart med, can’t turn on one of those newfangled PC things if his life depended on it and/or he wanted to see what his weird tattooed bi-curious grandson is posting on his MySpace home docking station whateveryoucallit. Adorable!

Cuter still is when said wisecrackin’ curmudgeon admits he depends on the wife to show him how it all works, to log on and open a browser and check e-mail and describe what it all might mean out there in Interweb Cybertown, as you get the distinct feeling the old guy has no idea what makes it go and believes all this crazy gizmongery is for troublemakin’ whippersnappers anyway, as he pines for the days of teletype machines and prop aeroplanes. Charming!

Or, you know, maybe not. Because you know what’s depressing and just a bit beyond sad? A serious presidential candidate - that is to say, yours - who thinks it’s harmless that he’s actually one of those guys, who admits he’s a complete Luddite when it comes to computers and, by extension, most every aspect of modern multimedia and technology, except perhaps the exact specs of the nuke required to annihilate Iran and/or take out a big pile of “gooks.”

See, word has gotten out. Your boy John McCain says has no clue how to work a computer. He’s an admitted tech illiterate, couldn’t Google his way out of a DailyKos to save his Yahoo.

But here’s the disturbing part: This confession of ignorance apparently bothers him and his campaign not at all, as they apparently believe any sort of tech know-how isn’t really required to run our deeply busted-up ship of state, that you need no real firsthand experience with the most definitive technology of the past 100 years to make decisions that affect the entire planet. Go figure.

So then, the valid question: Is it a big deal? Should you care? Because McCain’s I’m-just-a-clueless-old-guy comment has caused a bit a stir, with anyone with a functioning DSL line calling it a bit of an embarrassment, a bit like running for captain of the swim team while admitting all you know how to do is splash around in the bathtub. Gosh, Senator, don’t you think you need just a passing understanding of the culture in which you live to qualify you to oversee the damnable place? Doesn’t it help?

Maybe not. Maybe McCain’s apologists are right, the POTUS really doesn’t need to have a working knowledge of what hun