"In 2000, Katherine Harris, Florida Secretary of State, ordered county elections officials to purge 57,000 citizens from voter registries as felons not allowed to vote in Florida. In fact, about 95 percent of these voters were innocent of crimes -- but 54 percent were guilty of being African-American. Harris and the state admit that tens of thousands of black voters had been wronged, and with plantation noblesse have agreed to return them to the voter rolls -- at the beginning of 2003.... In 2000, the 180,000 'spoiled ballots' came overwhelmingly from the blackest, poorest, most Democratic counties. Now, the old dogs of ballot-bending are learning some new tricks. Before resigning to run for Congress, Harris leaned hard on the counties to purchase touch screen voting machines. But not just any machines. Harris first authorized the use of machines by only one company, Election Systems & Software of Omaha.... It was ES&S machines that were used in Florida's 2002 primaries and were plagued by countless breakdowns. A report by the state Inspector General says that the company 'bears major responsibility' for the foul-ups. An ACLU study found that, once again, it was Miami-Dade's black voters who were disproportionately disenfranchised by 'lost votes'.... Most troubling of all, some of these practices are going national."

...The intense debate in the United Nations Security Council over a resolution mandating new weapons inspections in Iraq has boiled down to a few phrases deep with meaning for diplomats. But the seven-week battle has masked a larger struggle over the projection and containment of U.S. power, diplomats and analysts said....

In the past two years, the administration has rejected international agreements covering topics from global warming to war crimes, leaving allies deeply cynical about its motives in going to the United Nations now, according to U.N. diplomats.

"The whole debate is about two issues," said an envoy whose country is one of the five permanent Security Council members. "One is Iraq. The other is U.S. power in the world. The second issue is the bigger part of the debate."

Kennedy represented the new, appealing face of America, giving the White House a family and human touch, and championing freedom for people at home and abroad. He acted against racial discrimination in the US and is the only American president to have earned worldwide popular admiration and respect. The country was going through a congressional election campaign, too....

THE ASSASSINATION here Monday of American diplomat Laurence Foley is the latest in a series of terror acts that must be addressed at the levels of both criminality and politics. The killing of Foley was a deep personal tragedy for his family, colleagues and friends, and for his Arab hosts as well. . He and many other Americans work hard every day presenting the best of America to the world — relaxed friendship, official assistance, dedicated professionalism, and a deep, joyous personal commitment to forging mutually satisfying relations between America and the world.

....What does it mean that proven American friends like Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Kuwait and Jordan have become symbols of anti-American terror? It means we are witnessing growing divergences between official Arab policy and public opinion in countries where governments rely heavily on American support while public sentiment is very critical of Washington. This also may be the first wave of anti-US terror in the Arab-Asian world generated by the American-led war against terror. It might be largely explained by the convergence of five separate strands of political sentiments of very varied legitimacy:

a) The cumulative indignities and anger that several hundred million Arabs feel against American policies in the Middle East, going back some four decades, to when Washington's policy tilted severely and became explicitly pro-Israeli.

b) Trends since the 1990-91 Gulf War, including the growing permanent US military presence in the region, and the Anglo-American-driven harsh enforcement of the UN embargo against Iraq, two factors that seem to have contributed to spawning Osama Ben Ladenism and Al Qaeda terror against America.

c) Israel's harsh military assaults, political brutality and economic suffocation of the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza since September 2001, which ordinary Arabs see in parallel with acquiescence by Washington and impotence by Arab governments.

d) America's global “war against terror”, though correct in its inception, is seen to be waged in a discriminating, uneven, manner. Most Arabs and Asians read its latest threat of war to change the regime in Iraq as only emphasising the long tradition of self-serving double-standards in American policy in this region.

e) Many people throughout the Arab-Asian region who feel deeply angry, humiliated, demeaned and helpless because of the above forces become doubly enraged when their own governments limit their freedom of expression or deny them opportunities to participate in political processes that could change government policies. Distortions and rights denials within Arab society only aggravate the pains Arab feel from abroad.

...Saddam Hussein is cruel man, but he seems — to me, at least — a lot saner than Kim Jong Il....Iraq's Saddam

Hussein doesn't have nuclear weapons, but President George Bush wants to use force to disarm him (and actually to dethrone him). North Korea does have nuclear weapons, but President Bush thinks we should use a diplomatic approach, without threats.

What's the difference?

North Korea has no oil; Iraq does. After a bloody war in North Korea, you would have nothing but a poor, devastated country. After a much easier war in Iraq, you would be sitting in charge of the second-largest known oil reserves in the world.

...U.S. estimates of [Amercian] casualties in the event of a war with North Korea said the estimate for the first few hours of combat is 72,000.
North Korea is the fourth-largest military power in the world. It has more than 1 million men in its army, and another 4.7 million in reserve. It has 3,500 main battle tanks and 26 submarines. It has so much of its power perched on the Demilitarized Zone, just a few miles from Seoul, South Korea, and 35,000 American troops, that there is no way we could fight a war without losing thousands of men...

Think about the contrasting headlines made last week by the biggest Arab state and the smallest Arab state. From the biggest state, Egypt, came the news that its state TV planned to run a 41-part series during the month of Ramadan; when TV viewing is at its highest; about a Zionist conspiracy to control Arab lands. [Egyptian TV Revives the 'Protocols of Zion' Myth 10/26 on blogleft] From the smallest state, Bahrain, came the news that it had successfully conducted the first democratic parliamentary election in the Arab gulf, to begin empowering Bahrainis to control their own land.

Therein lies the two Arab responses to 9/11.

One, the Egyptian model, is to feed their people bread, circuses and conspiracy theories to explain why they are falling behind in the world.

The other, the Bahraini model, is to feed their people more responsibility, a freer press and greater ability to shape their own future to help them catch up in the world....

... But the case of Mexico, one of 10 rotating members of the Security Council which so far has sided with France on curtailing any war "triggers" in the resolution, illustrates the nonpecuniary motivations.

"Public opinion in Mexico is not favorable to a war with Iraq, and it would be very costly politically for President [Vicente] Fox to support the US at this point," says Jorge Chabat, a noted Mexican specialist in international relations in Mexico City.

"It is not a case of being pro-French or even anti-American," Mr. Chabat says. "But Mexicans have had their own experience with American power," he adds, noting Mexico's historic loss of half its territory to the US in the 19th century. "Mexican people, more even than other people in the world, are not anxious to support the US in its use of power."

...Within two weeks, [President] Johnson announced that he would halt American bombing above the 20th Parallel, begin peace talks, and not run for reëlection; it looked as if Ellsberg had almost single-handedly engineered the beginning of the end of the war. .... He ends "Secrets" by making a detailed and persuasive case that the leak of the Pentagon Papers did help end the war, though in a way he hadn't anticipated: by setting in motion the Watergate scandal.

Popular US comedian Jon Stewart announced recently on his mock news show’s headlines, that there were plans for a regime change in Florida. After another botched election, Florida had become an embarrassment to the nation. Bombing would begin with targeting the city of Pensacola....

It is now clear that Mr. Bush sees his role as “Globocop” and the USA as the world’s self-appointed policeman....

Protesters represent informed, caring crowd
These people read foreign viewpoints online, don't want to say years hence that they did nothing....Today the crowd is huge; all four corners of the intersection of Cornwall Avenue and Magnolia Street are jammed with people. There is music from flutes and drums, drivers honk their horns in support, a giant puppet of an Iraqi mother holding her dead child looms over the crowd, signs wave in the crisp fall air: PEACE IS PATRIOTIC ... NOT IN OUR NAME ... IRAQIS SHOULD NOT HAVE TO DIE....

But Mondale, who served as the co-chairman of the commission, dissented from the majority position that supported raising retirement ages and privatizing government retirement programs. Mondale co-wrote the commission's dissent with six other Americans:

"Although we support the Commission's role in providing leadership in the global aging debate, we are strongly opposed to some of the Commission's findings and recommendations... Some of the Commission's findings and recommendations could be interpreted as mandates to fundamentally change Social Security and Medicare... Population trends should not be an excuse to renege on this commitment. Rather, we should rededicate ourselves to finding creative ways to meet the commitment, particularly because the United States does not face the same demographic challenges as other nations."

The dissent continued: "We do not support the Commission's findings and recommendations that might result in the dismantling of social insurance programs and their replacement with funded schemes. Funded systems are not immune to financial and demographic fluctuations, as the recent stock market performance clearly demonstrates. Funded systems should remain an important supplement to existing guarantees, but they should not replace those guarantees."

So ....Gingrich lied when he attacked Mondale for supporting Social Security privatization -- a policy which Gingrich himself, of course, supports but which he refuses to acknowledge by name.

... "North Korea can export missile and nuclear technology to the highest bidder," [Kim Myong Chol, a North Korean unofficial spokesman, ] "It's a capitalist practice."

"If America tries to knock out Yongbyon," Mr. Kim added, "North Korea will retaliate immediately on New York and Washington, wipe out South Korea, wipe out Japan."....

Some costume manufacturers have decided to forgo the typical fright, blood and gore this Halloween, choosing instead to market culturally insensitive and racially offensive masks as their new hot ticket items....

Times, Russia-- OPINION: IS THIS THE BEGINNING OF THE END FOR PUTIN?

2//Sydney Morning Herald, Australia--KEEP TROOPS HOME: SPLIT ON WAR ROLE

3//Arabia.com, United Arab Emirates-- ILLEGAL BOSNIAN ARMS SALES TO IRAQ MAY BECOME REGIONAL SCANDAL: ASHDOWN

4//Asia Times Online, Hong Kong--DOCTOR, ALL'S NOT WELL IN PAKISTAN

5//The Independent, UK--CONSERVATIVES PULL THE PLUG ON NUCLEAR POWER

The ads began Saturday and will continue at least through the end of the week. Milliken, a Traverse City resident who was governor from 1969-83, said he was embarrassed by a campaign he says appeals to "peoples' worst instincts."

"The race-baiting theme in television ads and campaign materials pitting Detroit and outstate against one another, not to mention some gross distortion of facts, is outrageous," he said. "The blatantly racial nature of these campaign ads is a betrayal of the Republican Party's heritage as the party of Lincoln."

...Our government has supported Saddam Hussein, Osama Ben Laden, Pol Pot, Augusto Pinochet, death squads in Central America. We have hindered investigations in Haiti by refusing to return materials seized from the Haitian military in September 1994 and failing to disclose documents detailing atrocities. We also hindered the investigations in Rwanda, by refusing to expose those who were providing arms to the killers. We even refused to call genocide “genocide”. As Americans, we are generous and loving ... when we know what is going on. We abhor human rights violations, and evil leaders. We usually root for the underdog in conflicts. In a nutshell, morality tends to be our compass....

It barely made the newspapers late last week when the FBI released a national alert warning that Al Qaeda terrorists may be planning an attack on passenger trains inside the U.S.

That news didn't capture much attention because the media were riveted on the arrests of two men linked to the sniper attacks that had been terrorizing Washington for three weeks. One form of terrorism squeezed out the other.

That's what it's been like for Americans of late. The cataclysmic violence of Sept. 11, 2001. The anthrax scare. The shoe bomber. Weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. A nuclear North Korea. The sniper. The unthinkable, on a regular basis, made real....

This open-ended anxiety is uncharted territory for U.S. society. The U.S. mainland appeared immune from attack even during World Wars I and II, and all but the very hottest moment (the Cuban missile crisis) of the Cold War. And while ordinary crime has always generated fear, the new cascade of domestic and foreign dangers seems different: larger, more organized, more difficult to avoid....

The real change in the atmosphere is the danger of stateless terrorism....

And that is the catch in the throat behind the sigh of relief that the sniper threat has apparently ended. One danger is gone. But others, as unpredictable as these attacks, still wait. After the last year-plus, more of the unimaginable now seems almost inevitable.

The president's failure to tell Congress about North Korea before the vote on Iraq violated separation of powers. ...The president owes us an explanation. The North Koreans had already told him about their nuclear weapons at the time Congress was debating war with Iraq. But he kept this information secret from the House and Senate. And he failed to mention it in his address to the American people in which he urged quick passage of a war resolution. ...We are creating an important precedent for the future. If the administration's breach of protocol is left unchecked this time, the way is open for more distortions the next time.

This is the first election ever in the Arab gulf region where women were allowed to run and vote, and their husbands have quickly discovered what that means. The king's wife, Sheika Sabika � in an unprecedented move in this conservative region, campaigned publicly for women to go out and vote. She visited a Shiite Muslim community center and an elderly woman stood up to say: "Thank you. [Because we can now vote,] for the first time our husbands are asking us what we think and are interested in what we have to say."...

The Bush team needs to pay attention to the Bahrain experiment, because it is a mini-version of what nation-building in Iraq would require. Like Iraq, Bahrain is a country with a Shiite majority, which has been economically deprived, and a Sunni Muslim minority, which has always controlled the levers of power. Historically in this part of the world, democracy never worked because of the feeling that if your tribe or religious community was not in power, it would lose everything, so no rotation in power could be tolerated

...Leaderless revolutionaries, one-man armies, lone wolves angry at the world: you don't need a plane or a bomb to terrorize America. Just one gun....

It took three weeks and 10 deaths to catch one man, possibly aided by a 17-year-old, armed with no more than a rifle and a fistful of bullets, in a part of the country with the highest concentration of police, military and counterterrorism forces.

The hunt for the killer exposed what can and cannot be done to prevent terrorism. The government can fortify high-profile, so-called hard targets like the White House and the airports, but what can it do to protect a Ponderosa Steakhouse?

...But in addition to the passion, conviction was central to the man. The other thing that was so exceptional about Paul Wellstone was his authenticity. He was authentic. There wasn't a sense that the Paul Wellstone you were seeing or I was seeing was different from the one that anybody else was seeing in Duluth or Eveleth or St. Paul. That was the sense of him that I will always cherish. That and rare political courage.

In 1996, Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich had fashioned and crafted together a remarkable political document called the welfare reform plan, which as Daniel Patrick Moynihan pointed out, left an awful lot of poor children out. And the only Democratic incumbent in the United States Senate that year who stood up and risked his political career to vote against a very popular, politically popular welfare reform plan was Paul Wellstone.

Ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the world has been dominated by a single superpower ­ the United States. Backed by overwhelming military force ­ and a stupendous military budget of close to $400 billion a year ­ the US has sought, and largely secured, global hegemony. Today, the “world order” is an American order. Contemplating the international scene, American intellectuals speak of a new “American imperium,” more powerful and extensive than the Roman or British empires of the past...

...the US has declared war on the nebulous worldwide network of Islamic militants which, after Sept. 11, it sees as the most immediate threat to both its security and its supremacy.

But something strange has happened. Over the past six weeks, the almighty United States has failed to get its way. Having declared its intention to overthrow the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein (which it portrayed on scant evidence as a threat to the entire “civilized world”) it prepared to take military action against Baghdad. It was then persuaded, by its British ally among others, to seek some sort of international legitimacy for its war by means of a new Security Council Resolution....

This is where the problem has arisen. For the past six weeks, in spite of repeated expressions of impatience, naked bullying, economic blackmail, and threats to go it alone, the US has so far failed to secure the resolution it wanted.

Instead, it has had to endure endless wrangling in the Security Council over the wording of the proposed resolution. Any words which could be interpreted as giving the US an automatic right to attack, in the event of Iraqi obstruction of the arms inspectors, have been removed.

At the same time, US efforts to impose draconian arms-inspection terms (which Iraq would almost certainly have rejected) have been watered down.

As the bargaining at the Security Council drags on, the US has been made to appear more petulant than powerful....A dent has been made in America’s vision of a “unipolar” world. Hopes have been raised, although as yet very faint, that a more balanced “bipolar” international order might eventually re-emerge... In contrast to the US message of global hegemony backed by military force, the message from Paris is the need for dialogue, for cultural and political diversity, for respect for human rights, for the peaceful resolution of disputes, for multilateral rather than unilateral action, for international solidarity with the weak and the poor, and above all for the strict application of the law....

Europe is moving steadily forward toward greater unity and is making great efforts to forge a common security and foreign policy. Reconciling the national interests of so many countries, large and small, is not easy. But the reward will be greater power and influence for Europe in world affairs. A bipolar world is on the horizon, able one day to stand up to America’s imperial ambitions.

What is missing in this reorganization of the affairs of the planet is a clear role for Arabs and Muslims. They too need to become a coherent force in the world, able to flex their political, economic and ideological muscles.

Terrorism struck at the heart of America and now at the heart of Russia. No one is safe. Innocent Palestinian, Israeli and Chechen civilians are no longer alone in having to constantly fear for their lives. The average Australian or Briton now knows that he/she can be the next victim, perhaps while on a fatal night out on the town during a holiday on an exotic island.

Military campaigns might — although so far have not managed to — succeed in bringing to justice some of the masterminds of large terrorist operations. But only comprehensive political solutions can ensure that others will not take their place, and that terrorism will not reemerge from where the bombs were dropped.