World Bank: Russia may need help if oil falls more

By CATRINA STEWART

MOSCOW (AP) - Russia would come under crippling financial pressure and may need to raise money externally if oil languishes at an average of $30 a barrel over the next two years, the World Bank predicted Friday.

The bleak scenario would mark a rapid unraveling of Russia's oil-fueled economic gains over the past eight years, during which time the government has paid down most of its foreign debt and built up a vast stockpile of international reserves.

"If oil prices in 2009 and 2010 average $30 a barrel, that would be a nightmare scenario for a global economy," Zeljko Bogetic, the World Bank's chief economist in Russia told investors on Friday. "The pressures on the current account and public finances in Russia would quickly rise to a point where the financing constraint would become so sharp that it's possible even to envisage Russia's return from a creditor to international organisations to (that of) a borrower."

At $50 a barrel, Russia could drain much of its reserve funds and run budgetary deficits, but would not face a "meltdown" scenario, said Bogetic.

Oil prices took a sharp turn downward this week, with the February light sweet crude contract trading just over $42 a barrel—more than $100 lower than its July peak—despite a large output cut pledged this week by oil producers' cartel OPEC.

Some major oil-importing countries have criticized OPEC's move to push up prices during a global slowdown.

The World Bank currently forecasts an average oil price of $75 a barrel over the next two years, said Bogetic.

Among emerging markets, Russia has been one of the hardest hit by the global financial crisis and plunging oil prices, the mainstay of the Russian economy. These factors have put the national currency under intense strain and triggered massive stock market losses and capital outflows from the country.

Russia, which grew at over 8 percent last year, is facing a severe slowdown in growth, and possibly even recession next year, analysts say. Torrid figures released earlier this week showed that industrial output had plunged 10.8 percent in November from the previous month, signaling a dramatic slowdown in the final quarter.

"Clearly we are in the middle of a major growth recession in Russia," said Bogetic. "I would call it a growth recession, not an output recession—yet."

He said the World Bank had tweaked its earlier projection of 3 percent growth next year to between 2-3 percent.

Some judges delay swearing-in of citizens, report says

WASHINGTON — Federal judges in some parts of the United States have delayed citizenship oaths for immigrants, apparently to keep millions of dollars in fees that would otherwise go to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, according to a new government report and immigration officials. ....

It’s Time to Uproot the Real Cause of the Mortgage Crisis

(Compiler's note: Yes - this is a must read article -- what is being discussed here impacts our national security.)

Or else American taxpayers will be called upon to bail out the economy again.

from Pajamas Media

As banks, insurance companies, brokerage firms, automobile manufacturers, and God knows who else line up to try and feed at the public trough, the original source of the spreading financial and credit crisis, the mortgage industry, is still in deep trouble. Whether the initial bailout plan passed by Congress will help stem mortgage lenders’ financial problems in the short run is still an open question. But one thing is certain: Nothing in the original legislation or Treasury’s actions and infusion of funds since then have made the legal, regulatory, and enforcement changes required to prevent this problem from happening again in the long run — no matter how many tax dollars the Treasury Department pours into the problem.

Nothing in the mortgage bailout legislation called for Congress to fix the serious problems with the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) that empower ACORN-style pressure tactics against lenders. Nothing made the Federal Reserve change its lending instructions. Nothing urged the president to change the enforcement policies at the Justice Department and HUD that forced lenders to make risky loans to unqualified applicants.

At its most basic level, this crisis started because of the weakening of mortgage lending standards caused by the Federal Reserve and other federal agencies. Lenders also feared facing discrimination claims and enforcement actions by government law enforcement agencies and organizations such as ACORN.

Consider a faulty study the Boston Fed conducted in the 1990s. It claimed that minority mortgage applicants were rejected at higher rates because of discrimination. Yet a detailed analysis by University of Texas economists Stan Liebowitz and Theodore Day showed that the Boston Fed study was so full of data transcription errors that it was “outrageously unreliable.” When those errors were eliminated, there was no discrimination. Some minority groups do have a higher rejection rate for mortgages on average, but because of weaker credit histories, not discrimination by lenders.

Undaunted, the Boston Fed issued a new manual that called traditional lending standards like creditworthiness and down payment requirements “outdated” and “discriminatory” because they supposedly prevented minorities from getting loans. Other federal agencies joined in. The FDIC still has a compliance manual that discourages banks from requiring an “excellent” credit rating or “adequate” longevity on the job because it may have a “disparate impact” on minority applicants. This despite the current crisis and the fact that in 2007 the Federal Reserve finally admitted in a report to Congress that credit scores are “predictive of credit risk for the populations as a whole and for all major demographic groups.”

Mortgage lenders were also pressured to adopt these weakened standards by the Community Reinvestment Act. If they couldn’t show enough lending in minority neighborhoods to bad credit risks, they could be accused of discrimination, their charter renewals or merger deals held up by third party “community” organizations like ACORN. These organizations used the CRA as an extortion racket to get money for themselves (so they could do things like “counsel” high-risk borrowers) and to get mortgage funds directed to borrowers who had no down payments, no steady employment, and terrible credit histories. And everyone in Congress and the executive branch are wringing their hands over how to keep these borrowers in mortgages they cannot afford, rather than getting them out and thereby stopping the hemorrhaging in the lending industry.

As Professor Liebowitz said in testimony before Congress this past summer, the government’s entire housing policy was based “on a false claim, or lie” that mortgage lenders were discriminating against minorities. This lie was also pushed by the liberal civil rights community and the Congressional Black Caucus — and it was repeated “over and over again. Eventually this lie began to poison the mortgage market, and now the entire economy is at risk.” The secondary market necessary for the securitization of all of these bad mortgages (by bundling and packaging them together) accepted the constant reassurances by the Fed, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and other government agencies that these high-risk mortgages were perfectly safe.

So where does the bailout plan direct the Federal Reserve, the FDIC, and all the other federal agencies involved in banking and lending to change their compliance manuals and regulations to allow mortgage lenders to tighten their lending standards? Where does it tell them to go back to traditional methods of determining creditworthiness without putting their charters in jeopardy or being accused of discrimination? Where are the amendments to the CRA to prevent lenders from being blackmailed into making more of these bad loans? Where are the president’s directives to the Justice Department and HUD banning the use of “disparate impact” in their enforcement actions and ordering those agencies to consider individual creditworthiness and other traditional lending requirements when investigating discrimination claims? You haven’t seen any of these directives because they don’t exist — and they are just as unlikely to come from the new administration.

You don’t hear any plans by anyone in Congress, the Federal Reserve Board, or in other federal agencies to take any of these actions — because no government officials want to admit their role in the financial crisis or incur the wrath of the race hustlers. They don’t want to confront the Congressional Black Caucus or the NAACP or other liberal pressure groups that will do everything they can to oppose these changes.

In a hearing in February, Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) actually claimed that the only problem with the CRA was that it didn’t cover enough of the credit market. Now that the Treasury Department is essentially buying control of American banks, mortgage lenders, insurance companies, brokerage firms, and other industries as the crisis spreads, how long will it be before federal career bureaucrats start using the government’s new ownership interest to force those same institutions and industries to implement “new and improved” social policies in their lending, credit, brokerage, manufacturing, and insurance practices?

And who will continue to be the real victims of these policies, in addition to the American taxpayer who is funding the bailout or losing his job because of the economic distress of so many employers? It will be the borrowers, many of them minorities, who have been put into terrible financial straits by lending practices forced onto mortgage lenders by the government.

This overwhelming problem is not the result of too much “deregulation” of the financial industry. It is the result of coordinated government regulations and destructive racial preference enforcement policies that effectively pressured lenders to make billions of dollars of loans to individuals who lacked the financial means to repay them. With the regulatory structures that are the root and cause of this whole problem unchanged, the American taxpayer will almost certainly be called upon to bail the mortgage system out again, as well as all of the other sectors of our economy being hurt by the credit crunch it engendered.

What Osama bin Laden Might Look Like in Disguise

By Paul Bedard

Ever wonder what terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden might look like if he shaved his trademark beard and turned in his robes and camouflage for a western business suit? Well, apparently so did the intelligence analysts at the National Counterterrorism Center. In their popular annual desk calendar, just received at Whispers, a page about the al Qaeda leader features an altered photograph, showing a neatly trimmed bin Laden in a dark suit and tie, looking more like a used-car dealer than a guerrilla fighter.

Bin Laden has a $27 million bounty on his head and a distinctive visage that has become remarkably familiar over the past decade, but the Westernized Osama looks surprisingly different. Still, it's a face only his mother could kiss. And there are some things he won't be able to disguise. The NCTC's calendar points out that he remains unusually tall (somewhere between 6 foot 4 and 6 foot 6) and walks with a cane. The NCTC, which is the U.S. intelligence community’s primary analytical shop for terrorism, has not yet posted its 2009 calendar, but the 2008 version is on its website.

Does our Federal Government Take Money Management Advice from Bernard Madoff?

(Compiler's note: I don't know about your home finances, but I've never been able to get out of debt by spending more and more money -- nor have I ever known anyone to achieve success with this method. Are you beginning to wonder about the wisdom of our long-standing national approach to solving the problem of crushing debt?)

by Cliff Kincaid

Business cable network CNBC is asking, in a special report, whether investment manager Bernard Madoff pulled off the “scam of the century.” But Madoff is only accused of a $50 billion heist. That’s peanuts compared to what the politicians have done to us.

On Monday, December 15, in a story that went unnoticed, the General Accountability Office (GAO) reported that the federal government has failed another financial audit. It was the 12^th year in a row that the federal government has been unable to accurately report on its fiscal condition. Frankly, nobody knows precisely where the money is going. But we know where it’s coming from - the beleaguered taxpayers.

We have all seen the film footage of Madoff leaving his New York apartment and being pushed around by a horde of photographers and cameramen trying to get a shot of him. Why aren’t the politicians being surrounded in similar fashion for destroying the financial stability of our country?

Almost every day we see a story that misses the big picture. On Thursday, President-elect Obama announced his pick to run the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Politicians are demanding to know why the agency failed to detect the Madoff fraud and what it will do in the future to uncover other fraudulent financial schemes. But what about the federal government’s own massive financial fraud, as documented by the GAO itself?

The GAO report was released one day before President Bush told CNN’s Candy Crowley that, in order to avoid economic collapse, he had to abandon freedom in order to save it. “I’ve abandoned free-market principles to save the free-market system,” he declared.

When I heard that Bush had made that statement, I thought it had to be a misquote. But then I played the tape of the interview and heard it for myself. “Stop me before I throw a shoe” was conservative commentator Michelle Malkin’s reaction to Bush’s CNN comments.

“I feel a sense of obligation to my successor to make sure there is not a huge economic crisis,” Bush told Crowley. So he was panicked by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson into pushing Congress to approve a $700-billion Wall Street bailout plan. What he got was a huge economic crisis. Our salvation now lies in Obama, a socialist who wants to spread the wealth around and spend even more money, perhaps as much as $1 trillion in a new “stimulus.”

The Bush comments about destroying free markets to save them wasn’t much of a controversy in the major media. Perhaps this was because so many media personalities were busy with other things. Some were lining up at the White House Christmas Party on Tuesday night to get a photo with the President. On Fox News on Wednesday morning, the hosts were blubbering over their attendance at the event and told viewers to go to their website for photos of the affair.

Unfortunately, when the President claimed “there’s a lot of blame” to go around for the financial and economic crisis, Crowley didn’t follow up by citing the Celent study finding that the claims made by Paulson and Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke to justify a socialist takeover of the financial industry were demonstrably false. The study suggests that the result of the bailout could be Weimar-style hyperinflation.

“Celent’s report is exhibit A in a trial for putting Paulson in jail,” is how one person responded to my column on the study. This feeling can only grow as awareness spreads through the alternative media about the looting of the taxpayers. It is time for talk radio to make this into the number one issue as we enter a new year. We are increasingly facing a federal government that is acting in a lawless fashion.

Nevertheless, Bush confirmed that his administration was working on a federal financial bailout of the auto industry. A good question would have been: how is that justified when Congress declined to provide the funds?

Bush said the financial system had become “inebriated” and this led to the current crisis. What kind of “democratic” system do we have when the people’s representatives in the House and Senate are bypassed by an executive branch or a Federal Reserve drunk with power?

Why is the Federal Reserve refusing to comply with a Freedom of Information Act request from Bloomberg News for information about “emergency” loans in the crisis? Bloomberg has been forced to go to court to get the information.

In regard to the auto bailout, comedian Jay Leno probably had the best line. He said, “Don’t you love watching congressmen lecture auto executives on how to run their business? I mean, you got people that put us a trillion dollars in debt lecturing people who put us a billion dollars in debt?” The trillion dollar figure, of course, is only a reference to the current projected federal deficit. It could get far larger.

Asked about Madoff, Bush told CNN’s Candy Crowley that he didn’t know much about the case. She should have asked him why the federal government copies Madoff’s accounting procedures.

Peter Schiff of Euro Pacific Capital points out that “The Social Security Administration runs its ‘trust funds’ with precisely the same methods used by Madoff and Ponzi. As money is collected from current workers, the funds are then dispersed to those already receiving benefits. None of the funds collected are actually invested, so no investment returns are ever generated. Those currently paying into the system are expected to receive their returns based on the ‘contribution’ made by future workers.”

He adds, “The United States Government runs its own balance sheet based on the Ponzi principal as well. Our national debt always grows and never shrinks. As existing debt matures, proceeds are repaid by issuing new debt. Interest payments on existing debt are also made by selling new debt to investors. The whole scheme depends on an ever growing supply of new lenders, or the willingness of existing lenders, to continue to roll over maturing notes. Of course, as was the case with Madoff, if enough of our creditors want their money back, the music stops playing.”

In terms of the financial “rescue” package, Bloomberg’s latest estimate is that the cost has reached a staggering $7.7 trillion.

A more recent estimate, provided in a Politico.com story by Jeanne Cummings, is $8.7 trillion. She reported, “According to Bianco Research President James Bianco, who crunched these numbers, that amounts to more government aid and assistance than nine other historic bailouts and big government outlays combined.”

A December 10 GAO Report dealt with the so-called TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Program), which was supposed to “rescue” the financial system. Paulson changed his mind and TARP became the CPP, a capital purchase program that had provided taxpayer funds to 87 financial institutions as of December 5. However, GAO found that the Treasury Department “has yet to address a number of critical issues. These include determining how it will ensure that CPP is achieving its intended goals and monitoring compliance with limitations on executive compensation, dividend payments, and stock repurchases. Moreover, it has yet to formalize transition planning efforts given the upcoming shift to a new administration or to establish an effective management structure and an essential system of internal controls.”

In other words, there is really no effective oversight and no accountability to the taxpayers providing the money.

Can we start to have some media scrutiny of America’s descent into socialism and national bankruptcy

before President Obama asks Congress to “save” us by spending more money and going further into debt?

The Rising Threat of the UAE

(Compiler's note: Another must read.)

by Sultan Knish

Until Dubai

Ports World, a company owned by UAE ruler Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, attempted to buy six major ports in the United States, few Americans were paying serious attention to the rising threat of the UAE.

Where regimes like Iran or Pakistan offer up more direct threats to the West in the form of nuclear arsenals and terrorism sponsorship, the UAE represents a soft threat that may be ultimately be just as dangerous because it is understated.

While the UAE provided 2 of the 9/11 terrorists, had close ties with the Taliban and served a stop on the smuggling network that moved nuclear technology from North Korea to Iran, the UAE has avoided the bellicose confrontational rhetoric, instead operating under the radar.

Where states like Iran or Saddam's Iraq routinely blew their oil money on weapons and a military that could never actually pose a threat to the West in anything except non-conventional weapons, the UAE has relied on the United States to provide regional security, while aggressively pursuing a program of economic conquest of the US and Europe.

The UAE may have many of the same ties to terrorists that Saudi Arabia does, but it has done a far better job with its own public image, building business ties with Western companies and slowly taking them over. The DPW takeover may have been a shock to the system, but it is part of a slow creeping pattern of UAE businesses seizing pieces of the Western economy.

Compared to the brutal tyrannies of Iran or Syria, or the ruthless public suppression of protest in Egypt or the armed militias of Lebanon or Gaza, the UAE seems to show a placid and sunny face of benign despotic family rule. The UAE of course is ultimately a tyranny based around the same system of clan and family interests that dominates much of the Middle East's politics, even when it's disguised by terms like Federation or Prime Minister. But above and beyond that the UAE is Sparta with a warrior class replaced by a business class.

Less than one in seven of the population of the UAE are actual nationals. The rest are mainly foreigners and foreign workers imported to do the work of the favorite sons of the land. And while it might be the Brad Pitts and Angelina Jolies who make the headlines, it is the hundreds of thousands of Southeast Asians slaving away in the homes and palaces, or the small children imported as camel jockeys because of their light weight that make up the real, often enslaved population, of this Sharia friendly Sparta.


The hundreds of thousands of Asians who live in collective labor accommodations resembling slave barracks with no legal rights to speak of, as is commonplace for non-Muslims in a Muslim country, are the real face of the UAE behind the PR spin, the glitzy shots of beaches and glass towers. The UAE, like all tyrannies, is ultimately built up on a base of human misery, oppression and exploitation.

Out of that heart of darkness dressed up in the glamorous light of luxury and opulent wealth, the UAE has advanced steadily into the West. Sharia Finance is a project Made in the UAE and is typical of the UAE's use of economic leverage to impose its power on the West. Even whie UAE royalty steadily financed the Taliban and other Islamic terrorist groups, their economic agenda had a far greater impact in the Clash of Civilizations. Like the airplanes that were flown into the towers, the UAE follows the pattern of Islam employing the modern tools and institutions of the West against it.

The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority or ADIA, another corporate spawn of the UAE ruling clan, is the largest shareholder in Citigroup, which plays a key role in the US Treasury Securities market. ADIA wields unknown billions across global financial markets, even as it snaps up real estate in New York and London. Among their acquisitions, the Chrysler building bought from Prudential and the General Motors building, the most expensive building in the world. To place this in the proper perspective, you would have to consider that the same UAE royals who helped finance Al Queda now own some of New York City's most notable surviving buildings.

Lenin boasted that the capitalists would sell him the rope with which he would hang them. But where he failed, the fat burnoosed bandits of the UAE are succeeding. Import-Export enabled the UAE to take hold of the building blocks

of international trade, which when combined with international finance, gave them the economic leverage to advance their agenda on a wider playing field. Hollywood is already on the block. With an economy in shambles, tomorrow's movies are being financed out of Dubai, and the investors ultimately gain the deciding power. As Dubai becomes the financial center for Hollywood that New York once was, you can look forward to movies that even further advance the Islamic agenda while degrading America and the West.

And as a double twist of the knife, bringing Hollywood to Dubai along with its drove of celebrities, further mainstreams Islam and Islamic culture in the West. This of course is to be followed by business alliances that will market Dubai created films to American audiences, in exchange for help marketing American films to Middle Eastern audiences. And the next stage of the plan involves treating Hollywood, as the UAE has treated every Western company it has done business with, by first forming entangling business alliances and then taking it over. As today Haliburton, once a leading American company is based out of Dubai, the same fate may yet befall Hollywood, as surreal as that may seem today.

Popular culture is power, and the UAE wants to have that power over the West. Its control over international trade and finance now paves the way for making even greater inroads into the West, for forcing Sharia compliant finance, insuring that Islamic law becomes recognized in Europe, that Islamic ideas are broadcast on film and TV for Western audiences, that the slavemasters of the UAE will even own sizable portions of the cities of their enemies.

Terrorism alone cannot accomplish a victory. It can only serve as a prod. It is the financial conquest of a nation and the resulting transfer of power that is far more devastating. The UAE's silent economic war against the West has brought victory after victory, a war that is all the more devastating because of how covert it is, and how well it hides behind a friendly smile, while a knife is held just out of sight behind a billowing white sheet. Sharia finance is only the opening shot of a far more comprehensive economic takeover of the West, no longer funded by oil money alone, but by the trade, the land and the entertainments of the West.

With economy in shambles, Congress gets a raise

By Jordy Yager

A crumbling economy, more than 2 million constituents who have lost their jobs this year, and congressional demands of CEOs to work for free did not convince lawmakers to freeze their own pay. Instead, they will get a $4,700 pay increase, amounting to an additional $2.5 million that taxpayers will spend on congressional salaries, and watchdog groups are not happy about it. “As lawmakers make a big show of forcing auto executives to accept just $1 a year in salary, they are quietly raiding the vault for their own personal gain,” said Daniel O’Connell, chairman of The Senior Citizens League (TSCL), a non-partisan group. “This money would be much better spent helping the millions of seniors who are living below the poverty line and struggling to keep their heat on this winter.” However, at 2.8 percent, the automatic raise that lawmakers receive is only half as large as the 2009 cost of living adjustment of Social Security recipients. Still, Steve Ellis, vice president of the budget watchdog Taxpayers for Common Sense, said Congress should have taken the rare step of freezing its pay, as lawmakers did in 2000. “Look at the way the economy is and how most people aren’t counting on a holiday bonus or a pay raise — they’re just happy to have gainful employment,” said Ellis. “But you have the lawmakers who are set up and ready to get their next installment of a pay raise and go happily along their way.” Member raises are often characterized as examples of wasteful spending, especially when many constituents and businesses in members’ districts are in financial despair. Rep. Harry Mitchell, a first-term Democrat from Arizona, sponsored legislation earlier this year that would have prevented the automatic pay adjustments from kicking in for members next year. But the bill, which attracted 34 cosponsors, failed to make it out of committee. “They don’t even go through the front door. They have it set up so that it’s wired so that you actually have to undo the pay raise rather than vote for a pay raise,” Ellis said. Freezing congressional salaries is hardly a new idea on Capitol Hill. Lawmakers have floated similar proposals in every year dating back to 1995, and long before that. Though the concept of forgoing a raise has attracted some support from more senior members, it is most popular with freshman lawmakers, who are often most vulnerable. In 2006, after the Republican-led Senate rejected an increase to the minimum wage, Democrats, who had just come to power in the House with a slew of freshmen, vowed to block their own pay raise until the wage increase was passed. The minimum wage was eventually increased and lawmakers received their automatic pay hike. In the beginning days of 1789, Congress was paid only $6 a day, which would be about $75 daily by modern standards. But by 1965 members were receiving $30,000 a year, which is the modern equivalent of about $195,000. Currently the average lawmaker makes $169,300 a year, with leadership making slightly more. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) makes $217,400, while the minority and majority leaders in the House and Senate make $188,100. Ellis said that while freezing the pay increase would be a step in the right direction, it would be better to have it set up so that members would have to take action, and vote, for a pay raise and deal with the consequences, rather than get one automatically. “It is probably never going to be politically popular to raise Congress’s salary,” he said. “I don’t think you’re going to find taxpayers saying, ‘Yeah I think I should pay my congressman more’.”

Don't link Islam to terror, Islamic chief urges

GENEVA (Reuters) – The world's top diplomat for Islam called on Friday for an end to what he termed efforts to equate the religion with terrorism and said the 'demonization' of Muslims around the world must be fought.

But speaking soon after the U.N. General Assembly passed an Islamic-sponsored resolution condemning "defamation of religion" for the fourth year in a row, Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu said his group was committed to respecting freedom of expression.

There was a "rising tide of incitement to religious hatred and discrimination and intolerance targeting Muslims," he told a meeting called by the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) at the United Nations in Geneva. The 57-nation OIC, based in Saudi Arabia, represents 1.5 billion Muslims.

"Attempts to equate Islam with terrorism should be stopped. Stereotyping and demonization of Muslims should be combated," said Ihsanoglu, a Turkish history professor who became OIC Secretary-General in 2005.

In a statement on Ihsanoglu's remarks, Geneva spokesman for the International Humanist and Ethical Union Roy Brown argued that Islam was often linked to terror because perpetrators of many terrorist acts identify themselves as Muslims.

Critics of the OIC -- including countries who voted against the "defamation" motion at U.N. headquarters in New York on Thursday -- say many Islamic states use defamation or "blasphemy" laws against minorities and free-thinkers.

Referring to the U.N. vote, in which for the first time since the OIC introduced a "defamation" motion in 2005 more countries voted against or abstained than voted for, Ihsanoglu said the motives of the Islamic grouping were misunderstood.

FREEDOM OF SPEECH

The aim of the OIC, he declared, "is not to protect religion against critics based on objective and rational interrogation." The body, he added, "is firmly committed to respect for freedom of expression, which is a fundamental human right."

In a statement issued earlier this week, watchdogs on freedom of expression for the U.N.'s Human Rights Council and for key regional inter-state organizations in Africa, Europe and Latin America called for an end to "defamation" resolutions.

The four, three of them prominent developing country human rights lawyers, said that where "blasphemy" laws existed they had often been used "to prevent legitimate criticism of powerful religious leaders and to suppress the views of minorities, dissenting believers and non-believers."

In an echo of their comments, U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay told Friday's meeting that when criticism of religion became incitement to hatred "urgent but proportionate" action should be taken.

But, she added, "speech critical of religions does not necessarily constitute such incitement" and that it should always be assessed "stressing the importance of protecting the rights of both religious minorities and non-believers alike."

(Editing by Stephanie Nebehay and Ralph Boulton)

Jobs go begging at Northrop Grumman

The defense contractor is offering cash and free dinner inducements to applicants to fill hundreds of positions. There's a catch: Many jobs require highly specialized skills and a security clearance.

By Peter Pae

It's an increasingly rare sight these days, but Northrop Grumman Corp. has been putting out help-wanted signs all over town.

The huge defense contractor has flown sky banners with "Northrop Grumman is hiring" over Southland beaches and during a USC football game, has placed ads on company shuttle buses, and has even offered $100 plus a free dinner for potential hires to come check them out.

Despite perhaps the biggest pool of unemployed workers looking for jobs in decades, Northrop officials say they haven't been able to fill the open positions.

This year it has hired 1,800 workers for its Integrated Systems division in Southern California but still has another 1,800 openings for engineers, machinists, mechanics and computer programmers.

In a cruel twist for thousands of job-seekers, Northrop says a vast majority of the applicants -- the company gets 30,000 resumes a week -- don't qualify. And many who do qualify already have good jobs with rivals who are doing all they can to keep them.

Century City-based Northrop is the nation's third-largest defense contractor and the second-largest private employer in Southern California. In the last year or so it has won several major multi-billion-dollar government contracts.

Few qualify because many of the jobs require highly specialized or esoteric skills. Consider the latest opening at Northrop for a "cryogenic propellant management engineer." If you need to ask what it is, then you probably don't qualify. For most of us, it has something to do with really cold rocket fuel used for NASA's lunar lander. The bottom line is that there aren't many people who have any experience in the area of cryogenic propellants.

Adding to the hiring difficulty is that most of the jobs require that the employee have a government security clearance.

"It's a quandary for us," said Emitte Scruggs, director of staffing for Northrop's Integrated Systems sector. "Even when we do find someone, they can't get the clearance. I know it sounds odd, but we're having a tough time hiring."

Moonbeam Brown wants Constitution thrown out – caters to rad/gays

(San Francisco Chronicle) Despite being responsible for defending the laws of California, AG Jerry Brown has announced he won't defend Prop. 8 against challenges, and, instead, tells the court the voter-approved gay-marriage ban should be invalidated ...

Nouriel Roubini: The $700 Billion Bailout Isn’t Enough

by Luke Mullins

I spoke with the bearish—but prescient—economist Nouriel Roubini on Wednesday about what's in store for the economy, housing, and stock markets in 2009. Here's what he had to say:

What is your outlook for the length and depth of the recession?

My view is that that recession is going to continue at least through the end of 2009. It started in December 2007, so it's going to be 24 months long. It's going to be the longest we've had in the last 60 years. I expect a cumulative fall in output from the peak of 4 to 5 percent. Just to give you a sense, in the last recession, the cumulative fall in output was only 0.4 percent—this one is 10 times deeper. The unemployment rate will peak at above 9 percent sometime in 2010. And we're facing not just a U.S. recession but a global recession. There is a recession in all of the advanced economies, and now there is the beginning of a hard landing also in the emerging markets.

What are the main factors behind the recession?

Initially, it was the excesses in the U.S. housing market, but we have discovered that those excesses were not limited only to housing. The household sector was highly leveraged—subprime, prime, credit cards, auto loans, student loans. There was a releveraging of the financial system, with massive amounts of excessive leverage and risk taking. That led to the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression and, because of securitization, we spread it to the rest of the world. Also easy money from the Fed—they pushed down the federal funds rate and kept it too low for too long—and lax supervision of financial institutions played a role. So a number of different factors [triggered the crisis].

What's your outlook for housing?

Well, between 1996 and 2006, real home prices doubled. So just to go back to the previous level—without undershooting—you need a fall in real terms of 50 percent in home prices. You can achieve 40 percent of that through nominal falling home prices and 10 percent of it through inflation. That means that home prices have to fall at least 40 percent [from the peak]. And they have fallen, as of today, from their peak of 2006 by 25 percent. I expect them to fall at least another 15 percent or maybe even 20—so a cumulative fall in home prices in nominal terms of at least 40 percent, possibly 45. And the housing recession has not bottomed out. The data yesterday about housing starts and building permits suggested that it's a total disaster in housing, and there is no bottom to it. This is the worst housing recession since the Great Depression.

Do you think stocks have bottomed?

No, I don't think so. Of course, in the last few weeks we have been in another bear market rally, but bear market rallies have occurred for the last 12 months. Markets rally after shocks, and then shocks come and they fall further. But I see another downside to U.S. and global equities of at least 15 to 20 percent from current levels for three reasons. One is that the news about the economy—both in the U.S. and abroad—is going to be much worse then expected. The numbers have been just awful, and they are going to get worse. Two, there is still a lot of delusion about what earnings are going to be in 2009. And three, I think that there are going to be many more financial shocks, other large institutions going bust—highly leveraged institutions like hedge funds.

The financial shocks are not over, and the credit losses are going to mount because they are spreading from subprime to prime to credit cards to auto loans to student loans to leveraged loans to municipal bonds to industrial and commercial loans to corporate bonds. We have to take about $2 trillion of credit losses and so far nearly half of it has been recognized. So I see another wave of massive credit losses that is going to worsen the credit crunch.

Would you say then that the credit crisis is at its halfway point?

Well, we're still in the middle of it. We are still in the deepest part of this credit crunch. Look at corporate credit spreads—they are unprecedented. We are nowhere near the bottom. The credit crunch is as painful now as it has been. And so far, everything the Fed has done in its massive quantitative easing has not made much of a difference as far as corporate credit spreads.

What is your opinion of the government's response to the credit crisis so far?

My first observation would be that even if they do everything right, the recession is going to proceed through the end of next year. I don't think that there is anything that the government can do at this point to reverse that. What they can do is to try to ensure that there is at least the beginning of an economic recovery toward the end of next year and into 2010. What needs to be done is actually many different things. The first thing is we need a huge fiscal stimulus because private demand, consumption, and spending are collapsing. So you need a huge stimulus—$500 billion to $700 billion of government spending in infrastructure, money to state and local governments, unemployment benefits. The usual range of things.

The second thing you need is to more aggressively recapitalize the financial institutions, not just banks but broker dealers, finance companies, and insurance companies. And there is only $350 billion of TARP [Treasury Asset Relief Program] money left. We are going to spend all of that, and we are going to need a TARP II because in order to cover all the losses you will need more than $1 trillion. Three, you need to reduce the debt burden of the households that are insolvent. Loan modifications are meaningless. You need debt reduction, similar to what we did during the Great Depression with the [Home Owners' Loan Corp.]—the government buying up the mortgage, reducing its face value, and converting [the loans] from variable rates to long-term fixed rates. And all of these things have to be done in a cohesive, consistent way showing that you have a plan of action because otherwise you're not signaling credibility to the market.

What advice do you have for President-elect Obama?

First of all, he has a great team. He doesn't need my advice; he has excellent people like Tim Geithner and Larry Summers—they are people that know markets, know policy, know the financial sector and the economy. The advice is essentially a combination of aggressive fiscal policy, more aggressive recapitalization of financial institutions, and plans to reduce the debt burden of the household sector, and the Fed continuing to do aggressive quantitative easing.

Are we headed for a depression?

I don't believe we are going to be in a depression—we could end up like Japan that had essentially economic stagnation for a decade with deflation. You know, the "L"-shaped recession. At this point the "U"-shaped recession could turn into an "L"-shaped recession if we don't fix the financial system, and the credit crisis becomes worse and if we don't get a massive fiscal stimulus. So, a lot depends on our policy reaction. If our policy reaction is appropriate, by 2010 there will be some recovery of growth. The only risk is that the recovery of growth could be so weak that it feels like a recession even though we are technically out of it. So there is a risk of something like a Japanese-style, multiyear economic stagnation. I would not rule it out, but it is not my benchmark scenario. I think there is a one-third probability it will end up that way, but a two-thirds probability that we will end up in a severe, two-year-long recession. And that would be by any standard the worst recession that the U.S. has experienced in the last 60 years.

Doubts Remain 20 Years After Lockerbie

by Associated Press

LONDON(AP) -- Much of the political fallout from the Lockerbie air disaster has been resolved, but doubts remain about who was behind the explosion 20 years ago Sunday in the skies above Scotland.

A cancer-stricken Libyan secret agent is in prison, the sole person convicted in the tragedy, but he has earned a second appeal by convincing judges that ''a miscarriage of justice'' may have occurred during his trial.

Some of the victims' families are still not convinced that Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi, 56, is to blame for the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, which killed 259 people, mostly Americans, in the air, and 11 more on the ground. Al-Megrahi, convicted in January, 2001, is serving a life sentence.

The Rev. John Mosey, whose 19-year-old daughter Helga was killed on the flight, attended all but one week of al-Megrahi's nine-month trial before deciding the Libyan was probably not responsible.

''I came away from the court 85 percent convinced he did not do it, based on the evidence I heard,'' said Mosey, from Cumbria, England. ''He was convicted on circumstantial evidence and not beyond all reasonable doubt.''

Mosey is putting his faith in the appeal set to be heard next year -- if al-Megrahi lives that long. The prisoner is suffering from incurable prostate cancer that has spread to other parts of his body, but his lawyer's bid to free him on humanitarian grounds has failed.

Mosey thinks the bombing may have been carried out by a Palestinian organization backed by Syria and Iran, as many believed in the immediate aftermath. He thinks the focus was shifted to Libya -- an archenemy of then-President Ronald Reagan -- for political reasons.

''Sadly, I believe there is not the political will to catch the real perpetrators and this terrible case will remain unsolved,'' he said.

Mosey plans to deliver a sermon at a memorial service at London's Heathrow Airport on the 20th anniversary, with other commemorations set for the village of Lockerbie.

''In the first five to 10 years after her death I thought about her every single day, every hour,'' he said of his daughter. ''Twenty years on, time heals to some degree, but I still think about her very often.'' Al-Megrahi was granted a new appeal in June, 2007, after his lawyers claimed British and U.S. authorities tampered with evidence, disregarded witness statements and steered investigators away from suggestions the bombing was an Iranian-financed plot carried out by Palestinians to avenge the shooting down of a civilian Iranian airliner by U.S. forces several months earlier.

In a statement summarizing its 800-page report, the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission said it had found new evidence that led its members to believe ''that the applicant may have suffered a miscarriage of justice.''

That view is rejected by almost all of the Americans who lost family members in the explosion, said Kara Weipz of Cherry Hill, N.J., whose late brother was on board.

''Most people absolutely, unequivocally believe it was al-Megrahi,'' said Weipz, president of the Victims of Pan Am Flight 103 group. ''His guilt was never in doubt.''

The Palestinian groups suspected of being involved have steadfastly denied any link to the plot.

The dynamics of the case have changed in recent years as Libyan leader Col. Moammar Gadhafi has engineered a rapprochement with the West in the dangerous times following the 9/11 attacks on Washington and New York.

The self-styled revolutionary leader, who once seemed to thrive on confrontation, has renounced terrorism and voluntarily dismantled his clandestine program to develop nuclear weapons.

Britain, the United States and Libya are friendly now, publicly committed to working together to contain the threat of international terrorism.

Libya has paid out several billion dollars to the families of Lockerbie victims, and has accepted ''general responsibility'' for the attack.

U.S. officials, and the families involved, said in November that Libya had made the final compensation payments. These acts of contrition have allowed Libya to restore diplomatic ties to Britain and the United States and to curtail United Nations-imposed sanctions.

Former U.S. intelligence officer Bob Ayers, now a terrorism analyst at Chatham House in London, said Gadhafi was able to ''rehabilitate'' Libya by accepting responsibility for Lockerbie and paying compensation.

''This was ultimately good for the world,'' he said. ''But these were decisions reached by Gadhafi and Libya, not actions imposed by the court. To my way of thinking, there are still doubts as to whether the prosecution was done in such a way to result in a safe conviction.''

Ayers said the Lockerbie explosion was ''a seminal event'' in modern terrorism that had led to a massive revamp of airline safety procedures designed to keep bombs from being smuggled onto planes.

''It's been a constant battle since then between the authorities and the terrorists,'' he said.

Although most of the victims' families have accepted the compensation deal, which paid out $10 million per victim, some close relatives who have not been included in the deal are trying without success to sue the Libyan government.

Washington lawyer Mark Zaid, who represents about 20 families, said that since the U.S. government and Libya regard the matter as closed there is no forum he can use to seek money for those who were left out.

''These families have been forgotten,'' he said, describing how some parents and adult siblings did not receive any part of the settlement, which usually went to spouses or children. ''The hard and cold truth is that as far as the government is concerned the issue with Libya has been resolved, and if a few stragglers are left out, they don't care.''

Expert: TSA Screening Is Security Theater

(CBS) Even as Transportation Security Administration officials beef up airline security with expensive new technology, a prominent security expert, Bruce Schneier, who has advised the TSA, tells 60 Minutes correspondent Lesley Stahl the TSA's efforts are largely "security theater" - a show to make passengers feel safe.

Schneier says truly effective security starts before the airport, with intelligence on terrorists, in a report to be broadcast this Sunday, Dec. 21, at 7 p.m. ET/PT.

"'Security theater,' It's a phrase I coined for security measures that look good, but don’t actually do anything," says Schneier, referring to the security measures that irritate airline passengers every day and that have cost billions of dollars.

That assessment angers Kip Hawley, the Bush Administration’s outgoing head of the TSA. "This isn’t theater. This is war," he tells Stahl. Hawley argues that all the security and especially the technical improvements have made people safer. ....

Durban II

from ACT for America

“Durban II” is the UN conference scheduled for April, 2009, ostensibly to address issues such as racism. With Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as Vice-Chairperson, such a conference would be a joke if it didn’t have such explosive and dangerous implications for worldwide freedom.

The draft document for the conference makes clear the threat it poses. It contains condemnations of “Islamophobia” and is an all-out assault against Israel and against speech that allegedly “defames” Islam.

This is the declared agenda of Islamists worldwide – to silence criticism of Islam. If they succeed, if countries in the West knuckle under to these fascist tactics, the long-term prospects of our resisting the tide of radical Islam will be dim indeed.

For the United States to attend this conference would be to legitimize these blatant assaults on free speech and legitimize the seething hatred, intolerance and anti-Semitism openly espoused by the likes of Ahmadinejad.

Please read the notice below and contact President-Elect Obama and/or Secretary of State-Designate Clinton at the contact information provided. They need to hear from us that it is categorically unacceptable for the United States to attend and legitimize this UN sponsored “hate-fest.”

Make your voice heard. Say “NO” to “Durban II.”

---

From The Washington Times, December 11, 2008.

The United States Should not Attend Any Aspect of the Anti-Semitic Durban II Conference
Elie Wiesel, Nobel Prize Laureate*	Alan Dershowitz, Harvard Law School	William Bennett, Former Secretary of Education	R. James Woolsey, Former Director, Central Intelligence	Bernard Lewis, Professor Emeritus, Princeton University
Martin Peretz, Editor-in-Chief, The New Republic	Michael Steinhardt, The Steinhardt Foundation	Sir Harold Evans, Author, The American Century	Norman Podhoretz, Presidential Medal of Freedom Recipient	James Q. Wilson, Presidential Medal of Freedom Recipient
Herbert I. London, Chairman Governing Council of the American Jewish Congress	Ali H. Alyami, Center for Democracy and Human Rights In Saudi Arabia	Michael Ledeen, Freedom Scholar	Seth Leibsohn, Fellow, Claremont Institute	Anne Bayefsky, EYEontheUN.org
Frank Macchiarola, President, St. Francis College	Brian T. Kennedy, President, The Claremont Institute	Leon Wieseltier, Literary Editor, The New Republic	Victor Davis Hanson, Senior Fellow, The Hoover Institute	Father Alexander Karloutsos, Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America
Manda Zand-Ervin, Alliance of Iranian Women	Dr. Phyllis Chesler, Author, Emerita Professor, CUNY	Shanaveon E. Pious, Ph.D., Chairman of Entrepreneurs University	Nina Rosenwald, Human Rights Voices	M. Zuhdi Jasser, M.D., President, American Islamic Forum for Democracy
* Resigned in protest from the group of eminent personalities before Durban I.

Join us in calling for the United States to say YES to racial and religious equality and freedom from anti-semitism by saying NO to attending the United Nations Durban II Conference. A 2008 U.S. State Department report on global anti-semitism highlighted the malicious role played by the 2001 United Nations Durban I Conference.

Durban I was, IN THEORY, intended to be an "anti-racism" conference. It was, in practice, anything but… Durban I ended just three days before 9/11. So deeply disturbed that the conference was hijacked by global harbingers of hate, that the United States and Israeli delegations walked out on principle in protest.

The agenda for Durban II? Scheduled for April 2009 the stated purpose of Durban II is to "further the implementation of the (2001) Durban Declaration." What does the Durban Declaration declare? That ISRAEL, and ONLY ISRAEL, is guilty of racism. And who sits on the Planning Committee for the Durban II Conference?

Make no mistake, this conference will not combat racism, but will promote and fuel hatred toward Israel, America and the free world. This conference will not be about the spread of free expression, but how to curb it. The United States has always been a world leader in the battle against anti-semitism. We walked away once in protest... let us now stay away on principle. Today, there is an immediate way to act against growing anti-semitism around the world ... say no to Durban II. Declare that the United States will not participate in a dialogue that promotes prejudice.

The United States has consistently opposed Durban II, its funding and planning. The latest October 2008 documents from the Planning Committee confirm that the Durban II platform will be used to demonize Israel and launch an attack on free speech. We ask President-elect Obama and Secretary of State-designate Clinton to take the next step and deny legitimacy to Durban II. We urge the United States to join the lead of Canada and Israel by announcing now that the U.S. will not fund or attend Durban II. Please make your views known-Write to the president-elect, secretary of state designate and Others-tell them to say no NOW, that America DECLINES to participate in the upcoming Durban II International Hatefest.

CONTACT INFORMATION:
Secretary of State-Designate Hillary Clinton: 202-647-4000; website	President-Elect Barack Obama: 202-456-1111; email now!	Congressman Howard Berman (Chair, House Foreign Affairs Committee): 202-225-5021, 202-225-4695 website	Senator John Kerry: 202-224-2742, 202-224-8525; website
Sponsored by Lawrence Kadish, Human Rights Voices

U.S. General Eyes Nuclear Weapon Improvements

WASHINGTON -- A key Air Force nuclear official said recently the United States might seek to improve its nuclear arsenal with such features as enhanced stealth or extended range -- ideas that could prove controversial on Capitol Hill (see GSN, Sept. 12).

Under a "heavy modernization" effort, the United States could extend the service lives of the aging nuclear stockpile as well as retrofit weapons with updated technologies, according to Brig. Gen. Everett Thomas, commander of the Air Force Nuclear Weapons Center at Kirtland Air Force Base, N.M. (see GSN, Nov. 11).

"You could look at [a] low-observable aeroshell," he said in a telephone interview, referring to a re-entry vehicle that carries a nuclear warhead to its target. "You could look at extended range, because we now know how to do solid propellant much better than we did in the past. You could look at many things when you look at a modernization."

Some lawmakers might not agree. ....

U.S. Completes Small-Scale Sarin Neutralization Project

Sarin nerve agent held in three decaying containers at the Blue Grass Army Depot in Kentucky has been safely neutralized, the Associated Press reported yesterday (see GSN, Dec. 10).

The Army ordered the disposal project after one of the containers was found to be leaking in August 2007. Wastewater produced through the chemical neutralization process must still be destroyed at a private facility in Port Arthur, Texas.

Blue Grass is years away from beginning disposal of its entire chemical stockpile as required by the international Chemical Weapons Convention (Associated Press/WKYT.com, Dec. 18).

U.S. Bolstered Counterterrorism Efforts in 2008, Homeland Security Says

The U.S. Homeland Security Department made significant strides in 2008 to protect the country from potential attacks involving chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear weapons, the agency said yesterday in a year-end assessment of its activities (see GSN, Nov. 6).

The department's counterterrorism progress fits within its overarching goals of bolstering disaster preparedness and response abilities, streamlining its own organization, safeguarding vital infrastructure, and working to prevent dangerous goods and individuals from infiltrating the country, according to an agency statement.

The Homeland Security Science and Technology Directorate pursued new technologies to scan U.S.-bound cargo for potential WMD ingredients, the release says.

The department also published a new strategy aimed at preventing small boats from carrying weapons of mass destruction into the country (see GSN, April 28; U.S. Homeland Security Department release I, Dec. 18). ....

Anthrax Attacks Less Likely Today, U.S. Army Officer Says

A senior U.S. Army officer yesterday said that security measures put in place since the 2001 anthrax mailings would make it difficult for someone to conduct a similar campaign today, the Associated Press reported (see GSN, Oct. 27).

"I can't say for certain it could not happen today. ... But it would be much more difficult," said Maj. Gen. Robert Lennox, Army assistant deputy chief of staff.

Lennox noted that military services have approved increased camera surveillance and adopted new security measures for 12 laboratories used for research of anthrax and other lethal agents.....

Russia Offers Nuclear Restraint If U.S. Backs Off Missile Defense Plans

(Compiler's note: Ever heard of a "sucker punch"?)

A U.S. agreement to halt missile interceptor deployments in Europe would persuade Russia to halt its own work on new strategic weapons, Moscow indicated today (see GSN, Dec. 17). ....

Obama to Assign Top Liaison for Iran, Official Says

from Global Security Newswire

U.S. President-elect Barack Obama is expected to assign a high-level foreign policy official to oversee efforts to engage Iran on its nuclear program and other issues, the Washington Times reported today (see GSN, Dec. 18).

Obama has expressed interest in pursuing dialogue with Iran aimed at achieving a halt to activities in the Middle Eastern state that could support nuclear weapons development. Iran has defended its nuclear program as a strictly civilian effort.

"The idea is that the position should build on the existing diplomatic framework," a State Department official said.

Independent analysts supported claims about the new diplomatic post.

"There is every indication that they are seriously considering going this way," said Patrick Clawson, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy's deputy research director. National Iranian American Council head Trita Parsi also agreed that the incoming administration planned to establish the position.

The post is necessary to help coordinate Iran work across the U.S. government, said Suzanne Maloney, an Iran expert at the Brookings institution. "There is a huge interagency component to this," she said.

John Bolton, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, warned that Iran is not likely to halt its disputed nuclear work in exchange for financial and political benefits. "We've lost the (nuclear) race with Iran," he said.

A high-level diplomat is likely to receive the new post, even though coordinating positions are typically provided to midranking officials, according to the State Department source. Contenders include Dennis Ross, a former envoy in Israeli-Arab talks, and Ryan Crocker, now U.S. ambassador to Iraq, the official said.

James Dobbins, a former Bush administration diplomat and another prospective candidate, yesterday said the State Department should permit its envoys to regularly communicate with Iranian diplomats (Eli Lake, Washington Times, Dec. 19).

Meanwhile, The French parliament this week completed a report warning that an Iranian nuclear weapon could become reality in the next three years, the Associated Press reported. "Iran's access to the nuclear bomb is seen as inevitable and very dangerous, notably because of the risks of escalation with the United States," the report says.

The document is notable because "we state more clearly than others our belief that they are on the threshold of the nuclear weapon," said Jean-Louis Bianco, a French Socialist Party legislator who oversaw the report's creation.

The report also advocates "extremely open" multilateral discussions with Iran to address its nuclear activities, he said.

During a trip to Paris, former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu yesterday urged the international community to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear bomb.

"We have never had a situation in the history of the world in which a radical regime with a retrograde ideology and apparently known ambitions on the use of force will get access to the weapons of mass death," Netanyahu said. "The coming year or two -- this is the time table we are talking about -- will be a pivot of history. ... If Iran acquires nuclear weapons, then a terribly dangerous threshold will be crossed," he added (Associated Press/Google News, Dec. 18).

Elsewhere, U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey has declined to participate in the probe of a Manhattan property partly owned by an Iran-linked firm he helped represent in the 1980s, the Washington Post reported today.

The Alavi Foundation co-owns an office building with a firm suspected of funneling rental profits to an Iranian bank linked to Iran's nuclear and ballistic missile programs. Newsday reported in 1995 that the foundation itself was directed by senior Iranian clerics and that high-level officials in the organization had been connected to exports of weapons and technology to Iran (Glenn Kessler, Washington Post, Dec. 19).