Mood:  irritated

Kids often mistreated when parents sent to war

Updated Tue. Jul. 31 2007 5:04 PM ET

CTV.ca News Staff

http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20070731/abuse_soldier_070731/20070731?hub=TopStories

Kids are at greater risk of being abused or neglected when one of their parents is an enlisted soldier who has been sent into combat, finds a new study in the: Journal of the American Medical Association.

While the study looked only at American soldiers, the study likely has implications for the families of Canadian soldiers serving in Afghanistan or in other areas of conflict.

The researchers found that the rate of child maltreatment during times when one of the parents was deployed was 42 per cent higher than the rate of maltreatment during times when the soldiers were at home.

As well, the rates of children being neglected was almost twice as high when soldiers were sent into combat compared to when the soldiers were at home.

Parental stress is believed to be mostly to blame, since combat-related deployments have been associated with increased stress among the parents left at home.

A team led by Deborah A. Gibbs, a health and social policy analyst at RTI International, looked at 1,771 families of enlisted U.S. Army soldiers who had at least one report of child maltreatment reported to the Army Family Advocacy Program. They compared rates of child mistreatment while the soldiers were at home compared to while they were sent into combat, between September 2001 and December 2004.

They found that the occurrence of moderate or severe maltreatment of children was about 60 per cent higher during deployment vs. non-deployment.

The rate of child neglect was almost twice as high when soldiers were sent into combat compared to when the soldiers were at home. In contrast, the rates of physical and emotional abuse were lower during deployment than during non-deployment.

"Although many military families manage to cope with the stress created by combat deployments, in other families this stress significantly impairs the parents' ability to care for their children appropriately," said study co-author Sandra Martin, professor in the Department of Child and Maternal Health at the University of North Carolina.

The study found that it was generally the mothers left at home who were more likely to commit the mistreatment. The rate of child maltreatment by civilian mothers was more than three times greater during times of deployment. And the rate of child neglect by female spouses was almost four times higher.

The occurrence of maltreatment during deployment was also elevated among fathers left at home but not significantly so.

The researchers note that the U.S. Army does offer a number of services to families to address the stress that deployment has on family members left at home, including child care and support groups for spouses of deployed soldiers.

"Nevertheless, the greater rate of child maltreatment associated with deployments suggests the need for enhanced support for civilian parents in terms of additional resources, more effective services, development of services that those parents at greatest risk will be likely to seek out and accept, and greater outreach to connect parents to services," the authors write.

Posted by Joe Anybody at 2:50 PM PDT

Updated: Tuesday, 31 July 2007 2:51 PM PDT

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 http://www.economist.com/world/international/PrinterFriendly.cfm?story_id=9546242

 Flood, famine and mobile phones

Technology is transforming humanitarian relief—and shifting the balance of power between donors and recipients

“MY NAME is Mohammed Sokor, writing to you from Dagahaley refugee camp in Dadaab. Dear Sir, there is an alarming issue here. People are given too few kilograms of food. You must help.”

A crumpled note, delivered to a passing rock star-turned-philanthropist? No, Mr Sokor is a much sharper communicator than that. He texted this appeal from his own mobile phone to the mobiles of two United Nations officials, in London and Nairobi. He got the numbers by surfing at an internet café at the north Kenyan camp.

As Mr Sokor's bemused London recipient points out, two worlds were colliding. The age-old scourge of famine in the Horn of Africa had found a 21st-century response; and a familiar flow of authority, from rich donor to grateful recipient, had been reversed. It was also a sign that technology need not create a “digital divide”: it can work wonders in some of the world's remotest, most wretched places.

“Technology completely alters the way humanitarian work is done,” says Caroline Hurford of the World Food Programme (WFP), a United Nations body that is the single largest distributor of food aid. Once upon a time, when disaster struck, big agencies would roll up with grain, blankets and medicine and start handing them out. Victims would struggle to the relief camps, if they could. For aid workers (let alone recipients) there was no easy way to talk to head office.

Now, when an emergency occurs, the first people on the ground are often computer geeks, setting up telephone networks so other aid agencies can do their stuff. Donors keep track of supplies on spreadsheets and send each other SMS messages: this road has been attacked by bandits, that village cut off by floods. Transport agencies announce helicopter flights by e-mail. Aid providers can find out where exactly on an incoming ship their medical supplies are, saving hours hanging round the docks. Aid donors find it easier to locate the victims of disaster; and victims queue as eagerly for mobile-phone access as they do for food.

As a result, the organisation of aid is changing. On the ground, all big relief operations have communications centres where aid workers go to send e-mails, read the latest security updates and study satellite maps of the affected area. The UN's humanitarian-affairs office runs a portal called ReliefWeb, containing every map and document that might help aid donors; it got 3m hits a day after the Asian tsunami.

And aid agencies are reorganising themselves around the technology. Two UN agencies are in charge of ensuring communications work in disaster zones: UNICEF (the children's fund) does basic data transmission; the WFP does communications in insecure areas. Télécoms sans Frontières (TSF), a French voluntary agency (total staff: a dozen), goes in with the UN team that does the first needs-assessment in the hours after disaster strikes.

Even in the short life of TSF (which grew out of the Kosovo conflict in 1999) the technological landscape has been transformed. Satellite phones—often the only ones working right after a disaster—used to be clunky contraptions that could only transmit speech. In the past five years, transmission speeds have more than doubled, so that electronic data can flow easily. The traffic grows heavier all the time, in part because the ultimate backers of the aid agencies—be they governments or individuals—want efficiency and accountability, and think they can get both.

Disaster relief is basically a giant logistical operation. Today's emergency responders can no more dispense with mobile phones or electronically transmitted spreadsheets than a global courier company can. But unlike most couriers, aid donors operate amid chaos, with rapidly changing constraints (surges of people, outbreaks of disease, attacks by warlords). Mobile phones increase the flow of information, and the speed at which it can be processed, in a world where information used to be confused or absent. The chaos remains, but coping with it gets easier.

Better communications also favour information-sharing and co-ordination between agencies. In recent years, the problems of co-ordination have grown with the size and complexity of operations. The Asian tsunami hit 14 countries in Asia and Africa. At one point, 400 organisations were working in Aceh alone—“possibly 200 too many”, remarked Jan Egeland, then the UN's emergency-relief co-ordinator. Things like e-mail service and satellite links help to herd the cats. Donors drop into telecoms centres to send e-mails, but also to swap stories and gossip. This creates a new version of the office water-cooler. Toby Porter, emergencies director of Save the Children, adds that mobile phones can facilitate relations between aid agencies and local governments; this, in turn, makes it easier for charities to gain access to remote war zones.

The benefits of technology are not quite a one-way street. Equipment is expensive. It creates co-ordination problems of its own (because of different technical standards); to address them, a score of big NGOs set up a consortium called NetHope, which spreads the cost of satellite communications and internet links. And as Hugo Slim of the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue points out, technology increases the flow of information not just to workers in the field, but to offices in New York or London; this may tempt bosses to micro-manage from afar—which can be disastrous.

Oisin Walton of Télécoms sans Frontières has a different worry: e-mail may supplant aid workers' conflict-avoidance skills; they may come to rely too much on e-mailed security warnings, and not enough on their instincts. And the Red Cross's Florian Westphal fears satellite or mobile phones will make warlords even more suspicious of aid workers; it is now harder to eavesdrop than it was when aid workers used open radio frequencies.

On balance, of course, technology is more of a boon than a problem, though the gains are uneven. Small NGOs will benefit most, since big NGOs and UN bodies already have decent information systems. Some sorts of technology have developed more than others: one big growth area is surveillance, broadly defined to include software that tracks supplies.

The benefits of easier surveillance are manifold. Take two cases: since the tsunami, Sri Lanka's largest telephone company has started an early-warning system which would send SMS messages to every mobile phone in an area at risk of flooding. And Amnesty International, the human-rights agency, is paying satellite-imaging firms to take aerial shots of Darfur and of parts of Zimbabwe. Amnesty used pictures of burned villages in the Sudanese region to prove that massacres had occurred, despite government denials. Images of Zimbabwe provided evidence for a lawsuit against President Robert Mugabe.

Surveillance technology also blurs the distinction between emergency and routine operations. The UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation draws vast detailed maps showing who is vulnerable to food shortages (“poverty mapping”). This same information can be used to map the areas affected in a more acute way by drought or famine. Similarly, the software that aid agencies use to track emergency medical supplies can help public-health officials gather routine information.

Télécoms sans Frontières took the data transmitter and laptops it had used to track food aid during a famine in Niger in 2005 and adapted them to store facts about disease prevalence afterwards. Vodafone (a telecoms firm) and the UN Foundation (an American charity) run programmes in Kenya and Zambia that put information about disease and medicine on data banks for use by health ministries. In short, public-health information improves disaster response, and disaster response boosts public health. Surveillance technology is especially useful for spotting early-warning signals (by tracking the paths of locusts or hurricanes); so it helps more with “predictable” disasters than it does in cases (like earthquakes or tsunamis) where warning times are brief or non-existent.

While the joys of gadgetry may seem obvious to aid workers, how much has it really done to help victims? The full answer to that question has yet to emerge, and it is aid recipients who will give it. The Tsunami Evaluation Coalition, a group of agencies bent on learning from past mistakes, notes that “local people themselves provided almost all immediate life-saving action and the early-emergency support, as is commonly the case in disasters.”

As the example of Mr Sokor shows, people affected by catastrophe are not necessarily helpless or hapless. Their ingenuity is likely to change disaster response by rich-world donors in unexpected ways.

Already, mobile telephony is transforming the landscape. The World Bank says the number of mobile-phone subscribers in sub-Saharan Africa increased sevenfold between 2000 and 2006. India nearly doubled its mobile-phone subscriptions last year to 150m and the government expects 500m (mobile and land lines) by 2010. Natural and man-made disasters do not only strike rural areas; nearly a billion city dwellers (who use mobiles more) are vulnerable to disaster.

In several recent disaster zones, victims surprised their benefactors by asking not for food or medicine but money. Save the Children, at least, has responded: it has been handing out cash in addition to food in the Horn of Africa and South Asia, and it says UN agencies should do the same.

Aid agencies are also using technology to meet the victims' other key demand: contact with relatives. People in safe places who are worried about missing cousins, and victims who are in desperate need of support from the extended family, can make use of websites whose purpose is to reunite friends and relatives. A Red Cross website (familylinks.icrc.org) has details of 125,000 families.

More broadly, technology increases the role of extended families, migrants and diasporas in dealing with disaster. To take a small example, members of Zimbabwe's diaspora living in Britain can go to a website called mukuru.com, order and pay for goods such as petrol online—and have them delivered to family members back home. The operation depends not only on the internet but also on mobile phones, because when an order is made the recipient gets a code texted to his mobile, which he must show to the petrol station when he collects the goods. Other websites enable members of the diaspora to provide loved ones with a range of goods and services from food to mobile-phone credits.

As yet, such operations have made only a small dent in Zimbabwe's unfolding crisis. Mukuru, run from a flat in Clapham in south London, has about 10,000 clients. A drop in the ocean: the WFP reckons it will have to feed as many as 4m Zimbabweans by next April.

But the websites are expanding fast; mukuru plans to open in half a dozen African countries this year. And the possibilities for using mobile telecoms to help relatives are enormous. Family remittances are already a bigger source of transfers to poor countries than government aid. Mobile telephony and mobile-phone banking are spreading. As these trends converge, diasporas will move even closer to centre stage in the delivery of succour to the needy.

In any case, technology's effect on humanitarian relief is only starting to be felt. “In the humanitarian operation of the future,” says Save the Children's Mr Porter, “beneficiaries of emergency aid will use technology to tell us what they need—cash, food, or education—find out from us what to expect, and track its arrival, just as we can track an order from Amazon.com now.”

And it may all happen sooner than aid agencies expect. As Mr Sokor's case shows, victims' thinking often moves faster than their benefactors' does. Following his appeal, the WFP did boost rations in the Dagahaley refugee camp, albeit citing other reasons. That blunt text message may be a harbinger of things to come.

Posted by Joe Anybody at 1:17 PM PDT

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Mood:  d'oh

Britain is protecting the

"biggest heroin crop of all time"

By CRAIG MURRAY

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=469983

This week the 64th British soldier to die in Afghanistan, Corporal Mike Gilyeat, was buried. All the right things were said about this brave soldier, just as, on current trends, they will be said about one or more of his colleagues who follow him next week.

The alarming escalation of the casualty rate among British soldiers in Afghanistan – up to ten per cent – led to discussion this week on whether it could be fairly compared to casualty rates in the Second World War.

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Killing fields: Farmers in Afghanistan gather an opium crop which will be made into heroin

But the key question is this: what are our servicemen dying for? There are glib answers to that: bringing democracy and development to Afghanistan, supporting the government of President Hamid Karzai in its attempt to establish order in the country, fighting the Taliban and preventing the further spread of radical Islam into Pakistan.

But do these answers stand up to close analysis?

There has been too easy an acceptance of the lazy notion that the war in Afghanistan is the 'good' war, while the war in Iraq is the 'bad' war, the blunder. The origins of this view are not irrational. There was a logic to attacking Afghanistan after 9/11.

Afghanistan was indeed the headquarters of Osama Bin Laden and his organisation, who had been installed and financed there by the CIA to fight the Soviets from 1979 until 1989. By comparison, the attack on Iraq – which was an enemy of Al Qaeda and no threat to us – was plainly irrational in terms of the official justification.

So the attack on Afghanistan has enjoyed a much greater sense of public legitimacy. But the operation to remove Bin Laden was one thing. Six years of occupation are clearly another.

Head of the Afghan armed forces: General Abdul Rashid Dostrum

Few seem to turn a hair at the officially expressed view that our occupation of Iraq may last for decades.

Lib Dem leader Menzies Campbell has declared, fatuously, that the Afghan war is 'winnable'.

Afghanistan was not militarily winnable by the British Empire at the height of its supremacy. It was not winnable by Darius or Alexander, by Shah, Tsar or Great Moghul. It could not be subdued by 240,000 Soviet troops. But what, precisely, are we trying to win?

In six years, the occupation has wrought one massive transformation in Afghanistan, a development so huge that it has increased Afghan GDP by 66 per cent and constitutes 40 per cent of the entire economy. That is a startling achievement, by any standards. Yet we are not trumpeting it. Why not?

The answer is this. The achievement is the highest harvests of opium the world has ever seen.

The Taliban had reduced the opium crop to precisely nil. I would not advocate their methods for doing this, which involved lopping bits, often vital bits, off people. The Taliban were a bunch of mad and deeply unpleasant religious fanatics. But one of the things they were vehemently against was opium.

That is an inconvenient truth that our spin has managed to obscure. Nobody has denied the sincerity of the Taliban's crazy religious zeal, and they were as unlikely to sell you heroin as a bottle of Johnnie Walker.

They stamped out the opium trade, and impoverished and drove out the drug warlords whose warring and rapacity had ruined what was left of the country after the Soviet war.

That is about the only good thing you can say about the Taliban; there are plenty of very bad things to say about them. But their suppression of the opium trade and the drug barons is undeniable fact.

Now we are occupying the country, that has changed. According to the United Nations, 2006 was the biggest opium harvest in history, smashing the previous record by 60 per cent. This year will be even bigger.

Our economic achievement in Afghanistan goes well beyond the simple production of raw opium. In fact Afghanistan no longer exports much raw opium at all. It has succeeded in what our international aid efforts urge every developing country to do. Afghanistan has gone into manufacturing and 'value-added' operations.

It now exports not opium, but heroin. Opium is converted into heroin on an industrial scale, not in kitchens but in factories. Millions of gallons of the chemicals needed for this process are shipped into Afghanistan by tanker. The tankers and bulk opium lorries on the way to the factories share the roads, improved by American aid, with Nato troops.

How can this have happened, and on this scale? The answer is simple. The four largest players in the heroin business are all senior members of the Afghan government – the government that our soldiers are fighting and dying to protect.

When we attacked Afghanistan, America bombed from the air while the CIA paid, armed and equipped the dispirited warlord drug barons – especially those grouped in the Northern Alliance – to do the ground occupation. We bombed the Taliban and their allies into submission, while the warlords moved in to claim the spoils. Then we made them ministers.

President Karzai is a good man. He has never had an opponent killed, which may not sound like much but is highly unusual in this region and possibly unique in an Afghan leader. But nobody really believes he is running the country. He asked America to stop its recent bombing campaign in the south because it was leading to an increase in support for the Taliban. The United States simply ignored him. Above all, he has no control at all over the warlords among his ministers and governors, each of whom runs his own kingdom and whose primary concern is self-enrichment through heroin.

My knowledge of all this comes from my time as British Ambassador in neighbouring Uzbekistan from 2002 until 2004. I stood at the Friendship Bridge at Termez in 2003 and watched the Jeeps with blacked-out windows bringing the heroin through from Afghanistan, en route to Europe.

I watched the tankers of chemicals roaring into Afghanistan.

Yet I could not persuade my country to do anything about it. Alexander Litvinenko – the former agent of the KGB, now the FSB, who died in London last November after being poisoned with polonium 210 – had suffered the same frustration over the same topic.

There are a number of theories as to why Litvinenko had to flee Russia. The most popular blames his support for the theory that FSB agents planted bombs in Russian apartment blocks to stir up anti-Chechen feeling.

But the truth is that his discoveries about the heroin trade were what put his life in danger. Litvinenko was working for the KGB in St Petersburg in 2001 and 2002. He became concerned at the vast amounts of heroin coming from Afghanistan, in particular from the fiefdom of the (now) Head of the Afghan armed forces, General Abdul Rashid Dostum, in north and east Afghanistan.

Dostum is an Uzbek, and the heroin passes over the Friendship Bridge from Afghanistan to Uzbekistan, where it is taken over by President Islam Karimov's people. It is then shipped up the railway line, in bales of cotton, to St Petersburg and Riga.

The heroin Jeeps run from General Dostum to President Karimov. The UK, United States and Germany have all invested large sums in donating the most sophisticated detection and screening equipment to the Uzbek customs centre at Termez to stop the heroin coming through.

But the convoys of Jeeps running between Dostum and Karimov are simply waved around the side of the facility.

Litvinenko uncovered the St Petersburg end and was stunned by the involvement of the city authorities, local police and security services at the most senior levels. He reported in detail to President Vladimir Putin. Putin is, of course, from St Petersburg, and the people Litvinenko named were among Putin's closest political allies. That is why Litvinenko, having miscalculated badly, had to flee Russia.

I had as little luck as Litvinenko in trying to get official action against this heroin trade. At the St Petersburg end he found those involved had the top protection. In Afghanistan, General Dostum is vital to Karzai's coalition, and to the West's pretence of a stable, democratic government.

Opium is produced all over Afghanistan, but especially in the north and north-east – Dostum's territory. Again, our Government's spin doctors have tried hard to obscure this fact and make out that the bulk of the heroin is produced in the tiny areas of the south under Taliban control. But these are the most desolate, infertile rocky areas. It is a physical impossibility to produce the bulk of the vast opium harvest there.

That General Dostum is head of the Afghan armed forces and Deputy Minister of Defence is in itself a symbol of the bankruptcy of our policy. Dostum is known for tying opponents to tank tracks and running them over. He crammed prisoners into metal containers in the searing sun, causing scores to die of heat and thirst.

Since we brought 'democracy' to Afghanistan, Dostum ordered an MP who annoyed him to be pinned down while he attacked him. The sad thing is that Dostum is probably not the worst of those comprising the Karzai government, or the biggest drug smuggler among them.

Our Afghan policy is still victim to Tony Blair's simplistic world view and his childish division of all conflicts into 'good guys' and 'bad guys'. The truth is that there are seldom any good guys among those vying for power in a country such as Afghanistan. To characterise the Karzai government as good guys is sheer nonsense.

Why then do we continue to send our soldiers to die in Afghanistan? Our presence in Afghanistan and Iraq is the greatest recruiting sergeant for Islamic militants. As the great diplomat, soldier and adventurer Lieutenant-Colonel Sir Alexander Burnes pointed out before his death in the First Afghan War in 1841, there is no point in a military campaign in Afghanistan as every time you beat them, you just swell their numbers. Our only real achievement to date is falling street prices for heroin in London.

Remember this article next time you hear a politician calling for more troops to go into Afghanistan. And when you hear of another brave British life wasted there, remember you can add to the casualty figures all the young lives ruined, made miserable or ended by heroin in the UK.

They, too, are casualties of our Afghan policy.

Posted by Joe Anybody at 1:31 PM PDT

Updated: Tuesday, 24 July 2007 1:42 PM PDT

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Mood:  don't ask

Broader Privilege Claimed In Firings

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/19/AR2007071902625_pf.html

By Dan Eggen and Amy Goldstein
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, July 20, 2007; A01

Bush administration officials unveiled a bold new assertion of executive authority yesterday in the dispute over the firing of nine U.S. attorneys, saying that the Justice Department will never be allowed to pursue contempt charges initiated by Congress against White House officials once the president has invoked executive privilege.

The position presents serious legal and political obstacles for congressional Democrats, who have begun laying the groundwork for contempt proceedings against current and former White House officials in order to pry loose information about the dismissals.

Under federal law, a statutory contempt citation by the House or Senate must be submitted to the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, "whose duty it shall be to bring the matter before the grand jury for its action."

But administration officials argued yesterday that Congress has no power to force a U.S. attorney to pursue contempt charges in cases, such as the prosecutor firings, in which the president has declared that testimony or documents are protected from release by executive privilege. Officials pointed to a Justice Department legal opinion during the Reagan administration, which made the same argument in a case that was never resolved by the courts.

"A U.S. attorney would not be permitted to bring contempt charges or convene a grand jury in an executive privilege case," said a senior official, who said his remarks reflect a consensus within the administration. "And a U.S. attorney wouldn't be permitted to argue against the reasoned legal opinion that the Justice Department provided. No one should expect that to happen."

The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the issue publicly, added: "It has long been understood that, in circumstances like these, the constitutional prerogatives of the president would make it a futile and purely political act for Congress to refer contempt citations to U.S. attorneys."

Mark J. Rozell, a professor of public policy at George Mason University who has written a book on executive-privilege issues, called the administration's stance "astonishing."

"That's a breathtakingly broad view of the president's role in this system of separation of powers," Rozell said. "What this statement is saying is the president's claim of executive privilege trumps all."

The administration's statement is a dramatic attempt to seize the upper hand in an escalating constitutional battle with Congress, which has been trying for months, without success, to compel White House officials to testify and to turn over documents about their roles in the prosecutor firings last year. The Justice Department and White House in recent weeks have been discussing when and how to disclose the stance, and the official said he decided yesterday that it was time to highlight it.

Yesterday, a House Judiciary subcommittee voted to lay the groundwork for contempt proceedings against White House chief of staff Joshua B. Bolten, following a similar decision last week against former White House counsel Harriet E. Miers.

The administration has not directly informed Congress of its view. A spokeswoman for Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.), the Judiciary Committee's chairman, declined to comment . But other leading Democrats attacked the argument.

Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) called it "an outrageous abuse of executive privilege" and said: "The White House must stop stonewalling and start being accountable to Congress and the American people. No one, including the president, is above the law."

Sen. Charles E. Schumer (N.Y.) said the administration is "hastening a constitutional crisis," and Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.) said the position "makes a mockery of the ideal that no one is above the law."

Waxman added: "I suppose the next step would be just disbanding the Justice Department."

Under long-established procedures and laws, the House and Senate can each pursue two kinds of criminal contempt proceedings, and the Senate also has a civil contempt option. The first, called statutory contempt, has been the avenue most frequently pursued in modern times, and is the one that requires a referral to the U.S. attorney in the District.

Both chambers also have an "inherent contempt" power, allowing either body to hold its own trials and even jail those found in defiance of Congress. Although widely used during the 19th century, the power has not been invoked since 1934 and Democratic lawmakers have not displayed an appetite for reviving the practice.

In defending its argument, administration officials point to a 1984 opinion by the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, headed at the time by Theodore B. Olson, a prominent conservative lawyer who was solicitor general from 2001 to 2004. The opinion centered on a contempt citation issued by the House for Anne Gorsuch Burford, then administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency.

It concluded: "The President, through a United States Attorney, need not, indeed may not, prosecute criminally a subordinate for asserting on his behalf a claim of executive privilege. Nor could the Legislative Branch or the courts require or implement the prosecution of such an individual."

In the Burford case, which involved spending on the Superfund program, the White House filed a federal lawsuit to block Congress's contempt action. The conflict subsided when Burford turned over documents to Congress.

The Bush administration has not previously signaled it would forbid a U.S. attorney from pursuing a contempt case in relation to the prosecutor firings. But officials at Justice and elsewhere say it has long held that Congress cannot force such action.

David B. Rifkin, who worked in the Justice Department and White House counsel's office under presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, praised the position and said it is consistent with the idea of a "unitary executive." In practical terms, he said, "U.S. attorneys are emanations of a president's will." And in constitutional terms, he said, "the president has decided, by virtue of invoking executive privilege, that is the correct policy for the entire executive branch."

But Stanley Brand, who was the Democratic House counsel during the Burford case, said the administration's legal view "turns the constitutional enforcement process on its head. They are saying they will always place a claim of presidential privilege without any judicial determination above a congressional demand for evidence -- without any basis in law." Brand said the position is essentially telling Congress: "Because we control the enforcement process, we are going to thumb our nose at you."

Rozell, the George Mason professor and authority on executive privilege, said the administration's stance "is almost Nixonian in its scope and breadth of interpreting its power. Congress has no recourse at all, in the president's view. . . . It's allowing the executive to define the scope and limits of its own powers."

Posted by Joe Anybody at 2:13 PM PDT

Updated: Friday, 20 July 2007 6:03 PM PDT

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Mood:  irritated

TOPOFF 4

Frequently Asked Questions

http://www.dhs.gov/xprepresp/training/gc_1179422026237.shtm

1. What is the TOPOFF Exercise Series?

Top Officials 4 (TOPOFF 4) is the Nation’s premier terrorism preparedness exercise, involving top officials at every level of government, as well as representatives from the international community and private sector. Sponsored by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), TOPOFF 4 is the fourth exercise in the TOPOFF (Top Officials) Exercise Series, a congressionally mandated exercise program. Each TOPOFF exercise involves a two-year cycle of seminars, planning events, and exercises culminating in a full-scale assessment of the Nation’s capacity to prevent, prepare for, respond to, and recover from terrorist attacks involving Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD).

2. What is TOPOFF 4?

Taking place from October 15–24, 2007, the Top Officials 4 Full-Scale Exercise (TOPOFF 4 FSE/T4 FSE) will involve thousands of Federal, State, territorial, and local officials. They will engage in various activities as part of a robust, full-scale simulated response to a multifaceted threat. The exercise will address policy and strategic issues that mobilize prevention and response systems, require participants to make difficult decisions, carry out essential functions, and challenge their ability to maintain a common operating picture during an incident of national significance. As in a real-world response, agencies and organizations will deploy staff into the field and will face realistic incident-specific challenges, including the allocation of limited response resources and exercise actions needed to effectively manage conditions as they emerge. Planning and preparation for the exercise will also help strengthen working relationships between departments and agencies that are critical to successful prevention and response in real emergencies.

3. Where will the TOPOFF 4 Full-Scale Exercise take place? How were the venues selected?

Joining DHS and other Federal agencies in this important effort are the States of Arizona and Oregon, the United States Territory of Guam, as well as three international partners: Canada, the United Kingdom, and Australia. As radiological incidents originate in Phoenix, Arizona; Portland, Oregon; and the United States Territory of Guam, State, territorial, and local officials in Oregon and Guam will conduct a full-scale exercise, while Arizona officials will participate in a functional exercise. In coordination with the U.S. Department of State, related activities will also take place in Canada, Australia, and the United Kingdom.

States request participation in the exercise to support national exercise goals and to enhance their own preparedness. Typically, two States are selected for each TOPOFF cycle. For the first time in the TOPOFF series, a U.S. territory will take part in the exercise this year.

4. What is the difference between a functional and a full-scale exercise (FSE)?

A functional exercise focuses on coordination of decision-making and communications during a simulated disaster. It is a functional assessment of planning and decision-making in a time of crisis that engages multiple agencies in policy decisions and communications over several days.

A full-scale exercise adds on-the-ground first response activities to test participants on a wide range of capabilities and task areas, including incident response, incident command, cross-jurisdictional coordination, risk communication, and implementation of protocols and policies. Participants in both full-scale and functional exercises also exercise prevention and the intelligence gathering function, which are critical to preventing terrorist attacks.

5. How many, and what kinds of, agencies are participating?

There will be approximately 15,000 participants from government and private sector organizations in TOPOFF 4. Approximately 10,000 participants from more than 275 government and private sector organizations participated in TOPOFF 3.

6. Who participates in TOPOFF training? What top officials are participating?

The exercise engages participants at all levels of government, from Cabinet Secretaries to governors, mayors, and city managers; to local fire, EMS, police, and search-and-rescue personnel; to professionals in law enforcement, public health, and public communications; to members of the private sector.

TOPOFF 4 will enable top officials and relevant personnel to practice different courses of action, gain and maintain situational awareness, and deploy appropriate resources. Top Federal officials, State governors, county executives, mayors, and city managers, along with State, local, and territorial personnel will be key participants and play active roles throughout the exercise.

7. What are the objectives of TOPOFF 4?

TOPOFF 4 has overarching programmatic objectives in five areas, which provide a framework for enhanced interagency coordination, a more cohesive planning process, and a stronger overall exercise experience for participants, culminating in a heightened ability to prevent, respond to, and recover from terrorist attacks and natural disasters. The stated objectives for TOPOFF 4 are:

• Prevention: To test the handling and flow of operational and time-critical intelligence between agencies to prevent a terrorist incident.
• Intelligence/investigation: To test the handling and flow of operational and time-critical intelligence between agencies prior to, and in response to, a linked terrorist incident.
• Incident management: To test the full range of existing procedures for domestic incident management of a terrorist weapon of mass destruction (WMD) event and to improve top officials’ capabilities to respond in partnership in accordance with the National Response Plan and National Incident Management System.
• Public information: To practice the strategic coordination of media relations and public information issues in the context of a terrorist WMD incident or incident of national significance.
• Evaluation: To identify lessons learned and promote best practices.

While working to meet the overarching exercise objectives, participating agencies, States, territories, and local entities also exercise to support their own individual objectives.

8. What role does the private sector play in T4?

DHS works through its Private Sector Office and Office of Infrastructure Protection to involve the private sector in the TOPOFF exercise cycle of events. TOPOFF 3 involved more than 5,000 members of the private sector participating at varying levels.

9. How does TOPOFF 4 differ from previous exercises in the TOPOFF series?

With each successive TOPOFF cycle, coordination and cooperation are enhanced, creating continuous improvements in the preparedness effort. The T4 FSE includes the greatest coordination to date, with concurrent exercises being conducted by the Department of Defense and, for the first time ever, will include a response from within a U.S. Territory. The exercise includes a strong prevention component, and is being interlinked with the Terrorism Prevention Exercise Program (TPEP), a component of the Homeland Security Exercise and Evaluation Program (HSEEP).

TOPOFF 4 also utilizes a capabilities-based planning approach, allowing Federal, State, territorial, and local officials to identify and exercise multiple emergency response and recovery capabilities that would be employed against a wide array of real-world hazards. Some of the capabilities being exercised this year include: evacuation/shelter-in-place, mass care, and interoperable communications. This approach aligns TOPOFF exercise program with the National Preparedness Goal and associated documents such as the Target Capabilities List (TCL) (which identifies needed capabilities) and the Universal Task List (UTL) (which identifies the tasks necessary to execute each capability). It also gives participants an opportunity to become more familiar with the National Response Plan and National Incident Management System. This collective guidance forms the framework for how our Nation responds to all hazards in a coordinated and consistent manner.

10. What is the scenario for the TOPOFF 4 FSE?

The T4 FSE is based on National Planning Scenario 11 (NPS-11). The scenario begins as terrorists, who have been planning attacks in Oregon, Arizona, and the U.S. Territory of Guam, successfully bring radioactive material into the United States. The first of three coordinated attacks occurs in Guam, with the simulated detonation of a Radiological Dispersal Device (RDD), or “dirty bomb,” causing casualties and widespread contamination in a populous area. Similar attacks occur in the hours that follow in Portland and Phoenix. An RDD is not the same as a nuclear attack. It is a conventional explosive that, upon detonation, releases radioactive material into the surrounding area. Although it does not cause the type of catastrophic damage associated with a nuclear detonation, there are severe rescue, health, and long-term decontamination concerns associated with an RDD.

11. How is the TOPOFF 4 scenario developed?

A team of exercise planners experienced in WMD, war gaming, law enforcement, intelligence, and international terrorist networks develop the scenario. The team also works with planners in the participating nations, States, territories, local jurisdictions, private sector entities, and Federal departments and agencies to ensure that the scenario can sufficiently sustain the exercise and meet participants’ specific training objectives.

12. How relevant is the TOPOFF 4 scenario to the war on terrorism?

The TOPOFF 4 scenario is based on research of actual terrorist organizations’ capabilities and news accounts of events that have transpired since September 11, 2001. The scenario is plausible, but purely fictional.  It is not based on specific military or government intelligence and is not intended as a forecast of future terrorist activities. The scenario contains some artificiality to ensure conformance with agencies’ and jurisdictions’ training objectives.

13. Will real weapons be used?

Real weapons will not be used in the scenario, but the response will be mounted as if they had been.

14. How are lessons learned from past exercises used to inform and improve future exercises?

Lessons learned from each TOPOFF exercise provide valuable insights that guide future planning for securing the Nation against terrorist attacks. The Department of Homeland Security’s Homeland Security Exercise and Evaluation Program (HSEEP) is a capabilities and performance-based program that provides a standardized mechanism for building on such lessons learned. HSEEP outlines an evaluation methodology by using Exercise Evaluation Guides (EEGs). These standardized guides ensure that emergency preparedness can be measured in the exact same way everywhere exercises take place. This makes it possible to assess current capabilities and measure preparedness over time for any jurisdiction—in every response area. In addition to establishing standard evaluation tools, this model gives guidance on gathering and reporting lessons learned, which help to identify strengths and areas needing improvement. This information is then folded back into the exercise process to enhance its relevance and realism for the next exercise in the series.

15. What does it mean to “play” in the exercise? How is exercise play prompted and regulated?

Play is the term used to describe how personnel from a variety of agencies and organizations act out the response to the scenario, as though it had actually occurred.  Players are fed information by exercise controllers, based on a Master Scenario Event List (MSEL). The MSEL contains a number of key events that trigger the need to make decisions and conduct activities to exercise specific agency capabilities and achieve the exercise objectives.

16. What is gained from TOPOFF training?

Top officials from all levels of government gain valuable knowledge and experience dealing with complex issues related to terrorism prevention, preparedness, response, and recovery. The exercise offers participants a mechanism to test plans and skills in a real-time, realistic environment and to gain the in-depth learning that only experience can provide. Training activities are based on the objectives of participating departments and agencies.

Several of the overarching objectives of TOPOFF 4 pertain directly to the assignment of roles and responsibilities, and the coordination of communications and operations. By exercising these objectives, participants are able to improve upon their overall ability to respond to major disasters, regardless of whether they are natural or manmade.

TOPOFF 4 also provides an opportunity to fully integrate and conform to Homeland Security Presidential Directive – 8 (HSPD-8), the National Preparedness Goal, and the National Exercise Program. DHS will introduce the five-year National Exercise Program plan during the TOPOFF 4 exercise cycle. This program combines exercise activities, affords departments and agencies the opportunity to reduce the number of separate exercises they must plan and participate in, and, more importantly, provides an opportunity to demonstrate that the government can operate effectively during an elevated threat situation.

17. How does TOPOFF influence Federal, State, territorial, and local preparedness capabilities?

The exercise will offer top officials at all levels of government an opportunity to practice and reinforce operations under the President’s National Preparedness Strategy. The exercise’s implementation of the National Response Plan (NRP) will include practicing capabilities in the areas of incident response, incident command, cross-jurisdictional coordination, emergency and risk communication, and implementation of protocols and policies. Significantly, the T4 FSE will help to introduce a more integrated approach to national preparedness, ensuring that existing preparedness initiatives are closely aligned and operationally synchronized. The T4 FSE also offers an important opportunity to aggressively exercise capabilities developed or strengthened as a result of recent events, including new technologies, policies, and procedures.

18. Is the exercise open to outside observation?

Because of the sensitive nature of the capabilities being exercised, external observation and information dissemination will be carefully managed. Some international, Federal, State, territorial, and local officials and emergency response personnel are invited to observe a portion of the exercise, so that they may better understand how we as a Nation are preparing to address terrorist threats. Members of the media will be able to attend briefings during and after the exercise. Some law enforcement and intelligence components of the exercise are classified and will not be discussed in detail.

19. What happens if there is a real terrorist attack or natural disaster while the exercise is taking place?

The exercise will be halted immediately. No essential personnel will be diverted from any type of actual emergency response effort to respond to simulated events, nor will ongoing preparedness efforts be compromised.

20. What information will be made available to the public about exercise outcomes and lessons learned?

There will be a formal evaluation of the exercise, and findings and lessons learned will be applied to ongoing efforts to improve national preparedness and security. Because of the need to maintain operational security and protect sensitive information about efforts to thwart terrorist activities, information released to the public must be carefully scrutinized.  DHS and its partner agencies make every effort to keep the public informed, without releasing information that could potentially aid our enemies.

21. Who can I contact at DHS public affairs for additional information?

News media inquiries about TOPOFF 4 should be directed to the FEMA News Desk at (202) 646-4600 or send an email to FEMA-News-Desk@dhs.gov

Posted by Joe Anybody at 2:57 PM PDT

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Mood:  happy

Here is a Oregon Country Fair

Drumming Video

Filmed at the campgrounds a 9 min video of the

COUNTRY FAIR (camping) DRUM CIRCLE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nu99qhKx8i0

_________a longer 45 min version is on my web site ________

Here is just one small "bottle return" at the campgrounds

By the way "no beer drinking allowed in campgrounds"

PEACE ~ Joe

Posted by Joe Anybody at 5:25 PM PDT

Updated: Thursday, 19 July 2007 11:40 AM PDT

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Mood:  incredulous

http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/january2006/180106perspective.htm

CLICK LINK TO DOWNLOAD THIS POLICE STATE MONTAGE  

The Final Countdown

This montage features many personalities speaking about the NWO, including Alex Jones.

Thanks to

Alex Ansary
Host of Outside the Box
http://www.alexansary.blogspot.com

Posted by Joe Anybody at 3:24 PM PDT

Updated: Tuesday, 17 July 2007 3:26 PM PDT

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Mood:  lyrical

Helloooooooooo Vietnam

Oh wait……..no body remembers that!

That’s that war we all have seem to have amnesia from all of a sudden!

How are my fellow friendly Z3 Readers all doing?

I have been on vacation and it’has been “no sleeping-around” over here.

Let me rattle a few topics I have been involved with in the past couple months/weeks:

Here is my July 4^th 911 Truth - Protest Video Links:

http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2007/07/361946.shtml

Check out this one where I interview a young activist named Lori

When I met her at the 911 Truth march I was impressed by her insights, so I ask to film/ interview her …..which starts a good conversation on Indy Media about youth and politics see that short YouTube link on this Indy Media post of mine here:
http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2007/07/361888.shtml

And how about this guy downtown who spoke up, and towards my camera his name is Jerry D Earthling::

http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2007/07/361941.shtml

Just yesterday (Monday 7/9) I took this video on a War Resister Protest March::

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6008175453925948790

In the morning I am going to court to support 6 grannies who are on trial

Then more filming the war resister Agustín, “again” on Wednesday night at PSU

I recently was in court (star witness) (still waiting on verdict) with 2 peacemakers who were arrested for trying to talk to my Senator….. Mr. Smith. They were arrested for not leaving the private property The video I took is (same one judge watched) here:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2235463856419852730&hl=en

The defendants asked me to testify and my video was used as evidence. The judge watched the whole thing. We are awaiting the verdict …. It is a constitutional issue on being denied the right to talk with your Senator.

How about those “racist” minuteman who had a protest at city hall so I videoed them.

That was after that big Immigration Raid at Del Monty a few weeks ago, that video of outside city hall is here:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1033017606657408336

Oh ya, just finished working on another short video ( I was repairing some bad audio) for the Spanish/Mexican, Day-Labor Center, hope to hand that back to that group today (after the grannies-in-court meeting)…They were NOT in court for the TANK protest during the rose festival that I filmed here:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-29585898801983269

Just got back a few weeks ago from a 3 day campout in OLLIE Lake

I made two videos and just finished editing them both today. One is two young kids who are my friends children singing “Country Roads” the other is a 30 min “Nature” video with a music background.

I hope to post them on my video page by next week, what a great place!

So frequently .......Check here for all my video’s

http://www.joe-anybody.com/id83.html

I am still working but almost done with my Barn video… I shot an hours worth of video footage of this very old wooden barn that is falling apart….. Darn that one is behind schedule since I started that a few months ago. I should have that finished any day…its kinda long ….. but sure was a real cool barn by a lake!

Maybe it was all those grandkid birthday video I shot and made DVD copies to all my kids, that was real time gobbler …... but those were some cute films.

But I live today to wage peace and I urge you all to help support the anti war movement.

This world needs love ……remember …”make love – not war” ? …hmmmmmm?

Ya that saying, it too was from that same era of that war we all seem to have forgot about these day’s.

“If your not outraged …your not paying attention!”

Off to the Country Fair in 2 days ….. wow no computer out there!

PEACE NOW!

Joe-Anybody

Posted by Joe Anybody at 4:38 PM PDT

Updated: Tuesday, 10 July 2007 4:43 PM PDT

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