The Rag Blog

(Nov. 10) – The Internet is a fixture in most kids’ lives, but there is broad disagreement over the best way to protect children from things they shouldn’t see online – and what role, if any, new laws should play.

A federal court this month is revisiting the Child Online Protection Act, which threatens criminal penalties for commercial Web site operators that allow children to access material that is “harmful to minors.” The law, passed by Congress eight years ago, has never gone into effect because of a legal challenge from free speech advocates. The Supreme Court has ruled the law is likely unconstitutional, and prevented the Justice Department from enforcing it until it is reviewed by a lower court.

The Justice Department and child safety groups say the law would stop pornography at its source by requiring sites to demand age verification, such as a credit card, before allowing access to explicit content. Opponents argue that the law is overly broad and poses a threat to free speech, since much of the material deemed inappropriate for children, such as news photographs or sexual health information, is legal for adults. One of the central disputes in the case is whether children can be adequately protected by Internet filtering software.

After maintaining a relentless optimism in the face of ominous polls, Karl Rove tells TIME why Republicans wound up taking a bath on Election Night.

At the White House senior staff meeting in the Roosevelt Room at 7:30 a.m. on Wednesday, Chief of Staff Josh Bolten thanked Karl Rove for his hard work in the elections, and the group around the big table burst into spontaneous applause. It was a much-needed moment of cheer for Rove, the President’s chief strategist, after Republicans lost the House and were headed toward the same fate in the Senate in midterm congressional elections that turned into a blue rip tide of voter ire.

“The profile of corruption in the exit polls was bigger than I’d expected,” Rove tells TIME. “Abramoff, lobbying, Foley and Haggard [the disgraced evangelical leader] added to the general distaste that people have for all things Washington, and it just reached critical mass.”

Exit polls showed heavy discontent with the course of the war, and Bush announced the departure of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld the next day. But Rove took comfort in results of the Connecticut Senate race between the anti-war Democratic nominee, Ned Lamont, and Sen. Joseph Lieberman, who ran as an independent after losing the Democratic primary over his support for the war. “Iraq mattered,” Rove says. “But it was more frustration than it was an explicit call for withdrawal. If this was a get-out-now call for withdrawal, then Lamont would not have been beaten by Lieberman. Iraq does play a role, but not the critical, central role.”

And he does not believe his data let him down. “My job is not to be a prognosticator,” he said. “My job is not to go out there and wring my hands and say, ‘We’re going to lose.’ I’m looking at the data and seeing if I can figure out, Where can we be? I told the President, ‘I don’t know where this is going to end up. But I see our way clear to Republican control.’ “

Rove, who is Deputy Chief of Staff and Senior Adviser to the President, had long been warning in speeches that Democrats suffered defeat in 1994 after ossified thinking and an entitlement mentality took over the party: “What I was trying to say was: What happened to them could happen to us,” he told TIME.

He’s accomplished a great deal during his short time in office.

These banal desk-murderers are just too boring to really remember for very long. He’s like a Rotary Club assistant treasurer or something.

But he’ll be remembered for this:

As we know,
There are known knowns.
There are things we know we know.

We also know
There are known unknowns.
That is to say
We know there are some things
We do not know.

But there are also unknown unknowns,
The ones we don’t know
We don’t know.

I wasn’t particularly jubilant earlier today! I didn’t even follow the election results as closely as I should have: Bush was adamant to ‘stay the course’, the Democrats did not have a clear policy on Iraq. Some of them were even advocating the break-up of the country – a recipe for disaster…

But less than an hour ago this evening, and for the first time in more than a year, I listened carefully to what George Bush, the de-facto President of Iraq, had to say! It brought an unfamiliar warmth to my old heart to see that man, who brought so much death and destruction to my country, broken. He couldn’t hide that. It was written all over him!

Another of the President’s Men going down? Rummy, who had the President’s full confidence? Arrogant, murderous, contemptuous Rummy?

I am not a Democrat. But those two items made my day.

Can an Iraqi hope now? Perhaps a little.
Time for accountability? Dare we hope? Perhaps too soon for that.
The beginning o the end of a mad era? Perhaps too soon for that too.

To Americans I say: to see the man who has done so much damage to your country in that position in that press conference… I only have one word: Congratulations!

Your democracy may have many illnesses; you have a long way yet to go… but tonight many of you have shown the rest of the world that It and you are not dead yet.

In parting, I would just like to quote an American friend who wrote to me earlier today: ” There’s hope at this juncture, for a sane approach to assisting you Iraqi’s with the hideous mess we created for you. We aren’t all crazy over here … There are huge numbers of intelligent (non-hawk-whack-jobs) who agonize over what we’ve done to you.”

A former diplomat has revealed that the British mission to the United Nations opposed the policy of regime change in Iraq but was ordered by London to change its position in the lead-up to war.

The disclosure was made to MPs yesterday by Carne Ross, a member of the mission who resigned in protest at the Iraq war. He told the Foreign Affairs Committee that the US government was repeatedly warned by British diplomats that Iraq would fall apart if Saddam Hussein was toppled. But from mid-2002 instructions were received to change that view to fall in with the Bush administration.

Speaking in public for the first time since he left the diplomatic service two years ago, Mr Ross also confirmed suspicions that the Prime Minister made up his mind months before the Iraq invasion in March 2003 that the war was going to happen and British troops would take part. Mr Ross said when he was serving in the embassy in Afghanistan, as early as April 2002, British officials there knew troops were being held back in readiness for the Iraq invasion.

You are an artificial organism, although you mightn’t think it. You were made by machines.

You see, 100 years ago the world’s population was about 1.6 billion and unlikely to get much higher left to its own devices. Any number of things might limit human population, available water, arable land, amount of carbon available, amount of phosphorous available, etc. The thing that we ran up against about 100 years ago was available nitrogen. Although nitrogen is the most abundant gas in the atmosphere, it is doggedly reluctant to combine to form compounds. A little of it is fixed (combines with other elements, notably hydrogen to form ammonia) by lightening but for the past several hundred millions of years most nitrogen was fixed by bacteria.

On Wednesday, Cindy Sheehan, Ann Wright, Lennox Yearwood, and about 50 other activists for peace met up on the sidewalk in front of the White House. I brought along a box containing 6,000-some pages of names and comments: about 80,000 names with cities and states, about half of them with comments beside them. These were the names of people who have signed the petition at www.DontAttackIran.org. The media gathered around, and Cindy read the petition out loud:

“Dear President Bush and Vice President Cheney,

“We write to you from all over the United States and all over the world to urge you to obey both international and U.S. law, which forbid aggressive attacks on other nations. We oppose your proposal to attack Iran. Iran does not possess nuclear weapons, just as Iraq did not possess nuclear weapons. If Iran had such weapons, that would not justify the use of force, any more than any other nation would be justified in launching a war against the world’s greatest possessor of nuclear arms, the United States. The most effective way to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons would be to closely monitor its nuclear energy program, and to improve diplomatic relations — two tasks made much more difficult by threatening to bomb Iranian territory. We urge you to lead the way to peace, not war, and to begin by making clear that you will not commit the highest international crime by aggressively attacking Iran.”

We took the box of petition signatures over to the gate and asked the guard to accept it on behalf of the President. He asked Cindy to read the petition to him, which she did. Then he left and came back a few times, claiming that he was trying to find the proper person to accept it, but more likely waiting for more guards and Park Service police to show up.

Eventually we got tired of waiting. We handed a stack of pages to everyone in the crowd and asked them to stick them through the fence. Pages began piling up all over the White House driveway and front yard. Then a line of police officers stepped in the way and blocked the fence. So we began throwing pages, about 50 double-sided sheets at a time, over their heads and over the fence. This had the effect of scattering them more widely on the other side. I hope whoever had to pick up all those pieces of paper is aware whose administration destroyed the right to overtime pay, and I hope they read some of the comments. I read thousands of them. Many were angry. Many were polite. Most were passionate and pleading. Some were concise: “Iraq was our first mistake; don’t let Iran be our last.” Others went on for pages. People poured their souls out trying to educate and reform our President and Vice President. Instead they ended up decorating the White House lawn.

Here’s what the Associated Press had to say about this event:

“Activist Cindy Sheehan led about 50 protesters to a White House gate Wednesday to deliver anti-war petitions she said were signed by 80,000 Americans. The
California woman, whose son was killed in Iraq more than two years ago, joined the protesters in hailing the outcome of Tuesday’s elections and chanting ‘Stop the War’ outside the White House gate.

“‘They have to take (the petitions); it’s our First Amendment right,’ said Sheehan, who waited about 15 minutes at the gate with other protesters before tossing the petitions over the fence. ‘It was taking too long for them to decide whether to accept them or not, so we just delivered them.’…

“…Wednesday’s protest came as Republicans lost control of the House and the White House announced the resignation of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. ‘He’s being offered as a sacrificial lamb,’ said Sheehan, adding that she would not stop protesting until American forces are out of Iraq…

“…Sheehan and other protesters said the outcome of Tuesday’s House race – and the gains in the Senate – indicated that Americans are questioning the costs of U.S. military actions in both Iraq and Afghanistan. The petitions tossed over the White House fence were presented as an open letter to Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, opposing use of military force to resolve the dispute over Iran’s nuclear program.

‘Iran does not possess nuclear weapons, just as Iraq did not possess nuclear weapons,’ the petitions said. A U.S. Park Police spokesman said officers moved the protesters away from gates near Secret Service guard stations, but there were no arrests.”

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (Nov. 10) – Two days after losing a bid for a second term, Sen. Lincoln Chafee said he was unsure whether he would remain a Republican.

Chafee lost to Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse in a race seen as a referendum on President Bush and the GOP. On Thursday, he was asked whether he would stick with the Republican Party or become an independent or Democrat.

“I haven’t made any decisions. I just haven’t even thought about where my place is,” Chafee said at a news conference. When pressed on whether his comments indicated he might leave the GOP, he replied: “That’s fair.”

SPEECH BY THE DIRECTOR GENERAL OF THE SECURITY SERVICE, DAME ELIZA MANNINGHAM-BULLER, AT QUEEN MARY’S COLLEGE, LONDON, 9 NOVEMBER 2006

I have been Director General of the Security Service (MI5) since 2002. Before that I was Deputy Director General for five years. During that time, and before, I have witnessed a steady increase in the terrorist threat to the UK. It has been the subject of much comment and controversy. I rarely speak in public. I prefer to avoid the limelight and get on with my job. But today, I want to set out my views on the realities of the terrorist threat facing the UK in 2006; what motivates those who pose that threat; and what my Service is doing, with others, to counter it.

I speak not as a politician, nor as a pundit, but as someone who has been an intelligence professional for 32 years.

Five years on from 9/11, where are we? Speaking in August, Deputy Assistant Commissioner Peter Clarke, the head of the Anti-Terrorist Branch of the Metropolitan Police, described the threat to the UK from Al-Qaida-related terrorism as “real, here, deadly and enduring”. Only last week the Home Secretary said the threat will be “enduring – the struggle will be long and wide and deep.” Let me describe more fully why I think they said that.

We now know that the first Al-Qaida-related plot against the UK was the one we discovered and disrupted in November 2000 in Birmingham. A British citizen is currently serving a long prison sentence for plotting to detonate a large bomb in the UK. Let there be no doubt about this: the international terrorist threat to this country is not new. It began before Iraq, before Afghanistan, and before 9/11.

In the years after 9/11, with atrocities taking place in Madrid, Casablanca, Bali, Istanbul and elsewhere, terrorists plotted to mount a string of attacks in the UK, but were disrupted. This run of domestic success was interrupted tragically in London in July 2005. Since then, the combined efforts of my Service, the police, SIS and GCHQ have thwarted a further five major conspiracies in the UK, saving many hundreds (possibly even thousands) of lives.

Last month the Lord Chancellor said that there were a total of 99 defendants awaiting trial in 34 cases. Of course the presumption of innocence applies and the law dictates that nothing must be said or done which might prejudice the right of a defendant to receive a fair trial. You will understand therefore that I can say no more on these matters.

What I can say is that today, my officers and the police are working to contend with some 200 groupings or networks, totalling over 1600 identified individuals (and there will be many we don’t know) who are actively engaged in plotting, or facilitating, terrorist acts here and overseas. The extremists are motivated by a sense of grievance and injustice driven by their interpretation of the history between the West and the Muslim world. This view is shared, in some degree, by a far wider constituency. If the opinion polls conducted in the UK since July 2005 are only broadly accurate, over 100,000 of our citizens consider that the July 2005 attacks in London were justified.

What we see at the extreme end of the spectrum are resilient networks, some directed from Al-Qaida in Pakistan, some more loosely inspired by it, planning attacks including mass casualty suicide attacks in the UK. Today we see the use of home-made improvised explosive devices; tomorrow’s threat may include the use of chemicals, bacteriological agents, radioactive materials and even nuclear technology. More and more people are moving from passive sympathy towards active terrorism through being radicalised or indoctrinated by friends, families, in organised training events here and overseas, by images on television, through chat rooms and websites on the Internet.

The propaganda machine is sophisticated and Al-Qaida itself says that 50% of its war is conducted through the media. In Iraq, attacks are regularly videoed and the footage downloaded onto the Internet within 30 minutes. Virtual media teams then edit the result, translate it into English and many other languages, and package it for a worldwide audience. And, chillingly, we see the results here. Young teenagers being groomed to be suicide bombers.

We are aware of numerous plots to kill people and to damage our economy. What do I mean by numerous? Five? Ten? No, nearer thirty – that we know of. These plots often have links back to Al-Qaida in Pakistan and through those links Al-Qaida gives guidance and training to its largely British foot soldiers here on an extensive and growing scale. And it is not just the UK of course. Other countries also face a new terrorist threat: from Spain to France to Canada and Germany.