It is the biggest leak of military secrets ever. Al Jazeera has obtained access to almost 400,000 classified American documents. Torture, claims of murder at the checkpoint - revelations that make a mockery of the rules of combat. This special programme reveals the truth about the war in Iraq.
Hitchens asked Ramadan, who has said that terrorism is never justified but that he could understand how, in certain circumstances, people could be led to commit terror, “who has the authority to issue fatwas?” Not to be misunderstood, Hitchens pointed out, “I’m certainly not going to criticize Islam for not having a pope. The Christian world is full of pope-types.” But, he told Ramadan, “in cities from Sweden to Spain” Muslims are calling for inclusion into a restored Caliphate. “That’s why you’re in the position you’re in.”
Ramadan admitted there was a “crisis of authority” in Islam, but told Hitchens that he could not “reduce” Islamic leaders who espouse suicide bombing, to that position alone. “I read what is said and I try to be selective,” Ramadan said. “We need to have a particular debate.”
“You seem to want to have that a little bit both ways,” Hitchens said, before rounding on the biggest applause line of the night, “If you want diversity, you need a secular state with a godless constitution. Secularism is the only guarantee of religious freedom.”
Returning to the evening’s assignment, Hitchens said Islam requires the belief that the prophet Muhammad was “a perfect human being” and that the Koran is “a perfect book.” “These are categories that do not exist,” Hitchens said. “Yet any challenge to them is heresy. The demands that you believe these imperatives do not lead to peaceful outcomes.”
In the evening’s one stirring moment, Hitchens pointed out that the Jews had “decided about the second messiah what they had decided about the first.” There was a note of despair in his voice when he asked, “Will they ever be forgiven for either?”
Having defined jihad as a “resistance to reform the world for the better and blamed “political instrumentalization” for the misunderstanding of Islam, Ramadan did not respond. Later, when Hitchens remarked that “Syria does fund the murder gang Hezbollah,” Ramadan reacted, with some relief, as if he’d scored his biggest point of the night. “You agree on the instrumentalization of religion,” he said. “That’s good enough for me.”
After the debate a viewer said of Ramadan, “He was very articulate, but it sounded like he was talking around what would have gotten him in trouble.” This quality was apparent several times in the evening, not least when the moderator, Laurie Goldstein of the New York Times, asked Ramadan if he really meant to say that Turkey was becoming “more progressive” as its government became increasingly Islamic.
Ramadan, who had said Turkey was “progressing” and “moving to become more democratic,” responded by saying, “We don’t know what to call the leaders now. Islamists? Ex-Islamists? They have new thoughts on the rule of law promoting what they are trying to promote.”
But he never said what new thoughts either the Islamist or ex-Islamists had in mind.
By now Hitchens, who had arrived on stage in a trim blue suit with a clipboard and a bottle of water (and, incongruously, a massive Flashman collection), was no longer taking notes. Ramadan, whose voice rises when he slips into jargon such as “Islam says your dignity is in your freedom,” went on to say “don’t reduce Turkey to levels… there are dynamics… Turkish women everywhere are promoting a better kind of Islam. This is what I promote.”
At the end of the debate, Hitchens was rolling his pen in the fingers of one hand and looking over his shoulder offstage. After shaking hands with his opponent, he stood and waited for Ramadan to leave the stage before he turned to leave on his own.
The U.S. government will "vigorously enforce" federal laws against marijuana even if voters next month make California the first state to legalize pot, Attorney GeneralEric Holdersays.
Holder's warning, contained in a letter to ex-federal drug enforcement chiefs, was his most direct statement yet against Proposition 19, and it sets up another showdown with California over marijuana if the measure passes.
With Prop 19 leading in the polls, the letter also raised questions about the extent to which federal drug agents would go into communities across the state to catch small-time users and dealers, or whether they even had the resources to do it.
If the ballot measure passes, the state would regulate recreational pot use. Adults could possess up to one ounce of the drug and grow small gardens on private property. Local governments would decide whether to allow and tax sales of the drug.
But Holder stressed that the Justice Department remains committed to enforcing the Controlled Substances Act in all states.
"We will vigorously enforce the CSA against those individuals and organizations that possess, manufacture or distribute marijuana for recreational use, even if such activities are permitted under state law," he wrote.
The letter was dated Wednesday and was obtained by The Associated Press.
Medical marijuana users and experts were skeptical, saying there was little the federal government could do to slow the march to legalization.
"This will be the new industry," said Chris Nelson, 24, who smokes pot to ease recurring back pain and was lined up outside a San Francisco dispensary. "It's taxable new income. So many tourists will flock here like they go to Napa. This will become the new Amsterdam."
Holder also said legalizing recreational marijuana would be a "significant impediment" to the government's joint efforts with state and local law enforcement to target drug traffickers, who often distribute pot alongside cocaine and other drugs.
The attorney general said the ballot measure's passage would "significantly undermine" efforts to keep California cites and towns safe.
Officials in Los Angeles County, where authorities have aggressively moved to tamp down on an explosion of medical marijuana dispensaries, vowed that they would still assist the federal government in drug investigations.
County Sheriff Lee Baca and District Attorney Steve Cooley said at a news conference that the law would be unenforceable because it is trumped by federal laws that prohibit marijuana cultivation and possession.
"We will continue as we are today regardless of whether it passes or doesn't pass," Baca said. His deputies don't and won't go after users in their homes, but public use of the drug will be targeted, he said.
Both gubernatorial candidates - Democrat Jerry Brown and RepublicanMeg Whitman- oppose Prop 19 and declined comment Friday.
The ex-Drug Enforcement Administration chiefs sent a letter to Holder in August calling on the Obama administration to sue California if Prop 19 passes.
If California prevents police from enforcing the stricter federal ban on marijuana, the Supreme Court has ruled that the federal government cannot order local law enforcement to act, he said.
It "is a very tough-sounding statement that the attorney general has issued, but it's more bark than bite," said Robert Mikos, a Vanderbilt University law professor who studies the conflicts between state and federal marijuana laws.
"The same factors that limited the federal government's influence over medical marijuana would probably have an even bigger influence over its impact on recreational marijuana," Mikos said, citing not enough agents to focus on small-time violators.
Federal drug agents have long concentrated on big-time drug traffickers and left street-level dealers and users to local and state law enforcement. As police departments began enforcing California's medical marijuana law, the DEA only sporadically jumped in to bust medical users and sellers that local law enforcement was no longer targeting.
Allen Hopper, a drug law reform expert at the American Civil Liberties Union in Northern California, predicted that federal agents would selectively crack down on marijuana growers and merchants instead of going after every Californian who uses pot.
"They don't have the resources to flood the state with DEA agents to be drug cops," he said.
Nearly all arrests for marijuana crimes are made at the state level. Of more than 847,000 marijuana-related arrests nationwide in 2008, for example, just over 6,300 suspects were booked by federal law enforcement, or fewer than 1 percent.
Consequently, the fight over legalization may end up the same way medical marijuana did, experts said.
When Californians approved their first-in-the-nation medical marijuana law in 1996, Clinton administration officials vowed a harsh crackdown. But nearly 15 years later, California's billion-dollar medical marijuana industry is thriving.
During the Bush administration, retail pot dispensaries across the state faced regular raids from federal anti-drug agents. Their owners were sometimes sentenced to decades in prison for drug trafficking. Yet the medical marijuana industry still grew.
Besides California, 13 other states and the District of Columbia have legalized medical marijuana in recent years.
At the San Francisco Medical Cannabis Club, where you can buy marijuana-filled carrot cake and lollipops, manager James Kyne said the federal government would just be continuing "an endless cycle" with little positive effect.
Holder "is opening a bigger can of worms," Kyne said.
---
Associated Press writers Pete Yost in Washington, Terry Collins and Lisa Leff in San Francisco, Samantha Young in Sacramento and Robert Jablon in Monterey Park, Calif., contributed to this report.
On the day a Federal District Court judge told the would-be Times Square bomber that she hoped he would spend his life sentence thinking about whether “the Koran wants you to kill lots of people,” Christopher Hitchens and Tariq Ramadan took the stage at the 92nd Street Y to debate the question, “Is Islam a religion of peace?”
Neither man liked the question.
“This is not the right question to ask,” Ramadan said in his opening remarks. “It doesn’t mean anything.” It didn’t mean anything when George W. Bush called Islam a religion of peace, said the Swiss scholar, barred by the Bush administration from entering the United States on anti-terrorism grounds in 2004.
The right question, he said is “do we have something helping us toward peace?” Ramadan seemed to be saying that Islam served that purpose, though he never said so outright. “The Koran is the word of God,” he said. “The problem is not the book. The problem is the reader.”
In his rebuttal, Hitchens would agree with Ramadan about the perils of reading, but said that the fault did not always lie with the reader. “In reading the Koran,” Hitchens said, “I can’t tell if it’s the word of god, but I can hope it’s a sign of god having a bad day.”
Ramadan argued that religion was “instrumentalized” (he used the word five times) by bad actors who distorted it. With a penchant for becoming emphatic when stating the obvious, Ramadan said, “Islam is a religion for human beings. But we are not peaceful human beings.” The “diversity” within Islam—“Maimonides spoke Arabic better than me,” he said—led to the risk of “lots of wars.” Turning to Hitchens, a former Trotskyist and trade union organizer, Ramadan said, “You see what some did with Marx. Is therefore all Marx bad? No.”
(When he spoke next, Hitchens seemed to pause as he considered how far to take the bait about Marx, and then declined to do so at all.)
“You don’t give the people all the interpretation,” Ramadan told Hitchens. “It’s not serious to say all Muslims are acting in the same way. Don’t tell me you didn’t hear the Muslim condemnation of September 11.”
But Ramadan went on to complain that in fact Muslim appeals for reason do go unheard. Speaking of himself, he said, “When what he’s saying is good, he’s alone. When they don’t like what I say, it’s, `He has a huge following.’“
But he did not think that history should be any guide to reform. “Don’t rely on history,” he said. “With history you prove whatever you want.” He then drew a parallel between Islamist terror as a distortion of Islam and the American campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan. “In the name of human rights we kill innocent people,” he said, his soft, French-inflected voice rising as he leaned over the podium. “The blood of an Iraqi or an Afghan is as good as American blood.”
In his rebuttal, Hitchens pointed out that though he didn’t think “the motion was a particularly good one, I knew about it as long as Professor Ramadan did, and I agreed to speak to it. Not to make it a point of self-pity.”
After rebuking Ramadan for his remark about American and Middle Eastern blood, Hitchens asked, “What has the United States done in Iraq that was as criminal as the blowing up of the Golden Mosque in Samarra? Deliberately intending to start a civil war, which it did. Where is the Sunni outrage? Where is the Sunni fatwa against this conduct? I missed it. And so, apparently, did the followers of the prophet.”
"I hope you'll join me in this campaign to stop the killing of dolphins in Japan. Most people in Japan don't have any idea that the dolphin slaughter is even happening. If we can spread the word around the world - and especially in Japan - we can expose the secret of Taiji and force the Japanese government to stop it. We can win this issue - but we need your help!
At the Cove in Taiji, the dolphin killing continues. Although the killing of bottlenose dolphins - the primary target species - has dramatically decreased compared to previous seasons, they, along with other dolphin species, including many pilot whales and Risso's dolphins, continue to be captured for aquariums and slaughtered for meat by the Taiji fishermen. The fight for the protection of all marine mammals goes on. For updates on the situation, visit our Blog."
Bernard Thibault, head of the CGT workers' confederation, made the statement as union leaders prepared to discuss plans to hold a seventh day of national protests across France.
Rubbish has been piling up on the streets of Marseille after nine days of strikes by collectors.
Meanwhile rolling strikes are continuing against government plans to raise the pension age from 60 to 62.
Blockades of refineries and fuel depots have led to fuel shortages.
President Sarkozy has called for an end to the disruption. "This disorder which is aimed at paralysing the country could have consequences for jobs by damaging the normal running of economic activity," he said on Wednesday.
Stepping up action.
Mr Thibault told RMC radio on Thursday: "The government remains intransigent. We need to continue with massive action as soon as next week... We will ask the unions for strong action that will allow people to stop work and go on to the streets."
In the southern port-city of Marseille, there is no public transport, trains have been delayed or cancelled and the ports blockaded, and the nine-day rubbish collectors' strike means several thousand tonnes of refuse is piling up on the city's streets.
The top central government official in the area, Michel Sappin, said: "There is a real danger to the safety and health of Marseille."
The unions' tactics are clear, says the BBC's Matthew Price in the southern port city - to cause discomfort, if not chaos, and to create uncertainty across the country.
They believe that keeps the pressure on the government to change its retirement plans but, adds our correspondent, it also risks alienating the public, who so far according to surveys still support the strikers.
The Senate is due later this week to vote on the pension reforms - aimed at raising the retirement age from 60 to 62 and the full state pension age from 65 to 67.
The lower house has already approved the bill.
Electricity imports.
Ahead of the vote, correspondents say unions are stepping up the pressure on a 10th day of refinery strikes, go-slows on motorways and work stoppages at regional airports.
The BBC's Christian Fraser in Paris says there is a precedent for such a move.
In 2006, student protests forced the government to retreat on the controversial youth labour scheme, even after then President Jacques Chirac had signed it into law.
Some unions want to continue the protests whatever happens in parliament but that will depend on public support and the resolve of their members, many of whom have gone without pay for days even weeks, our correspondent adds.
About a quarter of France's service stations had no fuel on Wednesday, and strikes also stopped work at two of France's three liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminals.
On Wednesday, the country began importing electricity as the wave of protest action took hold of energy supplies.
At least 12 of France's 58 reactors were shut for maintenance but the unions say production has been cut at four others.
As well as the general strikes and protests, there have been six days of co-ordinated action in the past six weeks that have brought as many as three million people to the streets.
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Drug Warrior Spin #3: Regulating marijuana will aid drug cartels.
It is practically Orwellian to claim that state regulation of marijuana would benefit criminal cartels. More than 20,000 Mexicans have died in the last three years thanks to prohibition. There is nothing inherent about the plant that has caused these brutal murders. Banning marijuana makes it worth more than gold, so valuable that people are willing to kill each other over the right to sell it. By regulating marijuana and beginning to bring its production and distribution under the rule of law, we would eliminate the cartels’ existing monopoly and dramatically siphon their profits. They would be the biggest losers in this reform.
Drug Warrior Spin #4: Regulating marijuana would cost society more than the taxes it generates.
Taxing marijuana like alcohol statewide would generate $1. 4 billion in California alone, according to the state Board of Equalization. Californians will also save hundreds of millions in scarce law enforcement dollars currently devoted to enforcing these futile laws. Yet opponents say that drugged driving, increased health care costs, and lost productivity will end up costing much more than taxes would generate. By that logic, alcohol, which causes nearly 100,000 American deaths annually, should be illegal and warrant life without parole. The bottom line is that marijuana is California’s largest agricultural commodity, freely consumed by millions with no regulations or protections, and with no financial benefit to the state. In this economic climate, this is a reality we literally can’t afford to ignore any longer.
Drug Warrior Spin #5: What kind of message does regulating marijuana send to kids?
The irony is that failed marijuana prohibition does nothing to protect kids. Despite 30 years of “Just Say No,” half of high-school seniors admit to trying marijuana. Students are more likely to smoke marijuana than cigarettes and say it’s easier to buy marijuana than alcohol because drug dealers don’t ask for ID. Even more chilling, of the 78,000 Californians arrested for marijuana offenses in 2008, one in five was a child under 18 and half were under 30. Out of control access and mass arrests are prohibition’s true impact on our youth. State regulation will reduce that access, separate marijuana from harder drugs, and allow us to focus on effective youth drug education programs.
We will see these arguments play out repeatedly over the next six months. In the end, California will get to choose between two very different models of dealing with marijuana in our society.
The war on drugs will be on the ballot in California this November. The nation will watch the state decide whether to tax and regulate marijuana or continue to arrest adults for possession of this plant.
The vote on the Regulate, Control and Tax Cannabis Act of 2010 will impact many of the most important issues in the country today. Californians will express how they want police resources used, if adults who consume marijuana should be criminalized, how best to deal with the tragic violence in Mexico, and what our priorities should be in tough economic times. It’s no wonder that seven months out, this issue has already generated thousands of news stories around the world.
Opposition to this reform has crystallized within the drug war establishment, and so has their spin. Here are their top five talking points and the truth beyond them:
Drug Warrior Spin #1: Why would we authorize another harmful substance in our society?
The reality is that marijuana is already widely available in our society. Like it or not, it’s a mainstream recreational drug consumed by millions, including one in ten Californians last year, according to federal data. The California ballot initiative simply acknowledges that marijuana is here and that it’s more sensible to regulate this massive market, like we do with even more harmful drugs like cigarettes and alcohol. Prohibition of highly popular substances never works and brings terrible collateral damage. Alcohol prohibition didn’t keep people from drinking, but it did give us Al Capone and gun battles in the streets. No one dies over sales of Budweiser today.
Drug Warrior Spin #2: Regulation will cause marijuana consumption to skyrocket with addiction rates to match.
The truth is rates of marijuana consumption aren’t determined by penalties against it. If they were, the U.S. – which arrests an astounding 750,000 people for marijuana possession every year – wouldn’t have double the consumption rate of The Netherlands, where marijuana sales have been tolerated for decades. That principle holds true across this country as some states that lowered penalties against marijuana possession years ago have among the lowest rates of use while some states that retained harsh marijuana laws have among the highest. As for addiction, the risk of becoming dependent on marijuana is mild compared to most other drugs including alcohol and tobacco. In fact, most people who enter treatment for marijuana addiction in this country today are referred by the criminal justice system, but 65% don’t even meet the standard criteria for dependence.
My son just started kindergarten. So naturally, I have been thinking a lot about the type of world and community in which I want him and our seven-year-old daughter to live. I am involved in a project to improve school lunches in our district to reinforce the nutrition lessons we teach in our home. I am a founding board member of a community group trying to improve our city’s parks. And I am working to help pass Proposition 19, the initiative to control and tax marijuana in California. It is important to me as a mother that my children grow up in a state—hopefully a country soon—that rejects the ineffective and damaging policy of marijuana prohibition. It may be counterintuitive, but legalizing marijuana will be better and safer for our children.
I would like to believe my kids won’t ever choose to use drugs. But whatever happens, it is certain that prohibition does not stop kids from using marijuana, and that my kids will be exposed to it along with other risky behaviors. After all, about a third of high school seniors have used marijuana within the last year, a figure that has been relatively stable over decades across the country and has not been affected by variations in laws and enforcement. Moreover, it has long been easier for kids to get marijuana than it is for them to get alcohol. The plain fact is drug dealers don’t require ID, and legitimate businesses do. By taking marijuana out of the black market and placing it within the confines of safe, regulated, and licensed businesses that only sell to those 21 and over, Proposition 19 would actually reduce underage access to marijuana.
While we don’t want our kids to try marijuana, if they do later on it can lead to very harsh consequences if they are caught, even for actions that are not harmful to others. And this next part is really scary: when a person is convicted of a marijuana offense, he or she is precluded from receiving federal student loans, will forever have a drug record that diminishes job prospects, and is precluded from many other benefits, not to mention being arrested, possibly serving time, and other harsh and harrowing outcomes. We don’t prevent even violent criminals from getting student loans. Or underage drinkers, for that matter. I don’t want people to have their lives derailed for a youthful indiscretion. Do you?
To truly serve public safety, we should control and tax marijuana, since under present policies, thousands of violent crimes go unsolved, while police spend valuable and scarce resources targeting thousands of non-violent adult marijuana users. Arrests for simple possession of marijuana have tripled over the last two decades. The $300 million California spends each year on marijuana enforcement would better serve our communities spent on solving and preventing violent crimes. Any new tax revenues would better serve our children if spent on drug education, drug rehabilitation, and of course shoring up our crumbling public education system.
We know our children are going to make decisions for themselves, probably at an age we think is too young. Laws are not going to be nearly as effective in guiding those choices as the messages we send to them as parents and in our public education efforts. We need to help kids navigate into adulthood with the judgment to moderate their intake of so many substances capable of abuse—from sugar to caffeine, alcohol, prescription drugs, and, yes, marijuana. Not to mention making good decisions about sex, Internet usage, driving, studying, and extracurricular activities. As a mother, thinking through the list, I am not most terrified by the choices they might make regarding marijuana. How about you? So let’s treat marijuana like alcohol, explain to our kids why they should avoid both, at least while they are young, and teach them how to be responsible about various choices in life.
This month, my five-year-old new kindergartner has taken up rollerblading. He goes fast, and has a lot of confidence. He has great balance so I resist the impulse to hover too much, even though I know a skinned knee is possible. I breathe a sigh of relief when he stops at driveways to ask if it’s OK to go ahead. And I hope that he will learn to internalize that check against his daredevil tendencies. I will do my part, and I don’t want the state hovering over my shoulder, reflexively criminalizing behaviors that happen to make mothers gasp. As parents, we know that education is often more effective than punishment, and in some cases punishment is not effective at all.
Women were instrumental in bringing about repeal of Prohibition in 1933, and we can be again when it comes to determining when marijuana prohibition is reversed. In my view, Proposition 19 is the right choice—not just for true law and order—but for our kids.
Author: Hanna Liebman Dershowitz - is mother of a seven-year-old and a five-year-old. She is an attorney in Culver City and co-chair of the Proposition 19 legal subcommittee.
California's ballot measure to legalize marijuana has a new friend: Facebook co-founder Sean Parker has given $100,000 to back the proposal.
Parker's donation was reported in Proposition 19 campaign finance filings this week.
And he's not the first big Proposition 19 donor with ties to the social networking site. Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz has made two donations totalling $70,000, including a $50,000 contribution last month.
Neither Parker nor Moskovitz are still with Palo Alto-based Facebook, but both still have ownership stakes. Recent estimates put the value of the privately held company as high as $33.7 billion.
"What's interesting here is that (Parker) is a member of the generation that really gets it," said Stephen Gutwillig, a spokesman for the Drug Policy Alliance, the main beneficiary of Parker's contribution. "We think he's pivotal to the future of drug policy reform in the country."
The 30-year-old served as Facebook's first president and helped transform the company from dorm-room project to big business. Parker and Moskovitz have become household names since the recent release of "The Social Network." The film chronicling the contentious origins of Facebook was No. 1 at the box office last week.
Pop musician and actor Justin Timberlake plays Parker in the movie, which portrays him as a hotshot who convinces Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg to push out his friend from the burgeoning company.
In a recent Vanity Fair profile, the media-shy entrepreneur is described as a computer-programming prodigy with an uncanny knack for anticipating online trends and a penchant for designer clothes and partying.
At age 19, Parker helped develop Napster, the music-sharing software that turned the recording industry upside-down. He is now a partner at Founders Fund, a Silicon Valley venture capital firm.
Parker did not immediately respond to e-mails seeking comment.
About $1.5 million of the $2.4 million raised so far in support of Proposition 19 has come from the measure's main sponsor, Oakland medical marijuana entrepreneur Richard Lee. The only other six-figure donation not from Lee came from adult entertainment entrepreneur Phil Harvey, who gave $100,000.
Parker's donation came shortly after the Yes on 19 campaign committee reported having meager cash on hand heading into the final weeks before the election. The money from Parker and Harvey went to a separate committee to fund the Drug Policy Alliance's work on behalf of the measure.
Much of the money will go toward a get-out-the-vote campaign targeting young voters and voters of color, Gutwillig said.
Facebook recently came under fire from some marijuana advocates who claimed it was turning away advertising on the site in support of Proposition 19. Facebook said in a statement that company policy prohibits images of drugs, drug paraphernalia or tobacco in paid advertising but that ballot measure supporters were still free to advertise using different images.
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