Amnesty International Report 2003 Human rights activists continue to face new challenges. The war on Iraq has dominated the international agenda, diverting attention from other vital human rights issues. "Forgotten" conflicts have taken a heavy toll on human rights and human lives � in C�te d'Ivoire, Colombia, Burundi, Chechnya and Nepal. "Iraq and Israel and the Occupied Territories are in the news � Ituri in the Democratic Republic of Congo is not, despite the imminent threat of genocide, said Irene Khan, Amnesty International's Secretary General. "Drawing attention to 'hidden' crises, protecting the rights of the 'forgotten victims' is the biggest challenge we face today." Governments have spent billions to strengthen national security and the "war on terror". Yet for millions of people, the real sources of insecurity are corruption, repression, discrimination, extreme poverty and preventable diseases. Human rights defenders also celebrated some successes during 2002, such as the establishment of the International Criminal Court, which marked a breakthrough in the struggle against impunity for the worst crimes known to humanity. The Amnesty International Report 2003 documents human rights abuses in 151 countries and territories during 2002. It is a contribution to the work of human rights defenders struggling to achieve a safer world, a world where human rights take priority over political, military or economic interests. http://web.amnesty.org/report2003/index-eng

Thousands Move to Jewish Settlements This Year The Jewish settler population grew by more than 5,000 in the first half of 2003, despite U.S.-backed peace moves requiring Israel to halt construction in Jewish settlements, Israel said on Thursday. Palestinians seek an independent state on the West Bank and Gaza Strip that Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East war and the peace plan calls on Israel to dismantle unauthorized settler outposts and stop expansion of established settlements there. Advertisement The number of new settlers in the first half of 2003 showed a constant rate of population growth in the settlements that the international community says are illegal; a statement Israel disputes. Some 5,000 newcomers moved to the settlements in the second half of 2001 and in first half of 2002, while some 7,200 moved there in the second half of 2002, the Interior Ministry said. The ministry said 5,415 Israelis had moved to the settlements since January, with the ultra-Orthodox West Bank settlement of Beitar Illit seeing the largest jump of more than 1,000 newcomers. Betzalel Kahn, a Beitar Illit spokesman, said the draw for the ultra-Orthodox community was the cheap housing close to Jerusalem and not a bid to strengthen Israel's hold on the West Bank. http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-mideast-settlers.html

Deal Offered on Child Tax Credit Senate Republicans offered a compromise to the House today intended to end the stalemate blocking an expansion of the child tax credit to low-income families, but Democrats said the proposal's benefits for wealthier families were too expensive to pass. The offer came with an increase in political activity just four days before the government will begin mailing $400-per-child checks to 25 million middle-income families eligible to receive the tax credit. On Thursday, President Bush is scheduled to visit a federal office in Philadelphia that is printing the checks, using the opportunity to remind voters that the checks are to stimulate the economy. Democrats plan a series of protests on and off the floors of Congress this week to demonstrate their anger that 6.5 million low-income families were left out of the economic stimulus package and will not be receiving the checks. Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the Democratic leader, said members of her party would make this "the week from hell" for Republicans. On Wednesday, as part of one protest, 700 children are scheduled to descend on the Capitol to make a similar point. Today's compromise proposal, made by the three Republican senators who are negotiating with the House on the credits, would give the $400-per-child credits to the 6.5 million minimum-wage families, a provision that would cost $3.5 billion. But the plan would also spend $20 billion to give increased credits to 25 million middle- and upper-income families from 2005 to 2007. The increase, to $1,000 from $600, is now scheduled to expire in 2005. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/23/national/23TAX.html

The Great Catfish War For Tran Vu Long, who lives atop his floating catfish trap on the Mekong River near the border with Cambodia, the recent biannual harvest day was not the joyous payday it usually is. Mr. Long, a 35-year-old Vietnamese catfish farmer, sold his flapping fish � 40 tons' worth, all painstakingly weighed and carried in bamboo buckets onto the trading company's launch � at a loss of some $2,000, a small fortune here. Mr. Long, who stood sullenly to the side as his hired hands scooped out seemingly endless gaggles of fish from underneath the space that doubles as his living room, has Washington politicians to blame. "The United States preaches free trade, but as soon as we start benefiting from it, they change their tune," he said. His misfortunes are just another part of the tale of how wealthy countries that preach the gospel of free trade when it comes to finding markets for their manufactured goods can become wildly protectionist when their farmers face competition. The fate of Vietnam's catfish offers a warning to poorer nations short on leverage in the world trading system: beware of what may happen if you actually succeed at playing by the big boys' rules.� http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/22/opinion/22TUE1.html

Unjust, unwise, unAmerican America's plan to set up military commissions for the trials of terrorist suspects is a big mistake YOU are taken prisoner in Afghanistan, bound and gagged, flown to the other side of the world and then imprisoned for months in solitary confinement punctuated by interrogations during which you have no legal advice. Finally, you are told what is to be your fate: a trial before a panel of military officers. Your defence lawyer will also be a military officer, and anything you say to him can be recorded. Your trial might be held in secret. You might not be told all the evidence against you. You might be sentenced to death. If you are convicted, you can appeal, but only to yet another panel of military officers. Your ultimate right of appeal is not to a judge but to politicians who have already called everyone in the prison where you are held �killers� and the �worst of the worst�. Even if you are acquitted, or if your appeal against conviction succeeds, you might not go free. Instead you could be returned to your cell and held indefinitely as an �enemy combatant�. Sad to say, that is America's latest innovation in its war against terrorism: justice by �military commission�. Over-reaction to the scourge of terrorism is nothing new, even in established democracies. The British �interned� Catholics in Northern Ireland without trial; Israel still bulldozes the homes of families of suicide bombers. Given the barbarism of September 11th, it is not surprising that America should demand retribution�particularly against people caught fighting for al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. American officials insist that the commissions will provide fair trials. The regulations published by the Pentagon stipulate that the accused will be considered innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, that he cannot be compelled to testify against himself, and that the trials should be open to the press and public if possible. The problem is that every procedural privilege the defendant is awarded in the regulations is provisional, a gift of the panel which is judging him. The regulations explicitly deny him any enforceable rights of the sort that criminal defendants won as long ago as the Middle Ages. Moreover, the planned commissions lack the one element indispensable to any genuinely fair proceeding�an independent judiciary, both for the trial itself and for any appeal against a conviction. The military officers sitting as judges belong to a single chain of command reporting to the secretary of defence and the president, who will designate any accused for trial before the commissions and will also hear any final appeals. For years, America has rightly condemned the use of similar military courts in other countries for denying due process. Why dispense with such basic rules of justice? Mr Bush's officials say they must balance the demand for fair trials with the need to gather intelligence to fend off further terrorist attacks. Nobody denies that fighting terrorism puts justice systems under extraordinary strain. But this dilemma has frequently been faced by others without resorting to military trials. The established procedure is to pass special anti-terrorism laws, altering trial rules somewhat to handle terrorist cases, but not abandoning established court systems, and trying to retain the basic rights of those accused as far as possible. Britain and Spain have done this. There is no reason why America's own civilian courts, which have successfully tried plenty of domestic and foreign terrorists (including Mr Lindh), could not be adapted to this purpose. http://www.economist.com/opinion/displayStory.cfm?story_id=1908281

Report on USA Patriot Act Alleges Civil Rights Violations �in the six-month period that ended on June 15, the inspector general's office had received 34 complaints of civil rights and civil liberties violations by department employees that it considered credible, including accusations that Muslim and Arab immigrants in federal detention centers had been beaten. The accused workers are employed in several of the agencies that make up the Justice Department, with most of them assigned to the Bureau of Prisons, which oversees federal penitentiaries and detention centers. The report said that credible accusations were also made against employees of the F.B.I., the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Immigration and Naturalization Service; most of the immigration agency was consolidated earlier this year into the Department of Homeland Security. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/21/politics/21JUST.html?pagewanted=all&position=

450 Settlers Hold 30,000 Palestinians Hostage Hebron, where about 450 Jewish settlers live in a few small enclaves among some 150,000 Palestinians, illustrates how complicated it will be to move forward with the peace plan when mutual suspicion runs so deep. Under a previous agreement, Israel is permitted to keep troops in the center of Hebron to guard the settlers, even if the soldiers leave other parts of town. This allows the military to maintain strict control over 30,000 Palestinians, including the Karakis, who live in central Hebron. The army pulled back in the outlying parts of Hebron last fall. But since then, 27 Israeli civilians and security force members have been killed in the area, according to David Wilder, a spokesman for the settlers. "Any withdrawal of troops is a recipe for disaster," Mr. Wilder said. "Every time the soldiers pull out, Israelis get killed. There's much more Israeli security here today than three years ago. It's unfortunate, but it's absolutely necessary." Hebron has long stirred Jewish-Arab tensions. Arab rioters killed 67 Jews here in 1929. A Jewish settler, Baruch Goldstein, shot dead 29 Muslim worshipers in 1994 at the town's most important shrine, the Cave of the Patriarchs, which is sacred to Jews, Muslims and Christians. Soldiers now keep the Israeli and Palestinian sides completely separate. Mr. Karaki estimates his neighborhood has been under curfew for close to half of the past 33 months. The men have been able to work only sporadically. Schooling has been disrupted. The market has been closed. Even when the curfew is lifted, as has been the case for the past three weeks, soldiers still block most roads. The holy site is just a block away, but requires a roundabout journey of several miles to reach. The family acknowledges a powerful dependency on a satellite dish delivering 347 television channels. "If we didn't have this, we would explode," said Mr. Karaki, adding that it is usually tuned to Al Jazeera and other Arab news channels. "We have all become expert political analysts, but we are sick of the news." Eight babies have been born to the clan since the fighting began, and three more are expected by the end of the month. Three weddings have brought young brides into the family. "We have no work, no entertainment," said Fahmi Karaki, 52, another of the brothers. "There's nothing to do but make babies." The population boomlet has strained the limits of the compound. "We have reached the point where some people need to live outside," said Abdel Wahab Karaki, a father of 10 and grandfather of 14. "If someone wants to marry, we say, `Look for a house elsewhere.' " The two homes are spacious, well appointed and shockingly neat considering all the youngsters. The children have few toys and dart around in clusters, entertaining themselves on the blacktop between the homes, each with three levels. Small gardening plots just inside the walls have grapes, figs and lemons. School is out now, and a curfew is in effect only on Fridays and Saturdays. Still, the children have nowhere to go because soldiers block most streets. Ayman Karaki, 19, who works part time at a metal factory, rolled his eyes when asked if there was anywhere to go in the evenings. "I spend my life here with my cousins," he said. "I used to have friends in other parts of Hebron, and we played soccer or watched matches. Now I can't do anything like that." http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/21/international/middleeast/21HEBR.html?pagewanted=all&position=

In Najaf, a Sudden Anti-U.S. Storm Until now, interactions between the Americans and the Iraqis in Najaf have been calm, free of the random violence rampant in the country's Sunni heartland. But a sudden storm erupted on Saturday after Moktada al-Sadr, the scion of a clan of beloved clerics and the most vocal supporter of Iranian-style theocracy in Iraq, asserted that American forces were encircling his home. They were bent on arresting him, his aides announced, after an incendiary sermon on Friday in which he rejected the American-appointed Governing Council and called for the formation of an Islamic army. It was, said Lt. Col. Christopher C. Conlin, the commanding officer here, a deliberate misunderstanding. There had indeed been Apache helicopters clattering overhead and extra troops on the streets, but that was to provide security for a visit by Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz, Colonel Conlin said. The temporary ramping up of the United States presence could not be explained in advance for security reasons, and afterward the American officer relied on members of Najaf's City Council to pass the word. He wished the demonstrators would take their complaints to the new City Council. The abrupt storm this weekend underscored a point made by a review of the Iraq reconstruction effort released last week by a panel from the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. The lack of Iraqis involved in the reconstruction at all levels, widespread unemployment and woefully inadequate means of communicating what is happening to the country's 24 million people have combined to fuel an ever-higher level of frustration and anger about the American presence. Men like Mr. Sadr and his followers, determined to harness that frustration to wrest a greater say in Iraq's future, are stepping into the void. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/21/international/worldspecial/21NAJA.html?pagewanted=all&position=

Tense Meeting of Sharon and Abbas Ends in Stalemate On June 29, Israel withdrew from parts of the Gaza Strip and on July 2 from most of Bethlehem in the West Bank, pulling back in accordance with the peace plan from areas that, under the 1993 Oslo accords, it had previously ceded to Palestinian control. Palestinian forces resumed responsibility for policing in those areas. Israel has refused to withdraw from other areas, which it seized last year in response to a series of suicide bombings, until it determines that Mr. Abbas is dismantling militant groups. Israeli officials acknowledged that a result of that position was that most West Bank Palestinians had seen little tangible change as yet. They said Israel's defense minister, Shaul Mofaz, would consider easing some checkpoints and other restrictions on Palestinian travel through the West Bank. In a statement, Mr. Sharon's office said he had told Mr. Abbas "that Israel cannot ignore that terror and incitement have decreased of late, and it is noticeable that the Palestinians are making an effort regarding this." But he said terrorists had been rearming during the lull since late June, when the three main Palestinian factions announced that they were suspending attacks on Israelis. Mr. Sharon said Mr. Abbas needed to "take immediate and definite action to dismantle the terror organizations." Once that happened, he said, "Israel's ability to answer the needs of the Palestinians will be significantly increased." For now, Israelis are taking advantage of the Palestinian groups' declared cease-fire. Downtown Jerusalem was crowded late Saturday night with young people thronging to bars and restaurants. Mr. Abbas said in the interview that the governing Palestinian Authority was also using the cease-fire to rebuild. He said that it would strictly enforce the cease-fire and collect weapons from people carrying them in the streets, but that it would not provoke a civil conflict with Hamas or Islamic Jihad by, for example, searching homes for guns, as Israel demands. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/21/international/middleeast/21MIDE.html?pagewanted=all&position=

How Powerful Can 16 Words Be? "We did not go to war because of mustard gas or Scuds," said Joseph Cirincione, senior analyst at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "We went to war because President Bush told the nation that Saddam had, or might already have, a nuclear bomb, and we could not afford to wait. Now it's obvious that's not true and there was no solid evidence it was true at the time." "Would we have gone to war if the president hadn't uttered those 16 words?" he asked. "Clearly, the answer is yes." But, he added: "We wouldn't have gone to war without the nuclear threat. The president's case for war was centered on the nuclear threat." http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/20/weekinreview/20MARQ.html?pagewanted=all&position=

Why Liberals Are No Fun by FRANK RICH It wasn't in prime time, and the ratings weren't even on the charts. But in the 24/7 broadcasting arena of political talk, where liberals are on the losing side at least 22/7, they must take whatever scraps they can get. For them, it was a rare red-letter day when Al Franken, appearing on Book TV on C-Span 2, landed a rhetorical uppercut to the jaw of Liberal Nemesis No. 1, Bill O'Reilly, and left him even more senseless than usual. How can Democrats be so ineffectual in the media in which they would seem to have a home-court cultural advantage? The talk-show playing field is littered with liberal casualties: Mario Cuomo, Alan Dershowitz, Phil Donahue. Why waste money on more broadcasting flops? The conventional wisdom has it that liberals will never make it in this arena because they are humorless, their positions are too complicated to explain, and some powerful media companies (whether Mr. Murdoch's News Corporation or the radio giant Clear Channel) want to put up roadblocks. Others argue that liberals are so down and out that they don't even know what they believe any more. "The reason conservative media outlets work is that they have a mass audience united by a discrete ideology," says Tucker Carlson, who affably represents the right on CNN's "Crossfire" and is one of those I've queried about this topic in recent months. "They believe in nine things. They all know the catechism." In Mr. Carlson's view, Democrats are all over the ideological map in the post-Clinton era, and there can be no effective media without a coherent message. But the case against liberal talk success isn't a slam-dunk. After all, conservatives have their talk-show fiascos too, as evidenced by MSNBC, the lame would-be Fox clone that, as the comedian Jon Stewart has said, doesn't "deserve all those letters" in its name. MSNBC's just-canceled right-wing star, Michael Savage, drew smaller audiences on the channel than Mr. Donahue did. What's more, there actually are liberals who retain a sense of humor (witness Mr. Franken, Mr. Stewart and Michael Moore), while conservative stars are not infrequently humor-free (witness Mr. O'Reilly). Norman Lear goes so far as to argue that liberals are intrinsically funnier than conservatives. "Most comedy comes from those who see humor in the human condition," he says. "Most who traffic in the stuff could be called humanists. The far-right talk hosts spew a kind of venom and ridicule that passes for funnybone material with the program executives that hire them." If humor doesn't bring liberals talk-show success, is the problem that they lack rage? Cal Thomas, the conservative columnist and Fox host, speaks for many when he argues that "liberals don't have the anger" that conservatives have stored up from their years in the political and media wilderness. But this, too, is changing: Pinch most Democrats these days, and they'll vomit vituperation about President Bush as crazed as that of some Clinton haters of a decade ago.� http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/20/arts/20RICH.html

The Next Debate: Al Qaeda Link In all the debate over the disputed claims in President Bush's State of the Union address, we must not forget to scrutinize an equally important, and equally suspect, reason given by the administration for toppling Saddam Hussein: Iraq's supposed links to terrorists. The invasion of Iraq, after all, was billed as Phase II in the war on terror that began after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. But was there ever a credible basis for carrying that battle to Iraq? Don't misunderstand � we should all be glad to see the Iraqi people freed from Saddam Hussein's tyranny, and the defeat of Iraq did spell the demise of the world's No. 4 state sponsor of international terrorism (Iran, Syria and Sudan all have more blood on their hands in the last decade). But the connection the administration asserted between Iraq and Al Qaeda, the organization that made catastrophic terrorism a reality, seems more uncertain than ever. In making its case for war, the administration dismissed the arguments of experts who noted that despite some contacts between Baghdad and Osama bin Laden's followers over the years, there was no strong evidence of a substantive relationship. As members of the National Security Council staff from 1994 to 1999, we closely examined nearly a decade's worth of intelligence and we became convinced, like many of our colleagues in the intelligence community, that the religious radicals of Al Qaeda and the secularists of Baathist Iraq simply did not trust one another or share sufficiently compelling interests to work together. But Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld promised that the Bush administration had "bulletproof evidence" of a Qaeda-Iraq link, and Secretary of State Colin Powell made a similar case to the United Nations. Such claims now look as questionable as the allegation that Iraq was buying uranium in Niger.� http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/20/opinion/20BENJ.html

A Chronicle of Confusion in the Hunt for Hussein's Weapons On paper, the Pentagon's plan for finding Iraq's unconventional weapons was bold and original. Four mobile exploitation teams, or MET's, each composed of about 25 soldiers, scientists and weapons experts from several Pentagon agencies, would fan out to chase tips from survey units and combat forces in the field. They would search 578 "suspect sites" in Iraq for the chemical, biological and nuclear components that the Bush administration had cited time and again to justify the war. The Pentagon said the weapons hunters would have whatever they needed � helicopters, Humvees in case weather grounded the choppers, and secure telecommunications. But the "ground truth," as soldiers say, was this: chaos, disorganization, interagency feuds, disputes within and among various military units, and shortages of everything from gasoline to soap plagued the postwar search for evidence of Iraq's supposed unconventional weapons. To this day, whether Saddam Hussein possessed such weapons when the war began remains unknown. It is the biggest mystery of the war and a thorny political problem for President Bush. His administration has expanded the hunt and has urged patience, expressing the belief that some weapons may still be found. Others believe that to be increasingly unlikely. If only they'd had more patience wit the UN inspectors. A.I. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/20/international/worldspecial/20SEAR.html?pagewanted=all&position=

Annan Asks for Timetable on U.S. Withdrawal United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan has called on the American-led forces in Iraq to set out a "clear timetable" for a staged withdrawal, noting that numerous Iraqis had told United Nations officials that "democracy should not be imposed from the outside." While welcoming the formation last weekend of the 25-member Governing Council for Iraq, Mr. Annan said in a report distributed to Security Council members on Friday that "there is a pressing need to set out a clear and specific sequence of events leading to the end of the military occupation." The report comes at a delicate moment, less than a week after India declined to provide military assistance in Iraq unless it could be done with United Nations authorization. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell has indicated a willingness to explore a new resolution, but, simultaneously, United States military officials are predicting a prolonged guerrilla war that could keep high levels of troops in Iraq for months. The issue of a new resolution was not addressed in the report, though it did conclude by noting that "the legitimacy and impartiality of the United Nations is a considerable asset in promoting the interests of the Iraqi people." http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/20/international/worldspecial/20NATI.html

Title II Reports on the Quality of Teacher Preparation Meeting the Highly Qualified Teachers Challenge: The Secretary's Second Annual Report on Teacher Quality Under Title II of the 1998 reauthorization of the Higher Education Act, the Secretary of Education is required to issue annual reports to Congress on the quality of teacher preparation nationwide. Meeting the Highly Qualified Teachers Challenge: The Secretary's Second Annual Report on Teacher Quality is the Secretary's newest report on this important issue (PDF file, 1.8 MB). This report presents key findings from the Title II reporting system. It also addresses how we might move forward to meet the teacher quality requirements of the No Child Left Behind Act and highlights promising practices from all across the country. For additional data and information from the Title II accountability system on meeting the highly qualified teachers challenge, go to www.title2.org. http://www.ed.gov/offices/OESE/esea/index.html http://www.ed.gov/offices/OPE/News/teacherprep/Title-II-Report.pdf http://www.ed.gov/offices/OPE/News/teacherprep/