Sunday, January 5, 2014
CONTACT ME AT: manessmorrison2@yahoo.com


News Clips For The Day


US will not send troops to help Iraq fight al Qaeda: Kerry – NBC
By F. Brinley Bruton, Staff Writer


The United States will help Iraq fight an al Qaeda-linked group that seized the city of Fallujah in the west of the country, but will not send American troops, Secretary of State John Kerry said on Sunday.

"We will stand with the government of Iraq and with others who will push back against their efforts to destabilize," Kerry told journalists as he left Jerusalem for Jordan and Saudi Arabia. "We are going to do everything that is possible. I will not go into the details."

The Islamic State in Iraq and Levant (ISIL), which took control of Fallujah and Ramadi over last week, is one of the strongest rebel groups in Syria and has imposed a strict version of Islamic law in territories it holds.

U.S. intelligence officials said Friday the situation in western Iraq was "extremely dire" after the radical forces raised their flag in the town of Fallujah -- site of two of the bloodiest battles during the Iraq war -- and gained control of the city.
Kerry admitted that the U.S. was "very, very concerned" by the fighting, and called ISIL "the most dangerous players in that region."

The ISIL claimed responsibility for a suicide car bombing in in Lebanon on Saturday. 


Al-Qaeda
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Al-Qaeda (/ælˈkaɪdə/ al-KY-də; Arabic: القاعدة‎ al-qāʿidah, Arabic: [ælqɑːʕɪdɐ], translation: "The Base" and alternatively spelled al-Qaida and sometimes al-Qa'ida) is a global militant Islamist and takfiri organization founded by Osama bin Laden in Peshawar, Pakistan,[15] at some point between August 1988[16] and late 1989,[17] with its origins being traceable to the Soviet War in Afghanistan.[18] It operates as a network comprising both a multinational, stateless army[19] and a radical Sunni Muslim movement calling for global Jihad and a strict interpretation of sharia law.

With the loss of key leaders, culminating in the death of Osama bin Laden, al-Qaeda's operations have devolved from actions that were controlled from the top-down, to actions by franchise associated groups, to actions of lone wolf operators.

Al-Qaeda ideologues envision a complete break from all foreign influences in Muslim countries, and the creation of a new world-wide Islamic caliphate.[3][26][27] Among the beliefs ascribed to Al-Qaeda members is the conviction that a Christian–Jewish alliance is conspiring to destroy Islam.[28] As Salafist jihadists, they believe that the killing of civilians is religiously sanctioned, and they ignore any aspect of religious scripture which might be interpreted as forbidding the murder of civilians and internecine fighting.[9][29] Al-Qaeda also opposes man-made laws, and wants to replace them with a strict form of sharia law.[30]

Al-Qaeda is intolerant of non-Sunni branches of Islam and denounces them by means of excommunications called "takfir". Al-Qaeda leaders regard liberal Muslims, Shias, Sufis and other sects as heretics and have attacked their mosques and gatherings.[32

Al-Qaeda's management philosophy has been described as "centralization of decision and decentralization of execution."[34] It is thought that al-Qaeda's leadership, following the War on Terror, has "become geographically isolated", leading to the "emergence of decentralized leadership" of regional groups using the al-Qaeda "brand".[35][36]

Many terrorism experts do not believe that the global jihadist movement is driven at every level by al-Qaeda's leadership. Although bin Laden still held considerable ideological sway over some Muslim extremists before his death, experts argue that al-Qaeda has fragmented over the years into a variety of regional movements that have little connection with one another. Marc Sageman, a psychiatrist and former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officer, said that al-Qaeda is now just a "loose label for a movement that seems to target the West". "There is no umbrella organisation. We like to create a mythical entity called [al-Qaeda] in our minds, but that is not the reality we are dealing with."[37]

This view mirrors the account given by Osama bin Laden in his October 2001 interview with Tayseer Allouni:
"... this matter isn't about any specific person and... is not about the al-Qa`idah Organization. We are the children of an Islamic Nation, with Prophet Muhammad as its leader, our Lord is one... and all the true believers [mu'mineen] are brothers. So the situation isn't like the West portrays it, that there is an 'organization' with a specific name (such as 'al-Qa`idah') and so on. That particular name is very old. It was born without any intention from us. Brother Abu Ubaida... created a military base to train the young men to fight against the vicious, arrogant, brutal, terrorizing Soviet empire... So this place was called 'The Base' ['Al-Qa`idah'], as in a training base, so this name grew and became. We aren't separated from this nation. We are the children of a nation, and we are an inseparable part of it, and from those public demonstrations which spread from the far east, from the Philippines, to Indonesia, to Malaysia, to India, to Pakistan, reaching Mauritania... and so we discuss the conscience of this nation."[38]

Others, however, see al-Qaeda as an integrated network that is strongly led from the Pakistani tribal areas and has a powerful strategic purpose. Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism expert at Georgetown University, said "It amazes me that people don't think there is a clear adversary out there, and that our adversary does not have a strategic approach."[37


I am glad to see that the US is not going to go back into Iraq to fight the ISIL. Soon after we left, the militants moved in. Fighting them with armies doesn't seem to solve the problem. It is now up to the Iraqi army to defeat the insurgents. It is alarming that Al Qaeda, through affiliated groups, is gaining ground in a number of places in the Middle East and even Southeast Asia. There was even a report that Putin is combating them in Russia.

This movement is linked to the Sunni and Shia divide, and though it started in Pakistan in the fight between Afghanistan and Russia, it looks – from the Bin Laden description – like an attempt to control the whole Islamic world both ideologically and by armed dominance, and to confront the West. Bin Laden is dead, but the structure of Al Qaeda is alive as a religious and politically based movement. To the US on its home territory, the threat is mainly that of terrorism, but in the Middle East it is threatening all unstable or weak governments with dominance or civil war. I wonder what techniques we have to fight it effectively.

This may be why the US has backed so many dictatorial governments – they, by being cruelly repressive, have effectively blocked entrance by destabilizing influences. As long as religion is the basis of national organization and identity we may be battling Al Qaeda until peaceful Muslims win control those countries and true democracy grows.

This is why I am so opposed to the involvement of religious blocks in the government of the US. They are an irrational and potentially militant force, and their influence doesn't fit into a democratic society. To a large degree it was religious groups who founded the US, coming here to escape the long-term war between the Catholics and Protestants in England, where unsanctioned religious groups were repressed by the government. In response to that, our laws were set up to avoid such repression of individual beliefs here.




Pope calls for new approach to kids of gay, divorced parents – NBC
By Becky Bratu, Staff Writer


Pope Francis called for a reassessment of the way the Catholic Church deals with the children of gay couples and divorced parents, saying that an effort should be made to not push them away from the church. 

"On an educational level, gay unions raise challenges for us today, which for us are sometimes difficult to understand," Francis said in an address to the Catholic Union of Superiors General in November, according to Agence France-Presse. 
Fragments of his speech were published on Italian websites Saturday.

Francis acknowledged that a growing number of kids today have divorced parents, while others are part of non-traditional families.
"I remember a case in which a sad little girl confessed to her teacher: 'my mother's girlfriend doesn't love me'," he was quoted as saying, according to AFP.

Due to the Church's opposition to homosexuality, same-sex marriage and divorce, these children may feel unwelcome, the pontiff -- who has garnered a reputation for his efforts toward greater inclusion -- indicated.

"We must be careful not to administer a vaccine against faith to them," Francis added.

It's hard to tell from this article what the current behavior of the Catholic Church to these children is, but I suppose if the church ex-communicates the adults they will lose the children, too. They should reach out to young people uniformly, maybe making a special effort to bring those children in. Even more effective would be to keep the doors open to the adults as well, rather than shutting them out.

I don't know of a Protestant church that actually prevents “sinners” from coming to services and participating. Of course the Protestants have a long history of splitting away from the main church to form new denominations or congregations based on a disagreement over doctrine. That's part of our religious freedom in this country. I once drew up a list from the Internet of the different groups that exist today, and it had twenty five or thirty groups on the list. Some are formed to exert political influence and form a Christian state, some are based on ethnic or racial hatred, some are cults which completely control their congregants, but most are just varieties of the Christian dogmas. I like that. It gives me a chance to find the group of my choice and worship as I see fit.




White House announces two new 'executive actions' on guns – NBC
By Carrie Dann,


The Obama administration is proposing two more executive actions that it says will help prevent individuals who are prohibited from having a gun for mental health reasons from obtaining a firearm.

The Department of Justice, arguing that current federal law contains terminology about mental health issues that is too vague,  proposed a regulation that would clarify who is ineligible to possess a firearm for specific situations related to mental health, like commitment to a mental institution. “In addition to providing general guidance on federal law, these clarifications will help states determine what information should be made accessible to the federal background check system, which will, in turn, strengthen the system's reliability and effectiveness,” the administration said in a fact sheet distributed to reporters.

The second executive action, proposed by the Department of Health and Human Services, would allow some medical organizations more leeway to report “limited information necessary to help keep guns out of potentially dangerous hands” to the federal background check system. “The proposed rule will not change the fact that seeking help for mental health problems or getting treatment does not make someone legally prohibited from having a firearm,” the White House added.

The two new “executive actions” announced Friday by the Office of the Vice President add to over two dozen executive branch rules designed to help reduce gun violence.
Legislative efforts to pass stricter background checks failed to gain traction in Congress last year.


I hope this narrows the gaps in the system which have allowed some of the deranged shooters to get their weapons, even though they were known to have mental problems. I don't think, from the way these steps are described here, this should cause the NRA to try to oppose the new rules. We need government controls in this area of the law, as our society becomes more anonymous and therefore unaccountable in a way that small towns in the past were not. Crime can flourish here while the criminals get away undetected.

In small towns of fifty years ago the people who were dangerous were often known to their neighbors and therefore avoided by the law-abiding citizens. The law needs tools to prevent these dangerous people from doing violence. Not all mentally deranged people are violent, but there is a greater likelihood that they may be.

Unfortunately, the number of long-term hospitals has declined, as outpatient care has become more popular. This is good as long as drugs work well, but there will always be a need for hospitalization. Jail is not a good substitute. The least we can do is keep guns away from those people who are incapable of controlling their actions.



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Is U.S. Ready Rethink Sept. 11 Security Policies? – NPR
by Tom Gjelten
 
President Obama will announce this year how he wants to overhaul operations at the National Security Agency and other intelligence agencies. The NSA surveillance activities disclosed by Edward Snowden have been criticized by Congress and others. In the past, reports of intelligence abuses or failures have prompted significant changes.
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It's MORNING EDITION from NPR News. I'm Renee Montagne.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
And I'm David Greene. Good morning. President Obama says he will soon propose changes at the National Security Agency. Former contractor Edward Snowden's disclosure of NSA surveillance programs widespread criticism and prompted a review of the agency's operations by Congress, the courts, and the White House. NPR's Tom Gjelten looks at whether the country is now at a turning point, ready to rethink the security policies in place since 9/11.

TOM GJELTEN, BYLINE: The country's intelligence agencies have come under scrutiny before. In the 1970s, a Senate committee found the CIA, the FBI, and the NSA were involved in improper - in some cases illegal - activities. Those disclosures led to major intelligence policy changes. This past year brought the news of secret NSA telephone and Internet surveillance operations. But Richard Clarke, a counter terrorism adviser under Presidents Clinton and Bush, argues this scandal doesn't measure up to what happened in the '70s.

RICHARD CLARKE: We don't see any indication that NSA or other government organizations are abusing their power. They're acting clearly within the laws as defined by the Congress and the courts. We don't see them doing investigations for political reasons, or picking on minorities, or religious groups or ethnic groups.
GJELTEN: Another embarrassment for U.S. intelligence agencies came 12 years ago when they didn't foresee the 9/11 attacks and then erroneously reported that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. Those failures also brought a round of reforms. Michael Allen, who was an intelligence staffer at the Bush White House and then on Capitol Hill, tells the story of the post 9/11 changes in his book "Blinking Red." But he doubts the NSA surveillance controversy will produce a reform push like the one he saw back in 2004.

MICHAEL ALLEN: Everyone thought, well, we have got to do something about the intelligence community's performance. This time, I think you have a lot of people who want to reform some of the activities, but it's not quite clear where to go yet.
GJELTEN: U.S. intelligence agencies can claim success in helping to prevent another major terrorist attack. The questions now are whether they've dug too deep in their search for terrorists or considered the cost to privacy and civil liberties. The White House review panel concluded last month that too often we have over-reacted in periods of national crisis. Richard Clarke was a member of the group.

CLARKE: It's probably a good time, because we have cooler heads, to rethink some of the procedures and see if we can't do things in a way more consistent with our traditional values, while at the same time not diminishing our defenses.
GJELTEN: A fine-tuning of U.S. intelligence gathering at this point might not count as a major policy change comparable to the big intelligence reforms of the past. Jack Goldsmith is a Harvard law professor who served as a Justice Department lawyer under George W. Bush.

JACK GOLDSMITH: We've been in the process of calibrating our response to 9/11 ever since 9/11, in some respects going back, in some respects going forward. It's a constant process of learning new information about what the nature of the threat is, what the costs of our particular counterterrorism programs are, what the nation is willing to accept.

GJELTEN: The White House review group recommended that the NSA halt its bulk collection of telephone records, saying the records should be stored outside the government's direct control and searched only with a court order. One federal judge recently ruled that the bulk collection was unconstitutional; another judge concluded the opposite.

Members of Congress are similarly divided over what NSA changes, if any, are needed. Michael Allen says the second-guessing of U.S. counter terrorism policies in the aftermath of Edward Snowden's disclosures has reached the point that something will have to change.

ALLEN: I think there's going to have to be some sort of catharsis, either a legislative act or perhaps solid action by President Obama, for us to be able to say all right, well, we've addressed the NSA issues, and now it's time to move on.
GJELTEN: Critics and supporters of the intelligence agencies do agree the days of big budgets and broad authorities are over. And President Obama has already signaled he'll propose some changes in the way the NSA carries out its mission. But the memory of 9/11 eleven is fresh enough and the fear of terrorism still strong enough that a major course correction seems unlikely. Tom Gjelten, NPR News, Washington.


I think the idea of freezing the database of telephone records, storing it outside government control and requiring a court order to use it would probably be the best step for this time, as the White House panel has recommended. If it were accessed only in response to a pressing threat and under the court's control I would feel more relaxed. I will look for more news when Obama makes his recommendation.



­ Bill De Blasio Sworn In As New York City Mayor – NPR
by Charles Mahtesian
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Bill de Blasio was sworn in as the 109th mayor of New York City on Wednesday, marking the return of a Democrat to City Hall for the first time in two decades.
The public ceremony, which took place on the steps of City Hall, followed a formal swearing in at de Blasio's Brooklyn home at two minutes past midnight.

The new mayor took the oath of office from former President Bill Clinton with his hand on a bible once used by Franklin Delano Roosevelt. He rode the subway to the inauguration with his family.

De Blasio's November election victory signaled the end of an era in the nation's largest city. Running on a populist platform that highlighted issues of income inequality, the former city public advocate explicitly rejected the business-oriented approach of his predecessor, Michael Bloomberg, who held office for 12 years.
Bloomberg served as the city's dominant political presence in the post-Sept. 11 era and was widely recognized as a municipal innovator in areas ranging from transportation to public health. But on the campaign trail, de Blasio repeatedly referred to the city's relative prosperity as "a tale of two cities" — a message designed to underscore the gap between the city's rich and poor.

"My fellow New Yorkers, today you spoke out loudly and clearly for a new direction for our city," de Blasio said at an election night party. "Make no mistake: The people of this city have chosen a progressive path, and tonight we set forth on it, together."

That path to victory positioned de Blasio as a national herald of a new brand of liberal city governance, a role the 52-year-old mayor has embraced.
"We know that our mission reaches deeper. We are called to put an end to the economic and social inequalities that threaten to unravel the city we love," said de Blasio in his inaugural speech. "So today we commit to a new progressive direction in New York. And that same progressive impulse has written our city's history. It's in our DNA."
After the tenets of big-city liberalism were rejected by a generation of mayors — both in New York and elsewhere — the idea of a revival on a grand stage animated the speakers and officeholders who preceded de Blasio.

Public Advocate-elect Letitia James hailed a "wave of progressive victories" and criticized what she called "a gilded age of inequality."
"We can become America's DNA for the future," said Harry Belafonte, the singer and de Blasio supporter who opened the inaugural ceremonies.

In his address, de Blasio promised to expand the paid sick leave law, require more affordable housing from developers, reform the city's stop-and-frisk policing policies and offer full-day universal pre-K and after-school programs for every middle school student by taxing the wealthy.

"We do not ask more of the wealthy to punish success," he said. "We do it to create more success stories. And we do it to honor a basic truth: that a strong economy is dependent on a thriving school system."

De Blasio's immediate challenge could be more prosaic: A snowstorm is in the forecast for Thursday, presenting the new mayor with his first test.


Does this mark the beginning of a trend in US politics away from the Tea Party and their followers? True, it's only a city government, but it is a significantly large group of voters which includes rich, poor and middle class people. I hope the national consensus is moving toward progressive thinking again. Upward mobility is improved in that kind of environment rather than one of exclusivity and big business control. We need to keep feeding the Middle Class with more people from the ranks of the poor, rather than having it lose ground in these times of unemployment. The wealthy can afford to cover more of the expenses of civilized life and still be prosperous enough.



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'You're Invisible, But I'll Eat You Anyway.' Secrets Of Snow-Diving Foxes – NPR
by Robert Krulwich
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I'm a fox. It's January. I'm hungry. I want a meal. My food, however, is buried 3 feet down, deep in the snow, hiding. It's alive, in motion, and very small, being a mouse. So how does an above-ground fox catch an underground mouse? Well, the answer is nothing short of astonishing.
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Think about this an ordinary fox can stalk a mole, mouse, vole or shrew from a distance of 25 feet, which means its food is making a barely audible rustling sound, hiding almost two car lengths away. And yet our fox hurls itself into the air — in an arc determined by the fox, the speed and trajectory of the scurrying mouse, any breezes, the thickness of the ground cover, the depth of the snow — and somehow (how? how?), it can land straight on top of the mouse, pinning it with its forepaws or grabbing the mouse's head with its teeth.

While in the air, I recently read, foxes can adjust their flight pattern by shifting their tails, ever so slightly, to one side or the other — and all this without seeing what they're about to eat.
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Drone pilots have nothing on foxes. These animals can be superb aerial hunters, and a few years ago a Czech scientist noticed something odd about how they do it.
Jaroslav Cerveny decided to watch Czech red foxes catching mice in the wild. As reported by Ed Yong in his blog, Not Exactly Rocket Science, Cerveny recruited a team of 23 hunters and wildlife biologists who spread out across various meadows and fields and recorded "almost 600 mousing jumps performed by 84 foxes at a wide variety of locations and times." That's a lot of jumpin'.
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When they looked at each other's notes, the researchers saw a pattern: For some reason, Czech foxes prefer to jump in a particular direction — toward the northeast. (To be more precise, it's about 20 degrees off "magnetic north" — the "N" on your compass.) As the video above says, most of the time, most foxes miss their targets and emerge covered in snow and (one presumes) a little embarrassed. But when they pointed in that particular northeasterly direction, Ed writes, "they killed on 73 percent of their attacks." If they reversed direction, and jumped exactly the opposite way, they killed 60 percent of the time. But in all other directions — east, south, west, whatever — they sucked. Only 18 percent of those jumps were successful.
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Why this preference for a northeasterly/southwesterly leap? Cerveny found that foxes prefer to jump that way regardless of time of day, season of year, cloud cover or wind direction, so the northeast "advantage" isn't a temporary thing. It's constant.
What's going on?

Cerveny believes that foxes have "a magnetic sense." Not only can they see, hear, touch, taste and smell like we do, they've got an extra gift. They can sense the Earth's magnetic field. There are birds, sharks, turtles and ants that can do the same thing. But the fox is the first animal we know of to use this sense to hunt.
Cerveny can't prove this yet; he hasn't found a packet of magnetically sensitive cells or crystals inside a fox. That's going to take time. But if his theory is correct, here's how it might work.

Listening With A Compass
First, a fox hears something. She gets really quiet and tilts her ears. (You see this on the video — her head shifts, she concentrates.) She waits. There's another sound.
Where, she wonders, is that sound coming from? Here's where I wish I were a fox. Walking around with a "magnetic sense," says Ed Yong, is like walking around with a flashlight attached to your belt (or head) — pointed down at a fixed angle. Let's make it a 60-degree angle. Wherever you are, this spot travels with you, ahead of you, as you move. You can sense it — like you'd see the beam of light from a flashlight that never quits.
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John Phillips, who studies magnetic senses at Virginia Tech, told Ed that the flashlight beam is analogous to the downward slope of the Earth's magnetic field in the Northern Hemisphere. While I'm not sure what that means, apparently animals know how to measure the distance between themselves and that sort of magnetic beam. So, when a fox hears a sound under the snow, she searches "for that sweet spot," as Ed puts it, "where the angle of the sound hitting [her] ears matches the slope of the Earth's magnetic field." When the two are in alignment, then — like a treasure map marked "X" — she knows exactly where to go! And 73 percent of the time, she's exactly right.
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It's science like this that tells me creatures are doing ridiculously amazing things all the time that I can't understand, will never get to feel — which triggers, at least in me, another feeling, something darker. Animal envy. After reading these papers, I wanted to be a fox. Very badly. Not forever. Just for the time it would take to sense a magnet, to leap into the sky, to plunge down into a snowbank and land on my lunch. If there were only a fox wondering what it would be like to eat chicken with a fork, maybe we could swap.
But. I guess that's not going to happen.


Some people have suggested that cats and dogs may have an inborn directional sense, because every now and then there is a news article telling about a pet that has been moved across the country and sets out on foot to make its way home, succeeding though it took years in some cases. I, personally, have no directional sense. I get lost in new settings until I find my way around and learn the new route, unless I have a map in the car. Nowadays, I do nearly always have a map, unless I bring it inside my apartment to plot a route and then forget to take it back out.

Farmers and woodsmen in the early days in America had to learn to orient themselves directionally, and often did it by the suns position in the sky. As far as I know, though, this is a skill that has to be learned in humans. Foxes have no such training. They operate by instinct alone. People, of course, are not encouraged to do things according to their instincts, it being more important that they obey cultural rules and activities, following those who are the leaders with an often blind loyalty. As a result of that, I think many of our instincts have been bred out of us down through time.

Still, some people strongly believe in a “sixth sense,” that helps us to get down to the truth of a given situation or understand the inner mind of another person while they are actively projecting their preferred viewpoint. If we could only read minds or discern who is lying, life would be easier. We do come close to that with the ability to read faces and body language as people interact. And there are those people who are “dowsers” who employ a forked stick held out before them to detect when the stick dips downward, and supposedly at that location will be found a source of water – magnetic sensing?

My point is that we tend in modern society to follow external guides rather than internal, and therefore may not detect and develop abilities which we may have. It is unlikely, it seems to me, that some selected animals would have something as amazing as a magnetic sense while other species, which are also linked on the same evolutionary chain with earlier life forms would completely lack the ability. In the case of migrations – such as the lemmings – a magnetic sense is suspected. Humans in their early days on the earth also were migratory. Maybe we have something that we just don't need anymore and as a result we don't encourage it to develop.