Prometheus 6

The C.I.A.’s continuing relationship with the company, which recently was awarded a $100 million contract to provide security at agency bases in Afghanistan, has drawn harsh criticism from some members of Congress, who argue that the company’s tarnished record should preclude it from such work. At least two of the Blackwater-affiliated companies, XPG and Greystone, obtained secret contracts from the agency, according to interviews with a half dozen former Blackwater officials.

It would certainly explain a lot.

30 False Fronts Won Contracts for Blackwater
By JAMES RISEN and MARK MAZZETTI

WASHINGTON — Blackwater Worldwide created a web of more than 30 shell companies or subsidiaries in part to obtain millions of dollars in American government contracts after the security company came under intense criticism for reckless conduct in Iraq, according to Congressional investigators and former Blackwater officials.

While it is not clear how many of those businesses won contracts, at least three had deals with the United States military or the Central Intelligence Agency, according to former government and company officials. Since 2001, the intelligence agency has awarded up to $600 million in classified contracts to Blackwater and its affiliates, according to a United States government official.

The Senate Armed Services Committee this week released a chart that identified 31 affiliates of Blackwater, now known as Xe Services. The network was disclosed as part of a committee’s investigation into government contracting. The investigation revealed the lengths to which Blackwater went to continue winning contracts after Blackwater guards killed 17 Iraqi civilians in Baghdad in September 2007. That episode and other reports of abuses led to criminal and Congressional investigations, and cost the company its lucrative security contract with the State Department in Iraq.

The network of companies — which includes several businesses located in offshore tax havens — allowed Blackwater to obscure its involvement in government work from contracting officials or the public, and to assure a low profile for any of its classified activities, said former Blackwater officials, who, like the government officials, spoke only on condition of anonymity.

Another concern is whether the Pentagon, or government in general, has the nimbleness for such work. Mr. Lynn acknowledged that “it takes the Pentagon 81 months to make a new computer system operational after it is first funded.” By contrast, he noted, “the iPhone was developed in 24 months.”

When was the last time your antivirus software found anything but a tracking cookie? That's all mine has ever found. Meanwhile there is no antivirus software that can touch botnet infections, which are the serious threat now.

2008 Attack on Military Computers Is Confirmed
By BRIAN KNOWLTON

WASHINGTON — A top Pentagon official has confirmed a previously classified incident that he describes as “the most significant breach of U.S. military computers ever,” a 2008 episode in which a foreign intelligence agent used a flash drive to infect computers, including those used by the Central Command in overseeing combat zones in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Plugging the cigarette-lighter-sized flash drive into an American military laptop at a base in the Middle East amounted to “a digital beachhead, from which data could be transferred to servers under foreign control,” according to William J. Lynn 3d, deputy secretary of defense, writing in the latest issue of the journal Foreign Affairs.

“It was a network administrator’s worst fear: a rogue program operating silently, poised to deliver operational plans into the hands of an unknown adversary,” Mr. Lynn wrote.

The incident was first reported in November 2008 by The Los Angeles Times, which said that the matter was sufficiently grave that President George W. Bush was briefed on it. The newspaper cited suspicions of Russian involvement.

But Mr. Lynn’s article was the first official confirmation. He also put a name — Operation Buckshot Yankee — to the Pentagon operation to counter the attack, and said that the episode “marked a turning point in U.S. cyber-defense strategy.” In an early step, the Defense Department banned the use of portable flash drives with its computers, though it later modified the ban.

If you're into  it. Me, I'm not going to read 75,000 documents...especially since there are no surprises for a thinking person.

This, on the other hand, is to be autonomous.

South Korea deploys robot capable of killing intruders along border with North
South Korea has deployed sentry robots capable of detecting and killing intruders along the heavily-fortified border with North Korea, officials said on Tuesday.

Two robots with surveillance, tracking, firing and voice recognition systems were integrated into a single unit, a defence ministry spokesman said.

The 400 million won (£220,000) unit was installed last month at a guard post in the central section of the Demilitarised Zone which bisects the peninsula, Yonhap news agency said.

It quoted an unidentified military official as saying the ministry would deploy sentry robots along the world's last Cold War frontier if the test was successful.

The robot uses heat and motion detectors to sense possible threats, and alerts command centres, Yonhap said.

If the command centre operator cannot identify possible intruders through the robot's audio or video communications system, the operator can order it to fire its gun or 40mm automatic grenade launcher.

Report: Taliban training monkeys to fight against U.S. soldiers
Posted Jul 9, 2010 by ■ Andrew Moran

A Chinese news publication has reported that the Taliban are training monkeys to shoot and kill American soldiers. As one publication stated, either the news outlet was pranked or has nabbed an outrageous scoop.

The coalition forces in Afghanistan have some of the most sophisticated weaponry in the world. NATO powers in the region have everything from fighter jets to dangerous weapons to highly trained combat soldiers.

But the Taliban is supposedly investing in monkeys. That is what the the People’s Daily, a newspaper owned by the Chinese government, is reporting. According to Friday’s report, based on British intelligence, the Taliban is recruiting monkeys, and training them to use weapons and fight against American troops. American military intelligence experts are calling them “monkey terrorists.”

The United States, American officials said, faced a hard choice: refusing to compromise with the Arab states on Israel would have sunk the entire review conference. Given the emphasis Mr. Obama has placed on nonproliferation, the United States could not accept such an outcome.

It also would complicate the administration’s attempts to build bridges to the Arab world, an effort that is at the heart of some of the disagreements between the United States and Israel.

Nudge on Arms Further Divides U.S. and Israel
by MARK LANDLER

WASHINGTON — It was only one paragraph buried deep in the most plain-vanilla kind of diplomatic document, 40 pages of dry language committing 189 nations to a world free of nuclear weapons. But it has become the latest source of friction between Israel and the United States in a relationship that has lurched from crisis to crisis over the last few months.

At a meeting to review the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty in May, the United States yielded to demands by Arab nations that the final document urge Israel to sign the treaty — a way of spotlighting its historically undeclared nuclear weapons.

Israel believed it had assurances from the Obama administration that it would reject efforts to include such a reference, an Israeli official said, and it saw this as another sign of unreliability by its most important ally. In a recent visit to Washington, Israel’s defense minister, Ehud Barak, raised the issue in meetings with senior American officials.

With Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu scheduled to meet President Obama on Tuesday at the White House, the flap may introduce a discordant note into a meeting that both sides are eager to portray as a chance for Israel and the United States to turn the page after a rocky period.

McChrystal Is Summoned to Washington Over Remarks
By DEXTER FILKINS

KABUL, Afghanistan — An angry President Obama summoned his top commander in Afghanistan to Washington on Tuesday after a magazine article portrayed the general and his staff as openly contemptuous of some senior members of the Obama administration.

An administration official said the commander, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, would meet with President Obama and Vice President Biden at the White House on Wednesday “to explain to the Pentagon and the commander in chief his quotes in the piece,” which appears in the July 8-22 edition of Rolling Stone.

General McChrystal was scheduled to attend a monthly meeting on Afghanistan by teleconference, the official said, but was directed to return to Washington in light of the article. He apologized for his remarks, saying the article was “a mistake reflecting poor judgment and should never have happened.”

The article shows General McChrystal or his aides talking in sharply derisive terms about Mr. Biden; Ambassador Karl Eikenberry; Richard C. Holbrooke, the special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan; and an unnamed minister in the French government. One of General McChrystal’s aides is quoted as referring to the national security adviser, James L. Jones, as a “clown.”

A senior administration official said Mr. Obama was furious about the article, particularly with the suggestion that he was uninterested and unprepared to discuss the Afghanistan war after he took office.

Raining drones on Pakistan suddenly makes a lot more sense. Well, not sense, but you know what I mean.

U.S. Identifies Vast Riches of Minerals in Afghanistan
By JAMES RISEN

WASHINGTON — The United States has discovered nearly $1 trillion in untapped mineral deposits in Afghanistan, far beyond any previously known reserves and enough to fundamentally alter the Afghan economy and perhaps the Afghan war itself, according to senior American government officials.

The previously unknown deposits — including huge veins of iron, copper, cobalt, gold and critical industrial metals like lithium — are so big and include so many minerals that are essential to modern industry that Afghanistan could eventually be transformed into one of the most important mining centers in the world, the United States officials believe.

An internal Pentagon memo, for example, states that Afghanistan could become the “Saudi Arabia of lithium,” a key raw material in the manufacture of batteries for laptops and BlackBerrys.

The vast scale of Afghanistan’s mineral wealth was discovered by a small team of Pentagon officials and American geologists. The Afghan government and President Hamid Karzai were recently briefed, American officials said.

While it could take many years to develop a mining industry, the potential is so great that officials and executives in the industry believe it could attract heavy investment even before mines are profitable, providing the possibility of jobs that could distract from generations of war.

“There is stunning potential here,” Gen. David H. Petraeus, commander of the United States Central Command, said in an interview on Saturday. “There are a lot of ifs, of course, but I think potentially it is hugely significant.”

The value of the newly discovered mineral deposits dwarfs the size of Afghanistan’s existing war-bedraggled economy, which is based largely on opium production and narcotics trafficking as well as aid from the United States and other industrialized countries. Afghanistan’s gross domestic product is only about $12 billion.

Israel's siege mentality
The government’s macho attitude is actually making Israel weaker
Jun 3rd 2010

The blockade of Gaza is cruel and has failed. The Gazans have suffered sorely but have not been starved into submission. Hamas has not been throttled and overthrown, as Israeli governments (and many others) have wished. Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier taken hostage, has not been freed. Weapons and missiles can still be smuggled in through tunnels from Egypt.

Just as bad, from Israel’s point of view, it helps feed antipathy towards Israel, not just in the Arab and Muslim worlds, but in Europe too. Israel once had warm relations with a ring of non-Arab countries in the vicinity, including Iran and Turkey. The deterioration of Israel’s relations with Turkey, whose citizens were among the nine dead, is depriving Israel of a rare Muslim ally and mediator. It is startling how, in its bungled effort to isolate Gaza, democratic Israel has come off worse than Hamas, which used to send suicide-bombers into restaurants.

Most telling of all are the stirrings of disquiet in America, Israel’s most steadfast ally. Americans are still vastly more sympathetic to the Israelis than to the Palestinians. But a growing number, especially Democrats, including many liberal Jews, are getting queasier about what they see as America’s too robotic support for Israel, especially when its government is as hawkish as Binyamin Netanyahu’s. A gap in sympathy for Israel has widened between Democrats and Republicans. Conservatives still tend to back Israel through hell and the high seas. Barack Obama is more conscious that the Palestinians’ failure to get a state is helping to spread anti-American poison across the Muslim world, making it harder for him to deal with Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan. His generals have strenuously made that point. None other than the head of Israel’s Mossad, its foreign intelligence service, declared this week that America has begun to see Israel more as a burden than an asset.

That has led to the charge by hawkish American Republicans, as well as many Israelis, that Mr Obama is bent on betraying Israel. In fact, he is motivated by a harder-nosed appreciation of the pros and cons of America’s cosiness with Israel, and is thus all the keener to prod the Jewish state towards giving the Palestinians a fair deal. He has condemned the building of Jewish settlements on Palestinian territory more bluntly than his predecessors did, because he rightly thinks they make it harder to negotiate a peace deal. Mr Obama’s greater sternness towards Israel is for the general good—including Israel’s.

iRobot Demonstrates New Weaponized Robot
POSTED BY: John Palmisano // Sun, May 30, 2010

iRobot released today new video of its Warrior robot, a beefed up version of the more well-known PackBot, demonstrating use of the APOBS (Anti-Personnel Obstacle Breaching System), an explosive line charge deployed by a rocket, with a small parachute holding back the end of the line. The APOBS, iRobot says, is designed for "deliberate breaching of anti-personnel minefields and multi-strand wire obstacles." Although it may concern those who don't like the arming of robots, it makes great eye candy for those who like robots, rockets, and explosions.

Turkey strongly condemned the Israeli military action.

“Regardless of any reasoning, such actions against civilians engaged in only peaceful activities are unacceptable,” said a statement on the Foreign Ministry’s Web site on Monday. “Israel will be required to face the consequences of this act that involves violation of the international law.”

“Israel launched this operation in international waters and to a ship flagged white, which is unacceptable under any clause of the international law,” the head of the Turkish Grand National Assembly’s Foreign Affairs Commission, Murat Mercan, said on the Turkish station NTV.

“We are going to see in the following days whether Israel has done it as a display of decisiveness or to commit political suicide.”

At Least 10 Are Killed as Israel Halts Flotilla With Gaza Aid
By ISABEL KERSHNER

JERUSALEM — Israeli naval commandos raided a flotilla carrying thousands of tons of supplies for Gaza in international waters on Monday morning, killing at least 10 people, according to the Israeli military and activists traveling with the flotilla. Some Israeli news reports put the death toll higher.

The confrontation drew widespread international condemnation of Israel, with Israeli envoys summoned to explain their country’s actions in several European countries.

The criticism offered a propaganda coup to Israel’s foes, particularly Hamas, the militant group that holds sway in Gaza, and damaged Israel’s ties to Turkey, one of its most important Muslim partners and the unofficial sponsor of the Gaza-bound convoy. Turkey recalled its ambassador to Israel, and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan cut short a visit to Latin America to return home.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu canceled his plans for meeting with President Obama in Washington on Tuesday, an Israeli government official confirmed. Mr. Netanyahu, who is visiting Canada, planned to return home Monday to deal with fallout from the raid, the official said.

The Israeli Defense Forces said more than 10 people were killed when naval personnel boarding the six ships in the aid convoy met with “live fire and light weaponry including knives and clubs.” The naval forces then “employed riot dispersal means, including live fire,” the military said in a statement.

Greta Berlin, a leader of the pro-Palestinian Free Gaza Movement, speaking by telephone from Cyprus, rejected the military’s version.

“That is a lie,” she said, adding that it was inconceivable that the civilian passengers on board would have been “waiting up to fire on the Israeli military, with all its might.”

“We never thought there would be any violence,” she said.

At least four Israeli soldiers were wounded in the operation, some from gunfire, according to the military. Television footage from the flotilla before communications were cut showed what appeared to be commandos sliding down ropes from helicopters onto one of the vessels in the flotilla, while Israeli high-speed naval vessels surrounded the convoy.

A military statement said two activists were later found with pistols they had taken from Israeli commandos. The activists, the military said, had apparently opened fire “as evident by the empty pistol magazines.”

In 2009, only 1.3 percent of the nearly 600,000 people stopped were caught with weapons. Just 6 percent were arrested. If the number of stops keeps going up — and officers begin to be seen as acting recklessly and unfairly — the department will risk permanently alienating an entire generation of people in the very neighborhoods where trust in the law is most needed.

Kinda late...

Lingering Questions About ‘Stop-and-Frisk’

The New York Police Department says its “stop-and-frisk” program — under which officers investigating crimes, or working to prevent crimes, briefly detain or pat down people on the streets — has played a pivotal role in driving down crime levels to record lows.

But civil rights groups and some criminologists are understandably troubled by new statistics showing that police officers stopped a record 575,000 people last year — nearly 90 percent black or Hispanic — and that the number of stops is growing as crime falls. Instead of dismissing such complaints, the Police Department should re-evaluate the program.

Credible questions about the racial fairness of stop-and-frisk were raised in 1999 in a study released by the state attorney general, then Eliot Spitzer. Conducted by a Columbia University statistician and reviewed by the editor of a reputable journal, it found that the program had disproportionately higher stop rates for blacks and Hispanics. The rates remained elevated even when they were adjusted to take account of higher crime rates and arrest rates in minority neighborhoods.

Turkey Lashes Out at Israel
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

ANKARA, Turkey (AP) -- Turkey's prime minister accused Israel on Monday of threatening peace in the region and using disproportionate force against Palestinians.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan urged Israel to stop violating Lebanon's airspace and territorial waters. He also called on the U.N. Security Council to put the same pressure on Israel regarding nuclear arms as it does on Iran.

''We can never remain silent in the face of Israel's attitude. ... It has disproportionate power and it is using that at will while refusing to abide by U.N. resolutions. We can never accept this picture,'' Erdogan said. ''These steps threaten global peace.''

We have to take off our shoes and get them scanned before getting on an airplane because of "The Shoe Bomber." Do we now have to take off our underwear and get them scanned because of "The Crotch Bomber"? Or do we pat down everyone's crotch before they get on an airplane?

Judge Dismisses All Charges in Blackwater Case
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Filed at 3:40 p.m. ET

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A federal judge has dismissed all charges against five Blackwater Worldwide security guards charged in a deadly Baghdad shooting.

U.S. District Judge Ricardo Urbina said Thursday the Justice Department overstepped its bounds and wrongly used evidence it was not allowed to see. He said the government's explanations have been contradictory, unbelievable and not credible.

Even though the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has announced a freeze on housing construction in West Bank settlements until September in order to help restart peace talks, it did not include Jerusalem in the moratorium.

“If this is a moratorium, what does an increase look like?” asked Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator, in a telephone interview on the latest announcement. “They are undermining the two-state solution. I hope this will be an eye-opener for the American government.”

Israel Plans Homes in East Jerusalem
By ETHAN BRONNER

JERUSALEM — Israel announced Monday that it would build nearly 700 housing units in Jewish areas of Jerusalem, on territory conquered in the 1967 war that the Palestinians claim for their future state. The move was criticized by Washington and condemned by Palestinian leaders, who cited it as evidence that the Israelis were undermining efforts to restart peace talks.

Tenders for the 692 new units were issued by the Housing Ministry as part of the third and last batch of construction permits for 2009 across Israel. The other tenders issued, for almost 6,000 units in about 54 towns and communities, including more than 2,200 for Arab sectors of the country, drew little concern.

But the future of Jerusalem is among the most contentious issues of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Israel’s annexation of the parts of Jerusalem it won in 1967, and its assertion that the reunified city would remain under its control as its capital, has won almost no support worldwide.

The United States consistently condemns unilateral Israeli steps in East Jerusalem as harmful to peace efforts. On Monday, the White House press secretary, Robert Gibbs, issued a statement opposing the new construction and urging the Israelis and Palestinians to resume peace talks.

U.S. Widens Terror War to Yemen, a Qaeda Bastion
By ERIC SCHMITT and ROBERT F. WORTH

WASHINGTON — In the midst of two unfinished major wars, the United States has quietly opened a third, largely covert front against Al Qaeda in Yemen.

A year ago, the Central Intelligence Agency sent several of its top field operatives with counterterrorism experience to the country, according a former top agency official. At the same time, some of the most secretive Special Operations commandos have begun training Yemeni security forces in counterterrorism tactics, senior military officers said.

The Pentagon is spending more than $70 million over the next 18 months, and using teams of Special Forces, to train and equip Yemeni military, Interior Ministry and coast guard forces, more than doubling previous military aid levels.

Perhaps women simply don't figure into their considerations. Maybe they think sex and violence travel together...maybe they think an armed gay man will rape them. Given that the idea of women in combat roles got the same type of resistance,

Maybe the Halliburton guys who had such fun raping women thought it was military S.O.P.

Another Peril in War Zones: Sexual Abuse by Fellow G.I.’s
By STEVEN LEE MYERS

BAGHDAD — Capt. Margaret H. White began a relationship with a warrant officer while both were training to be deployed to Iraq. By the time they arrived this year at Camp Taji, north of here, she felt what she called “creepy vibes” and tried to break it off.

In the claustrophobic confines of a combat post, it was not easy to do. He left notes on the door to her quarters, alternately pleading and menacing. He forced her to have sex, she said. He asked her to marry him, though he was already married. He waited for her outside the women’s latrines or her quarters, once for three hours.

“It got to the point that I felt safer outside the wire,” Captain White said, referring to operations that take soldiers off their heavily fortified bases, “than I did taking a shower.”

Her ordeal ended with the military equivalent of a restraining order and charges of stalking against the officer. It is one case that highlights the new and often messy reality the military has had to face as men and women serve side by side in combat zones more than ever before.

Sexual harassment and sexual assault, which the military now defines broadly to include not only rape but also crimes like groping and stalking, continue to afflict the ranks, and by some measures are rising. While tens of thousands of women have served in Iraq and Afghanistan, often in combat, often with distinction, the integration of men and women in places like Camp Taji has forced to the surface issues that commanders rarely, if ever confronted before.

The military — belatedly, critics say — has radically changed the way it handles sexual abuse in particular, expanding access to treatment and toughening rules for prosecution. In the hardships of war, though, the effects of the changes remain unclear.

The strains of combat, close quarters in remote locations, tension and even boredom can create the conditions for abuse, even as they hinder medical care for victims and legal proceedings against those who attack them.

Captain White said she had feared coming forward, despite having become increasingly despondent and suffered panic attacks, because she was wary of she-said-he-said recriminations that would reverberate through the tightknit military world and disrupt the mission. Despite the military’s stated “zero tolerance” for abuse or harassment, she had no confidence her case would be taken seriously and so tried to cope on her own, Captain White said.

A Pentagon-appointed task force, in a report released this month, pointedly criticized the military’s efforts to prevent sexual abuse, citing the “unique stresses” of deployments in places like Camp Taji. “Some military personnel indicated that predators may believe they will not be held accountable for their misconduct during deployment because commanders’ focus on the mission overshadows other concerns,” the report said.

That, among other reasons, is why sexual assault and harassment go unreported far more often than not. “You’re in the middle of a war zone,” Captain White said, reflecting a fear many military women describe of being seen, somehow, as harming the mission.

“So it’s kind of like that one little thing is nothing compared with ‘There is an I.E.D. that went off in this convoy today and three people were injured,’ ” she said, referring to an improvised explosive device.

Modellers claim wars are predictable
Insurgent attacks follow a universal pattern of timing and casualties.
Natasha Gilbert

Seemingly random attacks and a shadowy, mysterious enemy are the hallmarks of insurgent wars, such as those being fought in Afghanistan and Iraq. Many social scientists, as well as the military, hold that, like conventional civil wars, these conflicts can't be understood without considering local factors such as geography and politics. But a mathematical model published today in Nature (see Nature 462, 911–914; 2009) suggests that insurgencies have a common underlying pattern that may allow the timing of attacks and the number of casualties to be predicted.

"We found that the way in which humans do insurgent wars — that is, the number of casualties and the timing of events — is universal," says team leader Neil Johnson, a physicist at the University of Miami in Florida. "This changes the way we think insurgency works."

Johnson and his colleagues argue that the pattern arises because insurgent wars lack a coherent command network and operate more as a "soup of groups", in which cells form and disband when they sense danger, then reform in different sizes and composition. The timing of attacks, the authors say, is driven by competition between insurgent groups for media attention.

The Israel Airports Authority said in response to the story: "A check that the lady's luggage underwent raised an indication that required security figures to act according to procedures. A police, who carried out the stated operation, was called to the scene. We suggest that the Israel Police be approached for any additional information."

Police shoot U.S. student's laptop upon entry to Israel
By Bar Ben Ari and Or Hirshauga, TheMarker Correspondents

Israel Border Police officers shot at an American student's laptop as she entered Israel via Taba, Egypt, two weeks ago.

Lily Sussman, 21, wrote on her blog that border police subjected her to two hours of questioning and searches prior to shooting her Apple Macbook three times.

"They had pressed every sock and scarf with a security device, ripped open soap and had me strip extra layers. They asked me tons of questions--where are you going?" Sussman wrote, describing the experience.

NATO Pledges 7,000 Troops, but Avoids Details
By MARK LANDLER

BRUSSELS — After months of anguished debate in the United States over how many new troops to send to Afghanistan, the numbers game switched to Europe on Friday, with NATO announcing that it planned to commit an additional 7,000 soldiers to the coalition in Afghanistan.

NATO portrayed the pledge as a powerful vote of support for the American-led effort. But in Europe as in Washington, arithmetic on troops can get fuzzy. Of the 7,000 troops promised by NATO, 1,500 are already in Afghanistan, sent months ago to bolster security during the presidential election.

An undisclosed number of the new troops will steer clear of the fighting because they are barred by their countries from combat operations. And two allies, the Netherlands and Canada, still plan to withdraw nearly 5,000 troops in the next two years, offsetting the infusion.

I heard an arbitrary deadline to begin withdrawing from Afghanistan. I think that is a good thing. If you decided to start shipping folks and hardware home tomorrow, it would be at least a year before you were done. I don't actually think he's proposed much of a delay.

The increase in troops, that's another matter. Maybe if they were tasked with packing up our stuff and shipping it home...

Dr. Edgar, Dr. Peter A. Coclanis, Associate Provost, International Affairs, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and Dr. Stanley Engerman, John Munro Professor of Economics, Professor of Economics and Professor of History, University of Rochester, will debate “Would Southern Slavery Have Survived the Civil War?”

Click Here to Watch

White House praises Israel's settlement proposal
10-month halt in construction seen as step toward Mideast peace negotiations
By Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, November 25, 2009 3:54 PM

The Obama administration hailed the Israeli government's announcement Wednesday that it intends to temporarily halt residential construction in Palestinian areas of the West Bank, even though the plan falls short of the administration's demand for a full freeze and Palestinian officials rejected it as inadequate.

"We believe the steps announced by the prime minister are significant and could have substantial impact on the ground," said former Sen. George J. Mitchell, the special envoy for Middle East peace. "For the first time ever, an Israeli government will stop housing approvals and all new construction of housing units and related infrastructure in West Bank settlements. That's a positive development."

Consider, for instance, Professor Sand’s assertion that Palestinian Arab villagers are descended from the original Jewish farmers. Nearly a century ago, early Zionists and Arab nationalists touted the blood relationship as the basis of a potential alliance in their respective struggles for independence. Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, and Yitzhak Ben Zvi, Israel’s longest-serving president, made this very argument in a book they wrote together in 1918. The next year, Emir Feisal, who organized the Arab revolt against the Ottoman empire and tried to create a united Arab nation, signed a cooperation agreement with the Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann that declared the two were “mindful of the racial kinship and ancient bonds existing between the Arabs and the Jewish people.”

Both sides later dropped the subject when they realized it was not furthering their political goals.

Book Calls Jewish People an ‘Invention’
By PATRICIA COHEN

Despite the fragmented and incomplete historical record, experts pretty much agree that some popular beliefs about Jewish history simply don’t hold up: there was no sudden expulsion of all Jews from Jerusalem in A.D. 70, for instance. What’s more, modern Jews owe their ancestry as much to converts from the first millennium and early Middle Ages as to the Jews of antiquity.

Other theories, like the notion that many of today’s Palestinians can legitimately claim to be descended from the ancient Jews, are familiar and serious subjects of study, even if no definitive answer yet exists.

But while these ideas are commonplace among historians, they still manage to provoke controversy each time they surface in public, beyond the scholarly world. The latest example is the book “The Invention of the Jewish People,” which spent months on the best-seller list in Israel and is now available in English. Mixing respected scholarship with dubious theories, the author, Shlomo Sand, a professor at Tel Aviv University, frames the narrative as a startling exposure of suppressed historical facts. The translated version of his polemic has sparked a new wave of coverage in Britain and has provoked spirited debates online and in seminar rooms.

Professor Sand, a scholar of modern France, not Jewish history, candidly states his aim is to undercut the Jews’ claims to the land of Israel by demonstrating that they do not constitute “a people,” with a shared racial or biological past. The book has been extravagantly denounced and praised, often on the basis of whether or not the reader agrees with his politics.