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President Bush is expected to make a proposal this week to create an interim Palestinian state. How an "interim" state will be defined and whether it will ever be able to develop into a permanent state will depend on the answers to a number of questions. The most important being, what is the purpose of this proposal, two, who wants this "interim" state, and three, what will be the shape and form of this provisional arrangement? The answer to the first question depends on the answer to the second. If the parties to the conflict agree on the shape and...

The United States is correct to oppose the UN's latest threat to the sovereign power of nations, the International Criminal Court. The Bush Administration is further justified in threatening to veto existing and future peacekeeping requests that come before the Security Council until U.S. nationals are given exemption from prosecution by the ICC, which will gavel-down on July 1. Without such an exemption, U.S. diplomats, soldiers and even tourists abroad would be vulnerable to attempted prosecutions that would be frivolous in content and malicious in intent. Certainly, there can be no serious no doubt that crusading European jurists and anti-U.S....

URL: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/news/archive/2002/06/22/state2229EDT7515.DTL (06-22) 19:29 PDT SHOW LOW, Ariz. (AP) -- Authorities ordered the 7,700 residents of this city to evacuate Saturday night as a mammoth wildfire raged just to the west. The call came as the Rodeo fire, which had burned more than 150,000 acres of forest since Tuesday, breached a passed what authorities considered a critical point about eight miles west of Show Low. The fire was moving slowly to the east and there wasn't an immediate threat to the city, fire spokesman Jim Paxon said. Authorities hadn't decided whether to evacuate neighboring Pinetop-Lakeside, with 3,500 residents. Meanwhile, a...

Aasser Arafat said yesterday he's willing to embrace the Mideast peace deal he disdained two years ago at Camp David, but Bush officials dismissed the offer as the cynical posturing of a desperate man. "Just more of his rant," said one senior administration official of the offer. "Arafat who? The man has made himself irrelevant to this process." In an interview with the Israeli daily Ha'aretz, the Palestinian Authority chairman declared that "enough is enough" — the phrase recently used by President Bush — and said it was time for "no more war." For the first time, Arafat said he...

New Technology For Catching Liars By CHRISTOPHER NEWTON Associated Press Writer June 21, 2002, WASHINGTON -- The world is becoming a trickier place for people who tell lies -- even little white ones. From thermal-imaging cameras, designed to read guilty eyes, to brain-wave scanners, which essentially watch a lie in motion, the technology of truth-seeking is leaping forward. At the same time, more people are finding their words put to the test, especially those who work for the government. FBI agents, themselves subjected to more polygraphs as a result of the Robert Hanssen spy case, have been administering lie detection...

The Iraqi dictator says his country's children are dying in their thousands because of the West's embargoes. John Sweeney, in a TV documentary to be shown tonight, says the figures are bogus. Here he reports from Iraq on his findings The witness against the government of Iraq walked stiffly into the room, metal callipers buckled to heavy medical shoes. They had tortured her two years ago. She is now four. Her father had been suspected of involvement in a plot to kill Saddam Hussein's psychopathic son, Uday. He fled to the north of Iraq, but the secret police, the mukhabarat,...

On the face of it, Yasser Arafat's remarks published in his interview to Ha'aretz on Friday should make us feel hopeful. The Palestinian leader expressed readiness to accept the peace proposal made by former U.S. president Bill Clinton, came out in support of the advertisement against suicide bombings published by a group of Palestinian intellectuals, and expressed the wish to pay personal condolence calls on the families of Israeli victims of terrorism. However, the lesson that the Israeli public has learned over the past 21 months from Arafat's behavior is that one cannot trust his word, since there is an...

Violent anti-American protests have taken place in several Muslim countries in what has been described as "a day of rage". Thousands of demonstrators took to the streets after Friday prayers in Pakistan, Iran, Indonesia, Malaysia and Sri Lanka following calls by hardline Islamic political leaders. And in the West Bank, thousands participated In two anti-US marches. Police and rioters clashed in the Pakistani port of Karachi where a KFC fast-food restaurant was torched and other buildings and vehicles were also attacked. Police used teargas and fired shots into the air to break up the protests as smoke rose from burning...

Iraq's tortured children   Some witnesses had direct experience of child torture       By John Sweeney BBC correspondent in Iraq The star witness against the government of Iraq hobbled into the room, her legs braced with clumsy metal callipers. "Anna" had been tortured two years ago. She is now four years old. Her father, Ali, is a thick-set Iraqi who used to work for Saddam's psychopathic son, Uday. Some time after the bungled assassination of Uday, Ali fell under suspicion. Saddam's secret police have been accused of torturing children   He fled north, to the Kurdish safe haven...

WASHINGTON - The U.S. dismissed Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat's comments to Ha'aretz that he now accepts the proposal of former U.S. president Bill Clinton for a permanent status agreement between Israel and the Palestinians. Sources in the administration said it is perfectly clear this plan is no longer on the agenda and so there is no significance to such a statement. State Department Spokesman Richard Boucher said that the U.S. "welcomes any remarks that tend to promote a [positive] environment and look forward to peacemaking. We welcome especially calls to end violence and terror." The sources said the administration...

Let me run by you a brief list of items that are "the law" in America today. As you read, consider what all these have in common. 1. A national database of employed people. 2. 100 pages of new "health care crimes" for which the penalty is (among other things) seizure of assets from both doctors and patients. 3. Confiscation of assets from any American who establishes foreign citizenship. 4. The largest gun confiscation in U.S. history --- which is also an unconstitutional ex post facto law and the first law ever to remove people's constitutional rights for committing a...

One current and one former member of a St. Tammany Parish fire department have been arrested and charged with deliberately setting forest fires near Pearl River. Kenneth Delaune and Dustine Talley have been charged with arson and criminal conspiracy. They each face a possible 20-year sentence if convicted. Investigators say the two men touched off the forest fires in 2000 and 2001 because they were bored. “They would be riding along the roads and possibly getting out of their vehicle and setting fires with lighters alongside of the roads,” said Roy St. Pierre, an investigator with the Forestry Department. Investigators...

        http://www.apple.com/switch/Are these new Apple advertisements the most idiotic on TV these days? They seem to pitched to people who are intelligent but are hapless boobs when it comes to computers.   

Rep. Greg Ganske (R) has closed the gap in his race against Sen.TomHarkin(D), according to a new Republican poll. Harkin led Ganske 49 percent to 43 percent in the survey done byDavid Hill, a Republican pollster not affiliated with the Ganske campaign. The poll tested 500 likely voters from June 12 to 15 with a 4.38 percent margin of error. Harkin was known by 98 percent of those polled; Ganske was recognized by 82 percent. Both men had solid favorable to unfavorable scores. Sixty-one percent viewed Harkin favorably, 32 percent unfavorably. Ganske had a 53 percent favorable to 20 percent...

Nazi Terms Signed But Hostilities Persist as French Fly to Get Italy's Demands Severity Protested Huntziger Voices View at Close of 27-Hour Compiegne Parley Nazi Truce Signed; Italy's Pact Next By GUIDO ENDERIS Wireless to The New York Times RELATED HEADLINES The International Situation Republican Fight Looms on War Issue at the Convention: Dewey, Taft and Willkie Reach Philadelphia to Appeal to the Delegates: No Group Has Control: Rival Candidates Make Ballot Claims--Willkie Stronger--Hoover Possibility Seen City WPA to Purge 1,000 Nazis, Reds: Signing of Affidavits to Be Started Tomorrow--FBI to Aid in Investigations For 200 New Ships: 70% Increase...

Ex-president Bill Clinton criticized the Catholic Church in off-the-record remarks at a recent dinner in New York City, according an eyewitness who was on hand, observing that the same church officials who were tough on him during the Monica Lewinsky scandal now have to deal with a sex scandal of their own. "I was at a dinner with him a couple of weeks ago," WABC Radio's Mark Simone said Saturday. "Bill Clinton is there and everybody starts talking about the Catholic Church - the priests, the scandal, and how terrible it all is." Simone described what happened next. "In front...

US says Palestinian deaths 'tragic'The U-S State Department says the Israeli Army's killing of Palestinian civilians in the past 24-hours is tragic, and demands investigation. Middle East Correspondent Tim Palmer reports, in the worst attack Israeli tanks shelled a busy marketplace killing three children.At first Israel's Army claimed tanks opened fire with shells and heavy machine guns in Jenin after being fired on themselves but later admitted there was no gunfire from the Palestinian side and the killings were a mistake. Three children two of them aged six years old died in the assault along with a 50 year old...

GAZA CITY, June 22 (AFP) - The Palestinian leadership condemned Saturday Israel's reoccupation of several West Bank towns as an escalation with "racist and Nazi" undertones."The pursuit of the aggression by the Israeli occupation forces and the ugly crimes committed against our people, land and holy sites, and the imposition of this destructive war is a new form of racism and Nazism," the leadership said in a statement carried by the official WAFA news agency."The occupation forces are exploiting the silence of the international community and the Arab countries ... in a bid to bring our people to their knees,"...

"The ultimate problem of all education is to coordinate the psychological and the social factors. ... The coordination demands that the child be capable of expressing himself, but in such a way as to realize social ends." – John Dewey Foundations offer financial and institutional support for a few good causes. On the other hand, most of their efforts in eugenics, population control, education and environmentalism are elitist. Very often they are also counterproductive and do nothing for ordinary citizens – but they do a whole lot for elites and the expansion of the state. It wouldn't be so bad...

Well, we all know that Free Republic has been the source of, or a conduit for, several romances, engagements, and weddings over the years. Tigerseye and .30carbine, LoneGreenEyeShade and DeadCultureWatch, Lazamataz and technochick99, DarthSidious and Lisa (FR name?), Slip18 and CyberLiberty, and probably many others who might be too modest to share their stories. Tonight, slugbug and I have the pleasure of sharing the announcement of our engagement with all of our friends, family, acquaintances, and fellow FR addicts.