White phosphorus: weapon on the edge

White phosphorus: weapon on the edge

Analysis By Paul Reynolds World Affairs correspondent, BBC News website  http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4442988.stm

US mortar bombs can be both explosive and phosphorus

The Pentagon's admission - despite earlier denials - that US troops used white phosphorus as a weapon in Falluja last year is more than a public relations issue - it has opened up a debate about the use of this weapon in modern warfare.

The admission contradicted a statement this week from the new and clearly under-briefed US ambassador in London Robert Holmes Tuttle that US forces "do not use napalm or white phosphorus as weapons".
The official line to that point had been that WP, or Willie Pete to use its old name from Vietnam, was used only to illuminate the battlefield and to provide smoke for camouflage.
'Shake 'n Bake'

This line however crumbled when bloggers (whose influence must not be under-estimated these days) ferreted out an article published by the US Army's Field Artillery Magazine in its issue of March/April this year.
The article, written by a captain, a first lieutenant and a sergeant, was a review of the attack on Falluja in November 2004 and in particular of the use of indirect fire, mainly mortars.
It makes quite clear that WP was used as a weapon not just as illumination or camouflage.

It's [WP] not forbidden if it is used within the context of a military application which does not require or does not intend to use the toxic properties Peter Kaiser

"WP proved to be an effective and versatile munition. We used it for screening missions at two breeches and, later in the fight, as a potent psychological weapon against the insurgents in trench lines and spider holes where we could not get effects on them with HE [High Explosive]. We fired "shake and bake" missions at the insurgents, using WP to flush them out and HE to take them out," the article said.
In another passage the authors noted that they could have used other smoke munitions and "saved our WP for lethal missions".


A word about the term "shake and bake." Anyone with a family to feed in the US knows what this term, properly "Shake 'n Bake, means. Made by Kraft, it is a seasoning which is put into a plastic bag with chicken and shaken before before baking. Its use gives the article the smack of reality. It's the kind of thing US soldiers would say.
Vietnam precedent
This tactic of forcing opponents out of cover is not new and should not really have come as a surprise. An article looking back at the Vietnam war published in 1996 by a US armoured unit (1st Battalion, 69th Armor) referred to "Willie Pete" weapons and their use in getting North Vietnamese troops to leave their positions:
"Our normal procedure was to fire these things at a hillside as soon as possible in order to get them out of the fighting compartment."
One wonders of course if, in Falluja, WP was used more directly to kill insurgents and not just to flush them out. In battle, soldiers take short cuts and this seems an obvious one.

Embed report
Evidence that this happened in Falluja comes from an article by a reporter, Darrin Mortenson of the North County Times in California, who was embedded with US marines there.

He wrote about a mortar unit receiving coordinates of a target and opening fire:
"The boom kicked the dust around the pit as they ran through the drill again and again, sending a mixture of burning white phosphorus and high explosives they call 'shake 'n bake' into a cluster of buildings where insurgents have been spotted all week."

The tactic therefore seems to have been not to flush them out first but to bombard them simultaneously with the two types of weapons.

Chemical Weapons Convention
The debate about WP centres partly though not wholly on whether it is really a chemical weapon. Such weapons are outlawed by the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) to which the United States is a party.
The CWC is monitored by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, based in The Hague. Its spokesman Peter Kaiser was asked if WP was banned by the CWC and he had this to say:

White phosphorous being used over Falluja

"No it's not forbidden by the CWC if it is used within the context of a military application which does not require or does not intend to use the toxic properties of white phosphorus. White phosphorus is normally used to produce smoke, to camouflage movement.
"If that is the purpose for which the white phosphorus is used, then that is considered under the Convention legitimate use.
"If on the other hand the toxic properties of white phosphorus, the caustic properties, are specifically intended to be used as a weapon, that of course is prohibited, because the way the Convention is structured or the way it is in fact applied, any chemicals used against humans or animals that cause harm or death through the toxic properties of the chemical are considered chemical weapons."
WP - the arguments

So WP itself is not a chemical weapon and therefore not illegal. However, used in a certain way, it might become one. Not that "a certain way" can easily be defined, if at all.

The US can say therefore that this is not a chemical weapon and further, it argues that it is not the toxic properties but the heat from WP which causes the damage. And, this argument goes, since incendiary weapons are not covered by the CWC, therefore the use of WP against combatants is not prohibited.
Critics claim that the US used chemical weapons in Falluja, on the grounds that it is the toxic properties which cause the harm. The UK's Guardian newspaper for example said: "The US used chemical weapons in Iraq - and then lied about it."
There is an intense debate on the blog sites about this issue. "It's not a chemical weapon" says Liberal Against Terror. "CONFIRMED: WP is a CW if used to cause harm through toxic properties," says Daily Kos.
Update 22 November: I have received an e-mail from a reader who points me to a reported US army document from 1991 which refers to WP as a chemical weapon. The document reports the possible use of WP by Iraq against the Kurds who rose up after the Gulf War. It says: "Iraq has possibly employed phosphorous chemical weapons against the Kurdish population."
The reader said this was proof that the US viewed WP as a CW.
I have also been contacted by Gabriele Zamparini of the Cat's Dream blog who appears to have published this document first. He makes the same point that the US Defense Department itself called WP a "chemical weapon." I offer these comments as part of the debate.
Tactical use of WP

The other argument is about the use of WP as a weapon.
The initial denials from the Pentagon suggest a certain hesitation, embarrassment even, about such a tactic. Some decisions must have been taken in the past to limit its use in certain battlefield scenarios (urban warfare for example). It is not used against civilians.
However the United States has not signed up to a convention covering incendiary weapons which seeks to restrict their use.
This convention has the cumbersome title "Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons." Agreed in 1980, its Protocol III covers "Prohibitions or Restrictions on use of Incendiary Weapons."
This prohibits WP or other incendiaries (like flamethrowers) against civilians or civilian objects and its use by air strikes against military targets located in a concentration of civilians. It also limits WP use by other means (such as mortars or direct fire from tanks) against military targets in a civilian area. Such targets have to be separated from civilian concentrations and "all feasible precautions" taken to avoid civilian casualties.
Notwithstanding the US position on the Convention, the use of WP against insurgents within Falluja does at least bring the issue into discussion, though one should note that the soldiers who wrote the Field Artillery article do say that their unit "encountered few civilians in its attack south".

What is White Phosphorous?

SEE
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_phosphorus

White phosphorus

Report on long-term effects of Israeli white phosphorus
EXCLUSIVE PICTURES

Middle East Monitor

MEMO, July 6, 2010 In a recent report into the white phosphorous used by Israel in its 2008-9 assault on the Gaza Strip, Italian experts have warned of the adverse long term effects of the three thousand five hundred shells that were dropped indiscriminately. In particular, the report addresses the impact of this weapon, the use of which against civilians is prohibited under international law. The immediate effects of white phosphorous on human beings are well documented. When white phosphorous explodes it burns at high temperatures until deprived of oxygen and when it lands on skin it will eat through muscle and into the bone. According to Amnesty International, during the war on Gaza, white phosphorous was the cause of horrific burns and suffocation which left dozens dead and wounded. However, the effects of white phosphorous have been found to extend to agricultural land and produce. In regions in the East of the Gaza Strip, such as the vicinity of Mount Rais, trees growing in land hit by phosphorous shells have become noticeably yellow in color. Gaza's ministry of agriculture confirmed that after the end of the military operation, it endeavored to prevent farmers growing crops or grazing animals on agricultural that had been shelled. Similarly, it warned against using water from shelled wells. These actions emphasize the belief that Israel used shells containing toxic, carcinogenic and radioactive material which directly affect the environment and render areas hit by such shells, dangerous to human health and to animals. Many agricultural areas used for cultivating herbs and plants that were hit by Israeli weapons are now barren, or the trees have dried up a lot. On land that was hit by more than one shell, the situation is worse. However, a few months after the war, other effects of these banned weapons started to become evident. New plants and emerging plant shoots began showing genetic mutations such as physical distortions and yellowing. Many farmers also complain of the stunted growth of their agricultural crops, tress erosion and falling branches. Produce has become small and the yield from harvests is low while the situation continues to worsen. According to Dr. Birch Manduca, a specialist in genetics at the University of Genoa and a researcher on the Italian team that produced the report, an analysis of soil samples from 2005 and samples taken after the war show marked differences, and the significant increase in the concentration of heavy metals has been attributed to the effects of Israeli missiles. The team also analysed samples taken from four craters left by bomb shells; two from the Israeli attack on Beit Hanoun and the Jabaliya refugee camp in July 2006, and two from apple orchards hit in the recent war. Results from analyses show differences in each case, indicating, according to Manduca, that different missiles caused each crater. Thus, different types of missiles appear to have different effects on soil. An interaction between toxins from missiles such as the Alvesforp, with white phosphorous is thought to be the cause of the current catastrophe for Gaza's agricultural sector. The team also found concentrations of the highly toxic metal Molybdenum at 25 to 3000 times normal levels. Molybdenum is rarely found in soil, it is lethal to sperm and adversely affects both fertility and unborn babies. Based on the results found by Menduca and his team, great concern has been voiced over the enormous quantities of pollution in Gaza caused by Israeli missiles which impact on the medium and long term health of the population. The fact that weapons like white phosphorous shells were indiscriminately exploded in the air, including in densely populated residential areas, means that their poisons are widespread and may yet manifest unknown effects on Gaza's general population.

Settlements Cover 42 Percent Of West Bank!

Settlements Cover 42 Percent Of West Bank

MATTI FRIEDMAN

July 6, 2010

JERUSALEM — The Israeli military indicted a soldier Tuesday on a charge of manslaughter during last year's war in the Gaza Strip – the most serious criminal charge to come out of an internal investigation into the devastating offensive in the Hamas-ruled territory.

The soldier was among three troops, including a field commander, to face new disciplinary action stemming from their conduct during the offensive, which has drawn international condemnation for its civilian death toll. An Israeli human rights group praised the announcement, but said the disciplinary measures announced by the army so far were insufficient.

The steps against the soldiers were linked to four specific incidents during the offensive, which Israel launched to halt years of rocket fire from Gaza.

Around 1,400 Gazans, many of them civilians, were killed in three weeks of fierce urban fighting and aerial bombardments. Thirteen Israelis were killed. A report commissioned by the U.N. Human Rights Council accused Israel of deliberately targeting civilians, a charge Israel rejects.

In a statement Tuesday, the military said its chief prosecutor would indict an infantry sergeant for manslaughter in connection with an incident in which two Palestinian women – a mother and daughter – were killed while reportedly holding white flags.

The military said there were discrepancies between the troops' accounts of the incident and the details reported widely by human rights groups, The troops reported shooting one man at the site, not two women, and on a different date. Also, it was unclear exactly whom the soldier was charged with killing. Asked for clarification, the military did not offer further details.

The military said this was the first manslaughter indictment from the Gaza war.

The incident was mentioned in U.N. report, which accused both Israel and Hamas of war crimes.

In addition, the military said a battalion commander was disciplined for allowing his troops to use a Palestinian civilian as a human shield. Soldiers sent the man toward a house where militants were holed up to persuade them to come out, a violation of army regulations, the announcement said.

In a third incident, the military said it disciplined an officer who ordered an airstrike near a mosque, an attack that the U.N. report said killed at least 15 civilians and wounded 40.

The military said the strike targeted a Palestinian militant outside the mosque and that the harm to those inside the building was unintentional, so it did not violate international law. But the military also said the officer was negligent and "failed to exercise appropriate judgment," and he would be barred from serving in "similar positions of command" in the future.

In the fourth incident, the military prosecutor ordered a new investigation into the deaths of two dozen members of a family who were ordered by troops into a building that was shelled later in the fighting.

Israel says Hamas bears overall responsibility for the casualties because it fired rockets and fought from heavily populated towns and cities. An internal military investigation last year largely cleared the army of any systematic wrongdoing, while promising to prosecute individual cases of misconduct.

One soldier has been convicted of stealing and using a Palestinian's credit card, while two others are being prosecuted for using a Palestinian boy as a human shield.

An army spokesperson said these indictments are part of an ongoing investigation of nearly 50 claims.

Sarit Michaeli, a spokeswoman for the Israeli human rights group B'Tselem, praised the military for making progress in its investigations but said they were insufficient.

"The main questions about the Gaza war concern policy, and a military investigation can't handle this," she said. "There must be an external investigation that will deal with the whole chain of command and chiefly with the people at the top who approved the directives."

Also Tuesday, as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu landed in Washington for talks with President Barack Obama, B'Tselem released a report showing that much of the West Bank, where Palestinians want to establish a state, is under the control of Israeli settlements.

Although the actual buildings of the settlements cover just 1 percent of the West Bank's land area, they have jurisdiction over more than 42 percent, the B'Tselem report said. Much of that land was seized from Palestinian landowners in defiance of an Israeli Supreme Court ban, the group said.

The Palestinians claim all of the West Bank, captured by Israel in the 1967 Mideast war, as part of a future state.

Dani Dayan, chairman of a settler umbrella group, disputed the report, saying settlements control just 9.2 percent of the West Bank, and charged that the report was aimed to sabotage the Netanyahu-Obama meeting.

Israeli government officials would not comment.

Obama backs Israel on nuclear conference

Obama backs Israel on nuclear conference

AFP

July 6, 2010

US President Barack Obama warned Tuesday that attempts to single out Israel over its undeclared nuclear program could scupper a Middle East regional nuclear conference planned for 2012.

Obama delivered the warning in a statement about his talks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in which he gave Israel a veiled, but public assurance over its strategic nuclear ambiguity.

"The President emphasized that the conference will only take place if all countries feel confident that they can attend, and that any efforts to single out Israel will make the prospects of convening such a conference unlikely," the statement said.

Obama also agreed to work with Israel to oppose any efforts to single out the Jewish state at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) General Conference in September.

After a decade of deadlock, the Non-Proliferation Treaty's 189 nations proposed new steps in May towards nuclear disarmament and making the Middle East free of atomic weapons.

Diplomats at an NPT review conference approved by consensus a 28-page final document that for the first time laid out action plans on disarmament, non-proliferation and promoting peaceful atomic energy.

The wording on the Middle East called for holding a conference in 2012 "to be attended by all states of the Middle East, leading to the establishment¨ of such a nuclear-weapon-free zone.

The NPT review conference called on Israel to join the treaty, which would oblige the Jewish state to do away with its nuclear weapons.

After his Oval Office talks, Obama told reporters that he had "reiterated" to Netanyahu that there was "no change in US policy" on nuclear proliferation in the Middle East.

"We strongly believe that, given its size, its history, the region that it's in, and the threats that are leveled against us -- against it, that Israel has unique security requirements.

"It's got to be able to respond to threats or any combination of threats in the region. And that's why we remain unwavering in our commitment to Israel's security.

"And the United States will never ask Israel to take any steps that would undermine their security interests."

Netanyahu thanked Obama for "reaffirming to me in private and now in public as you did the longstanding US commitments to Israel on matters of vital strategic importance."

Israel, which opposes creating a nuclear free zone until Middle East peace has been achieved, has never acknowledged that it has nuclear weapons.

It is widely believed to be the only nuclear power in the Middle East, with around 200 warheads, but has maintained a policy of deliberate ambiguity about its capabilities since the mid-1960s.

Anti-Israel ‘Lawfare’ in Europe

Published on The Brussels Journal (http://www.brusselsjournal.com)

Anti-Israel ‘Lawfare’ in Europe

By Soeren Kern

Created 2010-07-06 21:49

Pro-Palestinian activists are launching a new round of anti-Israel lawsuits in European courts. The lawsuits, which exploit the legal principle of universal jurisdiction, are being used to harass current and former Israeli political and military leaders, with the twin aims of tying Israel’s hands against Palestinian terror and delegitimizing the Jewish state.

On June 23, two Belgian lawyers representing Palestinians filed suit in Belgium against 14 Israeli officials on charges of war crimes committed during the Gaza War, a three-week armed conflict that took place in the Gaza Strip during the winter of 2008–2009. Those charged include Israeli opposition leader Tzipi Livni for her role as foreign minister during the war, former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilnai, and other Israeli military and intelligence officials.

The 70-page lawsuit is based on a report by Judge Richard Goldstone, which claims that an Israeli attack on a mosque near the Jabalia refugee camp in the Gaza Strip killed 16 civilians, including women and children. The plaintiffs, who include one Palestinian-Belgian national and 13 Gaza Strip residents, were either wounded or lost relatives in the attack.

The Goldstone Report claims that Israel committed war crimes during the offensive, also codenamed Operation Cast Lead. The 575-page report calls for prosecuting Israeli officials in international courts should Israel refuse to conduct a credible investigation into its army’s conduct during the war.

Georges-Henri Beauthier and Alexis Deswaef, the two lawyers representing the Palestinian plaintiffs, say Belgium’s attorney general will evaluate the case “by the end of August” to determine whether it provides just cause to open formal proceedings against the Israeli officials for “committing crimes against humanity.”

On June 13, pro-Palestinian activists in France said they would file a lawsuit against Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak both in France and at the International Criminal Court in The Hague. The International Civil Campaign for the Protection of the Palestinian People (CCIPPP) and Palestinian Charity and Aid (CBSP) are suing over the Israeli army’s May 31 raid on the Gaza-bound Freedom Flotilla in which nine activists were killed. The groups say Barak should be held personally responsible for the deaths.

The lawsuit, which has been joined by three members of the French parliament, forced Barak to cancel a visit to Paris, during which he was scheduled to open the Israeli pavilion at the Eurosatory defence industry trade show on June 14-18. Pro-Palestinian activists had called for French police to arrest Barak at the airport upon his arrival in the country. The Israeli Defense Ministry said Barak decided to remain in Israel “until the team of experts investigates the raid on the Gaza-bound flotilla.”

The new lawsuits are the latest salvo in a long-running propaganda war against Israel that is being waged in European courts under the guise of universal jurisdiction.

In December 2009, a British court issued an arrest warrant for Tzipi Livni for her role in Operation Cast Lead. Livni, who had been due to address a meeting in London, ended up cancelling her attendance. The court issued the warrant at the request of lawyers representing Palestinian victims of the Gaza War. The 1988 Criminal Justice Act gives courts in England and Wales universal jurisdiction in war crimes cases.

In October 2009, Deputy Prime Minister Moshe Ya’alon cancelled a planned trip to Britain for fear of being arrested there. Ya’alon had been invited to London to attend a fund-raising dinner. As chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces from 2002-2005, Ya’alon is one of several current and former senior officers being pursued by pro-Palestinian groups for so-called war crimes.

In September 2009, a British court was asked to issue an arrest warrant for Ehud Barak, who was attending a meeting at the Labour party conference in Brighton. He escaped arrest after the Foreign Office told the court that he was a serving minister who would be meeting his British counterparts. The City of Westminster magistrates’ court ruled that as a minister, Barak enjoyed immunity under the 1978 State Immunity Act.

In September 2005, retired Israeli Major General Doron Almog arrived in London on an El Al flight, only to learn that a British judge had issued a warrant for his arrest for allegedly violating the 1949 Geneva Convention in Gaza. Almog stayed on the plane and was allowed to return to Israel.

In February 2004, a London court rejected an application for an arrest warrant to be issued against Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz. District Judge Christopher Pratt argued that as a government minister, Mofaz qualified for immunity. Pro-Palestinian lawyers had asked Pratt to issue an arrest warrant for Mofaz for allegedly committing “grave breaches” of the Geneva Convention in dealing with the Palestinian uprising.

In January 2010, a group of Israeli military officers called off an official visit to Britain over fears they could be arrested on war crimes charges. The delegation had been invited to visit by the British Army.

The arrest warrants have provoked a furious reaction in Israel, and British officials have now vowed to change the law on universal jurisdiction to make it harder to arrest foreign officials. In May 2010, Britain’s new coalition government said it would seek to prohibit private groups from seeking to prosecute crimes committed abroad. British Foreign Secretary William Hague said: “We cannot have a position where Israeli politicians feel they cannot visit this country. The situation is unsatisfactory [and] indefensible. It is absolutely my intention to act speedily.”

Spain is also pushing back against mounting abuses of universal jurisdiction. In May 2009, the Spanish parliament approved a measure to limit the power of judges to prosecute people for crimes committed abroad under the concept of universal jurisdiction. The parliament acted on fears that activist judges were abusing the Spanish justice system for politically motivated prosecutions.

Spanish judges have gained a reputation for activism in recent years by using the principle of universal jurisdiction to pursue cases against suspected overseas human rights violators, most famously the former Chilean dictator General Augusto Pinochet. Until recently, judges at the Spanish National Court (Audiencia Nacional) were pursuing more than a dozen international investigations into suspected cases of torture, genocide, and crimes against humanity in places as far-flung as Tibet and Rwanda. But many of these cases have little or no connection with Spain and critics say the judges are interpreting the concept of universal jurisdiction too loosely.

Calls to reign in the judges increased when Spanish magistrates announced probes involving Israel and the United States. In January 2009, for example, Spanish National Court Judge Fernando Andreu said he would investigate seven current or former Israeli officials suspected of “crimes against humanity” in a 2002 air attack in Gaza that killed Salah Shehadah, a top Hamas militant. The Andreu case involved former Israeli Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, former Air Force Commander Dan Halutz, former head of the National Security Council Giora Eiland, and four other senior officials. Had Andreu decided to issue an international arrest warrant for any of the seven Israelis, they could have been detained upon arrival in any EU member state.

Most of the universal jurisdiction lawsuits that have been presented in Spanish courts have been the handiwork of one Gonzalo Boyé, a Marxist-Leninist “human rights lawyer” who earned his law degree through correspondence courses while in a Spanish prison. He was serving a 10-year sentence for collaborating with the Basque terrorist group ETA, and for his participation in the kidnapping of Emiliano Revilla, a well-known Spanish businessman. Boyé is now the Spanish representative of a group calling itself the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights.

The problem of frivolous lawsuits and freewheeling judges came to a head after Andreu rejected requests by Spanish prosecutors to suspend his inquiry on the grounds that Israel was already investigating the attack. Attorney General Cándido Conde-Pumpido has warned of the risks of turning the Spanish justice system into a “plaything” for politically motivated prosecutions.

So far none of the lawsuits filed against Israel in European courts have reached the stage of a trial where Israeli leaders have appeared before a foreign judge. But even short of actual prosecutions, pro-Palestinian activists have scored huge propaganda victories by charging Israeli officials with war crimes. This alone makes the pursuit of frivolous universal jurisdiction lawsuits a winning proposition for many activist groups.

For now, Israel’s best option for avoiding a messy and precedent-setting trial will be to exert diplomatic pressure on European authorities to persuade them that they have a vested interest in protecting their justice systems from malicious abuse. That strategy, which appears to be working in Britain and Spain, should now be applied in Belgium and France.

Soeren Kern is Senior Fellow for Transatlantic Relations at the Madrid-based Grupo de Estudios Estratégicos / Strategic Studies Group

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Source URL:
http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/4477

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July 2, 2010

Rise of the Religious Left

By CHARLES M. BLOW

Which political party’s members are most likely to believe that Jesus will definitely return to earth before midcentury? The Republicans, right? Wrong. The Democrats.
This was revealed by a report issued last week by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press.
On the surface it may seem surprising, but, in fact, it’s quite logical. Blacks and Hispanics, two highly religious groups, are a growing part of the Democratic Party. A June 2009 Gallup report found that blacks and Hispanics constituted 30 percent of the party. Recent polling by Pew puts the number at 37 percent.
According to a Gallup report issued last Friday, church attendance among blacks is exactly the same as among conservatives and among Republicans. Hispanics closely follow. Furthermore, a February Gallup report found that blacks and Hispanics, respectively, were the most likely to say that religion was an important part of their daily lives. In fact, on the Jesus question, nonwhite Democrats were roughly twice as likely as white Democrats to believe that He would return to earth by 2050.
Add to this the fact that, according to the 2009 Gallup report, 20 percent of the Democratic Party is composed of highly religious whites who attend church once a week or more, and you quickly stop second-guessing the Second Coming numbers.
Welcome to the Religious Left, which will continue to grow as the percentage of minorities in the country and in the party grows.
People often ask whether the Republican Party will have to move to the left to remain viable. However, the question rarely asked is whether the growing religiosity on the left will push the Democrats toward the right.
At the moment, that answer is both yes and no. On the one hand, unlike John Kerry before him, Barack Obama made a strong play for the religious vote on his march to the White House. It worked so well that it’s likely to continue, if not intensify, among Democratic candidates. On the other hand, the religious left is not the religious right. The left isn’t as organized or assertive. For the most part, it seems to have made its peace with the mishmash of morality under the Democratic umbrella, rallying instead around some core Democratic tenets: protection of, and equality for, the disenfranchised and providing greater opportunity and assistance for the poor.
The unanswerable questions are whether these highly religious, socially conservative Democrats will remain loyal to a liberal agenda as they become the majority of the party and their financial and social standing improves. Or whether Republicans will finally make headway in recruiting them. The future only knows.
Then again, the world as we know it may not have much of a future if, as these Democrats believe, a deity will soon descend from the sky

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July 6, 2010

Mr. Netanyahu at the White House

President Obama and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel satisfied their short-term political goals with an Oval Office meeting on Tuesday. It is less clear that they achieved much of substance.
Both were desperate to show their voters that their frigid relationship has warmed. So they posed — smiling — for an official photo, spoke with reporters and shared lunch. There was plenty of upbeat rhetoric. The two leaders expressed hope that direct Israeli-Palestinian peace talks — following the current “proximity talks” conducted by George Mitchell, the American envoy — would begin before Israel’s limited moratorium on settlement construction is due to expire in September.
We would like to have confidence in Mr. Netanyahu’s declaration that he is “committed to that peace” with Palestinians and President Obama’s assertion that the Israeli leader is “willing to take risks for peace.” Mr. Netanyahu didn’t offer any specifics about what he will do to help move peace negotiations forward.
Unlike Mr. Obama, the Israeli prime minister did not publicly mention a two-state solution. Mr. Netanyahu committed to that goal in June 2009 — but only under pressure from Washington. Each time he neglects to repeat it, he feeds doubts about his government’s sincerity.
President Obama has made a serious effort when it comes to Israel’s main security concern, Iran’s nuclear program. Mr. Obama rightly recognizes the threat to Israel and this country. He and his aides pushed the United Nations Security Council to pass a fourth round of sanctions and have worked with the Europeans and others, pressing them to adopt even tougher punishments on Iran. More pressure is needed, but the president’s commitment appears solid.
Mr. Obama is going to have to keep working hard to persuade Mr. Netanyahu that a peace deal with the Palestinians is also essential for Israel’s long-term security, the health of its democracy and its international standing — and not just something he has to try to mollify Washington.
Mr. Netanyahu promised after Tuesday’s meeting to take unspecified “concrete” steps in the coming weeks to move the peace process along in a “robust way.” He could start by committing to extend the moratorium on settlement construction past the Sept. 26 deadline and by outlining his plan for reaching a two-state solution.
The United States has an unshakeable bond with Israel. Still Israelis must worry about the battering their country’s reputation has taken — and the bolstering Hamas’s extremist government has gotten — since Israeli commandos killed nine activists on an aid ship trying to break the Gaza blockade.
Mr. Netanyahu took an important step when his government lifted restrictions on most imports into Gaza, except military-related items. It must go further and allow exports from the territory, as well as greater freedom of movement for people living there.
President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority and his government also must do their part, doing more to discourage incitement against Israel — and seriously preparing to make the hard choices that peace will inevitably require.
We know that it will not be easy, but Mr. Abbas needs to drop his insistence that he will begin direct talks only after Israel agrees to a complete freeze on settlement construction.
That is what the White House had promised him originally — and it would have been better for all. But more stalemate only feeds extremism. The only way to test Mr. Netanyahu is to get back to the table.
Arab states must do a lot more to support the Palestinians — with aid and political support for the tough compromises ahead. They also need to demonstrate to Israel their willingness to improve relations as negotiations move forward.
At their press conference, Mr. Netanyahu invited the American president to visit Israel, and Mr. Obama said: “I’m ready.” He should go and explain to Israelis directly why it is in the clear interest of both Israel and the United States to move ahead with a peace deal

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July 6, 2010

A New Generation, an Elusive American Dream

By LOUIS UCHITELLE

GRAFTON, Mass. — After breakfast, his parents left for their jobs, and Scott Nicholson, alone in the house in this comfortable suburb west of Boston, went to his laptop in the living room. He had placed it on a small table that his mother had used for a vase of flowers until her unemployed son found himself reluctantly stuck at home.
The daily routine seldom varied. Mr. Nicholson, 24, a graduate of Colgate University, winner of a dean’s award for academic excellence, spent his mornings searching corporate Web sites for suitable job openings. When he found one, he mailed off a résumé and cover letter — four or five a week, week after week.
Over the last five months, only one job materialized. After several interviews, the Hanover Insurance Group in nearby Worcester offered to hire him as an associate claims adjuster, at $40,000 a year. But even before the formal offer, Mr. Nicholson had decided not to take the job.
Rather than waste early years in dead-end work, he reasoned, he would hold out for a corporate position that would draw on his college training and put him, as he sees it, on the bottom rungs of a career ladder.
“The conversation I’m going to have with my parents now that I’ve turned down this job is more of a concern to me than turning down the job,” he said.
He was braced for the conversation with his father in particular. While Scott Nicholson viewed the Hanover job as likely to stunt his career, David Nicholson, 57, accustomed to better times and easier mobility, viewed it as an opportunity. Once in the door, the father has insisted to his son, opportunities will present themselves — as they did in the father’s rise over 35 years to general manager of a manufacturing company.
“You maneuvered and you did not worry what the maneuvering would lead to,” the father said. “You knew it would lead to something good.”
Complicating the generational divide, Scott’s grandfather, William S. Nicholson, a World War II veteran and a retired stock broker, has watched what he described as America’s once mighty economic engine losing its pre-eminence in a global economy. The grandfather has encouraged his unemployed grandson to go abroad — to “Go West,” so to speak.
“I view what is happening to Scott with dismay,” said the grandfather, who has concluded, in part from reading The Economist, that Europe has surpassed America in offering opportunity for an ambitious young man. “We hate to think that Scott will have to leave,” the grandfather said, “but he will.”
The grandfather’s injunction startled the grandson. But as the weeks pass, Scott Nicholson, handsome as a Marine officer in a recruiting poster, has gradually realized that his career will not roll out in the Greater Boston area — or anywhere in America — with the easy inevitability that his father and grandfather recall, and that Scott thought would be his lot, too, when he finished college in 2008.
“I don’t think I fully understood the severity of the situation I had graduated into,” he said, speaking in effect for an age group — the so-called millennials, 18 to 29 — whose unemployment rate of nearly 14 percent approaches the levels of that group in the Great Depression. And then he veered into the optimism that, polls show, is persistently, perhaps perversely, characteristic of millennials today. “I am absolutely certain that my job hunt will eventually pay off,” he said.
For young adults, the prospects in the workplace, even for the college-educated,[ΕΙΝΑΙ  ΑΓΡΑΜΜΑΤΟΙ,  ΘΕΩΡΟΥΝ ΤΟ "ΛΥΚΕΙΟ" ΚΑΛΗ ΕΚΠΑΙΔΕΥΣΙ!] have rarely been so bleak. Apart from the 14 percent who are unemployed and seeking work, as Scott Nicholson is, 23 percent are not even seeking a job, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The total, 37 percent, is the highest in more than three decades and a rate reminiscent of the 1930s.
The college-educated among these young adults are better off. But nearly 17 percent are either unemployed or not seeking work, a record level (although some are in graduate school). The unemployment rate for college-educated young adults, 5.5 percent, is nearly double what it was on the eve of the Great Recession, in 2007, and the highest level — by almost two percentage points — since the bureau started to keep records in 1994 for those with at least four years of college.
Yet surveys show that the majority of the nation’s millennials remain confident, as Scott Nicholson is, that they will have satisfactory careers. They have a lot going for them.
“They are better educated [ΘΕΩΡΟΥΝ ΤΟ "ΛΥΚΕΙΟ" ΕΚΠΑΙΔΕΥΣΙ!!!] than previous generations and they were raised by baby boomers who lavished a lot of attention on their children,” said Andrew Kohut, the Pew Research Center’s director. That helps to explain their persistent optimism, even as they struggle to succeed.
So far, Scott Nicholson is a stranger to the triumphal stories that his father and grandfather tell of their working lives. They said it was connections more than perseverance that got them started — the father in 1976 when a friend who had just opened a factory hired him, and the grandfather in 1946 through an Army buddy whose father-in-law owned a brokerage firm in nearby Worcester and needed another stock broker.
From these accidental starts, careers unfolded and lasted. David Nicholson, now the general manager of a company that makes tools, is still in manufacturing. William Nicholson spent the next 48 years, until his retirement, as a stock broker. “Scott has got to find somebody who knows someone,” the grandfather said, “someone who can get him to the head of the line.”
While Scott has tried to make that happen, he has come under pressure from his parents to compromise: to take, if not the Hanover job, then one like it. “I am beginning to realize that refusal is going to have repercussions,” he said. “My parents are subtly pointing out that beyond room and board, they are also paying other expenses for me, like my cellphone charges and the premiums on a life insurance policy.”
Scott Nicholson also has connections, of course, but no one in his network of family and friends has been able to steer him into marketing or finance or management training or any career-oriented opening at a big corporation, his goal. The jobs are simply not there.
The Millennials’ Inheritance
The Great Depression damaged the self-confidence of the young, and that is beginning to happen now, according to pollsters, sociologists and economists. Young men in particular lost a sense of direction, Glen H. Elder Jr., a sociologist at the University of North Carolina, found in his study, “Children of the Great Depression.” In some cases they were forced into work they did not want — the issue for Scott Nicholson.
Military service in World War II, along with the G.I. Bill and a booming economy, restored well-being; by the 1970s, when Mr. Elder did his retrospective study, the hardships of the Depression were more a memory than an open sore. “They came out of the war with purpose in their lives, and by age 40 most of them were doing well,” he said, speaking of his study in a recent interview.[Ο ΝΙΚΗΤΗΣ ΤΟΥ ΠΟΛΕΜΟΥ ΕΞΗΣΦΑΛΙΣΕ ΤΙΣ ΠΛΟΥΤΟΠΑΡΑΓΩΓΙΚΕΣ ΠΗΓΕΣ ΠΟΥ ΚΑΤΕΚΤΗΣΕ!--ΕΥΚΟΛΟΣ ΠΛΟΥΤΙΣΜΟΣ!!]
The outlook this time is not so clear. Starved for jobs at adequate pay, the millennials tend to seek refuge in college [ΣΥΝΗΘΙΖΝ ΝΑΝΑΙ ΤΕΛΕΙΩΣ ΑΓΡΑΜΜΑΤΟΙ!!] and in the military[ΤΟ ΤΕΛΕΥΤΑΙΟ ΟΠΛΟ ΤΩΝ ΥΠΟ  ΚΑΤΑΡΡΕΥΣΙΝ ΑΛΛΟΤΕ ΕΞΟΥΣΙΑΣΤΙΚΩΝ ΚΟΙΝΩΝΙΩΝ, ΠΡΟΣ ΚΑΤΑΚΤΗΣΙΝ ΝΕΟΥ  ΠΛΟΥΤΟΥ!!--ΕΙΝΑΙ ΚΟΜΒΙΚΟ ΤΟ ΑΦΓΑΝΙΣΤΑΝ ΓΙΑ ΤΗΝ ΕΚΜΕΤΑΛΛΕΥΣΙ ΤΗΣ ΚΕΝΤΡΙΚΗΣ ΑΣΙΑΣ!!!] and to put off marriage and child-bearing. Those who are working often stay with the jobs they have rather than jump to better paying but less secure ones, as young people seeking advancement normally do. And they are increasingly willing to forgo raises, or to settle for small ones.
“They are definitely more risk-averse,” said Lisa B. Kahn, an economist at the Yale School of Management, “and more likely to fall behind.”
In a recent study, she found that those who graduated from college during the severe early ’80s recession earned up to 30 percent less in their first three years than new graduates who landed their first jobs in a strong economy. Even 15 years later, their annual pay was 8 to 10 percent less.
Many hard-pressed millennials are falling back on their parents, as Scott Nicholson has. While he has no college debt (his grandparents paid all his tuition and board) many others do, and that helps force them back home.
In 2008, the first year of the recession, the percentage of the population living in households in which at least two generations were present rose nearly a percentage point, to 16 percent, according to the Pew Research Center. The high point, 24.7 percent, came in 1940, as the Depression ended, and the low point, 12 percent, in 1980.
Striving for Independence
“Going it alone,” “earning enough to be self-supporting” — these are awkward concepts for Scott Nicholson and his friends. Of the 20 college classmates with whom he keeps up, 12 are working, but only half are in jobs they “really like.” Three are entering law school this fall after frustrating experiences in the work force, “and five are looking for work just as I am,” he said.
Like most of his classmates, Scott tries to get by on a shoestring and manages to earn enough in odd jobs to pay some expenses.
The jobs are catch as catch can. He and a friend recently put up a white wooden fence for a neighbor, embedding the posts in cement, a day’s work that brought Scott $125. He mows lawns and gardens for half a dozen clients in Grafton, some of them family friends. And he is an active volunteer firefighter.
“As frustrated as I get now, and I never intended to live at home, I’m in a good situation in a lot of ways,” Scott said. “I have very little overhead and no debt, and it is because I have no debt that I have any sort of flexibility to look for work. Otherwise, I would have to have a job, some kind of full-time job.”
That millennials as a group are optimistic is partly because many are, as Mr. Kohut put it, the children of doting baby boomers — among them David Nicholson and his wife, Susan, 56, an executive at a company that owns movie theaters.
The Nicholsons, whose combined annual income is north of $175,000, have lavished attention on their three sons. Currently that attention is directed mainly at sustaining the self-confidence of their middle son.
“No one on either side of the family has ever gone through this,” Mrs. Nicholson said, “and I guess I’m impatient. I know he is educated and has a great work ethic and wants to start contributing, and I don’t know what to do.”
Her oldest, David Jr., 26, did land a good job. Graduating from Middlebury College in 2006, he joined a Boston insurance company, specializing in reinsurance, nearly three years ago, before the recession.
“I’m fortunate to be at a company where there is some security,” he said, adding that he supports Scott in his determination to hold out for the right job. “Once you start working, you get caught up in the work and you have bills to pay, and you lose sight of what you really want,” the brother said.
He is earning $75,000 — a sum beyond Scott’s reach today, but not his expectations. “I worked hard through high school to get myself into the college I did,” Scott said, “and then I worked hard through college to graduate with the grades and degree that I did to position myself for a solid job.” (He majored in political science and minored in history.)
It was in pursuit of a solid job that Scott applied to Hanover International’s management training program. Turned down for that, he was called back to interview for the lesser position in the claims department.
“I’m sitting with the manager, and he asked me how I had gotten interested in insurance. I mentioned Dave’s job in reinsurance, and the manager’s response was, ‘Oh, that is about 15 steps above the position you are interviewing for,’ ” Scott said, his eyes widening and his voice emotional.
Scott acknowledges that he is competitive with his brothers, particularly David, more than they are with him. The youngest, Bradley, 22, has a year to go at the University of Vermont. His parents and grandparents pay his way, just as they did for his brothers in their college years.
In the Old Days
Going to college wasn’t an issue for grandfather Nicholson, or so he says. With World War II approaching, he entered the Army not long after finishing high school and, in the fighting in Italy, a battlefield commission raised him overnight from enlisted man to first lieutenant. That was “the equivalent of a college education,” as he now puts it, in an age when college on a stockbroker’s résumé “counted for something, but not a lot.”[ΕΥΚΟΛΑ ΧΡΗΜΑΤΑ, ΑΠΟ ΑΓΡΑΜΜΑΤΟΥΣ!!!]
He spent most of his career in a rising market, putting customers into stocks that paid good dividends, and growing wealthy on real estate investments made years ago, when Grafton was still semi-rural. The brokerage firm that employed him changed hands more than once, but he continued to work out of the same office in Worcester.
When his son David graduated from Babson College in 1976, manufacturing in America was in an early phase of its long decline, and Worcester was still a center for the production of sandpaper, emery stones and other abrasives.
He joined one of those companies — owned by the family of his friend — and he has stayed in manufacturing, particularly at companies that make hand tools. Early on, he and his wife bought the home in which they raised their sons, a white colonial dating from the early 1800s, like many houses on North Street, where the grandparents also live, a few doors away.
David Nicholson’s longest stretch was at the Stanley Works, and when he left, seeking promotion, a friend at the Endeavor Tool Company hired him as that company’s general manager, his present job.
In better times, Scott’s father might have given his son work at Endeavor, but the father is laying off workers, and a job in manufacturing, in Scott’s eyes, would be a defeat.
“If you talk to 20 people,” Scott said, “you’ll find only one in manufacturing and everyone else in finance or something else.”[ΑΝΤΙΛΑΜΒΑΝΟΜΕΘΑ ΤΙ ΛΕΓΕΙ?? ΣΤΗΝ ΑΜΕΡΙΚΗ ΥΠΟΧΩΡΟΥΝ ΠΛΕΟΝ ΑΙ ΔΗΜΙΟΥΡΓΙΚΑΙ ΕΡΓΑΣΙΑΙ (ΘΕΩΡΟΥΝΤΑΙ ΚΑΙ ΚΑΚΟ)--ΔΙΔΟΝΤΑΙ ΠΑΡΑΓΓΕΛΙΑΙ ΣΤΗΝ ΚΙΝΑ-- ΚΑΙ ΥΠΑΡΧΟΥΝ ΑΙ ΠΑΡΑΣΙΤΙΚΑΙ!!!]
The Plan
Scott Nicholson almost sidestepped the recession. His plan was to become a Marine Corps second lieutenant. He had spent the summer after his freshman year in “platoon leader” training. Last fall he passed the physical for officer training, and was told to report on Jan. 16.
If all had gone well, he would have emerged in 10 weeks as a second lieutenant, committed to a four-year enlistment. “I could have made a career out of the Marines,” Scott said, “and if I had come out in four years, I would have been incredibly prepared for the workplace.”
It was not to be. In early January, a Marine Corps doctor noticed that he had suffered from childhood asthma. He was washed out. “They finally told me I could reapply if I wanted to,” Scott said. “But the sheen was gone.”
So he struggles to get a foothold in the civilian work force. His brother in Boston lost his roommate, and early last month Scott moved into the empty bedroom, with his parents paying Scott’s share of the $2,000-a-month rent until the lease expires on Aug. 31.
And if Scott does not have a job by then? “I’ll do something temporary; I won’t go back home,” Scott said. “I’ll be a bartender or get work through a temp agency. I hope I don’t find myself in that position.

July 6, 2010

Day 77: The Latest on the Oil Spill

Capture and Containment Efforts Continue
BP reported Tuesday that its capture systems at the blown-out well in the Gulf of Mexico collected or burned off 24,980 barrels of oil on Monday. Mark Proegler, a BP spokesman, said preparations continued for hooking a third vessel, the Helix Producer, up to the systems, which would increase the capture capacity from 28,000 barrels a day to 53,000 barrels. Skimming operations across the gulf have scooped up about 23.5 million gallons of oiled water so far.
Oil Spotted in Lake Pontchartrain
Oil sheen and tar balls from the spill have been spotted in Lake Pontchartrain, which forms the northern boundary of New Orleans and was rescued in the 1990s from rampant pollution, according to the unified command for the spill. Response crews placed a combined 600 feet of hard and soft boom in the Rigolets strait to prevent more oil from getting through to the lake. Nineteen manual skimming vessels and four decontamination vessels based out of Orleans and St. Tammany Parishes were dispatched to the oiled areas.
An interactive map tracking the spill and where it has made landfall, live video of the leak, a guide to online spill resources and additional updates: nytimes.com/national.