After months of delay in responding to the package of incentives offered by the United Nations (UN) Security Council’s permanent five plus Germany (P5+1), Iran has submitted a detailed and comprehensive response that puts the diplomatic ball squarely back in the court of the P5+1. While rejecting the UN demand for an immediate halt to its uranium enrichment, Iran’s response leaves the door open for serious talks and perhaps an acceptable resolution of the nuclear showdown for all parties. By agreeing to put the issue of suspension of enrichment activities on the table and to commence the talks immediately, Iran has sent a strong signal that the internal debate between power centres in Iran’s leadership has ended in favour of voices of moderation seeking a mutually satisfactory resolution of the nuclear standoff with the west. It will be a pity if Washington overlooks this opportunity for a fair negotiation with Iran, especially considering the details of Iran’s response. Iran has, expectedly, sought clarification on a number of issues, including the following: The incentive package mentions respecting Iran’s rights under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, yet the only treaty articles mentioned are articles I and II, pertaining to nonproliferation, and […]
Federal law provides no special protection for reporters with confidential sources. In other words, if the government needs information from those reporters to carry out a prosecution, the government can – in theory – go after them. Yet for more than 40 years, the Justice Department has wisely recognized in its own guidelines that it should use the force of law to compel reporters to give up their sources only when the need is pressing – and then, only after all other investigative avenues have been exhausted. All that is at risk in the Justice Department these days. In the past few months, the department allowed the U.S. attorney in Los Angeles to subpoena two San Francisco Chronicle reporters who broke the baseball steroids scandal to get them to reveal the source of the leak of Barry Bonds’ and Jason Giambi’s grand jury testimony. The journalists, whose courageous reporting forced baseball to deal with the steroid problem after ignoring it for a decade, now face jail if they refuse to give up their sources. (In the interest of full disclosure, I filed an affidavit in support of the reporters.) And in the Eastern District of Virginia, the […]
Whether it’s the roads we drive on, the pipes carrying our water, or the power lines humming with the electricity that lights our homes, America’s physical networks are falling apart. That’s bad news for those of us spending hours a day in traffic caused by road-repair bottlenecks, or sweating through prolonged summer blackouts. But it’s also a substantial drag on our economy and on our businesses. And it will be a competitive challenge for this country in the years to come. Infrastructure - the catchall term for the backbone of our nation - is the kind of word that makes taxpayers want to roll over, hit the snooze button and go back to sleep. We ignore it and only complain when something breaks. No dummies, our lawmakers react accordingly. They approach the underpinnings of our nation’s future like school nurses, applying the equivalent of Band-Aids and aspirin. Unfortunately, what ails Uncle Sam’s body is much more than nicks and bruises and there are no short-term remedies, much less miracle elixirs. It takes years to lay a comprehensive network of fiber-optic cable or dig a tunnel through bedrock. By the time we notice how bad things have gotten, […]
Even though medical researchers told Chuck Park that he might be getting a sugar pill, the 30-year-old software producer was pretty sure he was getting the real thing. Just a few weeks into the clinical trial, Park’s depression started to lift. He began to feel less anxious and sad. So when Park learned he’d been taking a placebo all along, it was a surprise. ‘I was fully expecting to receive the real drug even though I knew that the placebo was a possibility,’ remembers Park of Culver City, Calif. ‘I guess I wanted it to work - and in a way, it did. For years, scientists have looked at the placebo effect as just a figment of overactive patient imaginations. Sure, dummy medications seemed to curb epileptic seizures, lower blood pressure, soothe migraines and smooth out jerky movements in Parkinson’s - but these people weren’t really better. Or so scientists thought. Now, using PET scanners and MRIs to peer into the heads of patients who respond to sugar pills, researchers have discovered that the placebo effect is not ‘all in patients’ heads’ but rather, in their brains. New research shows that belief in a dummy treatment […]
KHIAM, Lebanon — When Mercy Corps and other Western aid agencies reached this devastated village on the front line of the battle between Israel and Hezbollah with food and medicine, they quickly discovered they had a big problem: the United States. Like all other international relief agencies here that receive financing from the American government, Mercy Corps is barred from giving out money or aid through Hezbollah, the Shiite militant group that is considered a terrorist organization by the United States. But as with all the most demolished areas in southern Lebanon, where whole villages have been flattened by Israeli bombs and there is no food, water or electricity, this village is the domain of Hezbollah - and little seems to bypass the group. That fact is nettlesome for the United States, not merely because it does not want Hezbollah to be strengthened even further after its war with Israel, but because it is eager to find and support a viable alternative to the militant group. That will not be easy. Hezbollah has been the fastest and, without a doubt, most effective organization doling out aid to the shattered towns and villages of southern Lebanon. Aid groups […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
