Ethics Newsline®

While the U.S. presidential election raised deep disagreements, it left pundits in consensus on one thing: It was among the most negative, nasty, and divisive elections this country has ever seen.

As I’ve said before, both candidates spoke the vituperative language of contemptuous dismissal with great force and conviction. In doing so, they effectively gave permission to others to talk that way. Result: increasingly vehement anti-American talk abroad, and a decline of comity at home.

Is healing possible? Former U.S. ambassadors David Abshire and Max Kampelman think so. These two longtime, bipartisan Washington institution-builders have put forward an intriguing proposal. Three days after the election, they issued a well-written “Declaration on Civility and Inclusive Leadership to Unite a Divided America.” Their immediate goal is to get 101 of the nation’s top political and educational leaders to sign on, as a start at reversing the bitterness and rancor in public life.

Dr. Abshire, who heads the Center for the Study of the Presidency, makes a persuasive historical case that the nation has prospered when unity has been strongest. Citing Abraham Lincoln’s Biblical reminder that “a house divided against itself cannot stand,” he also argues that the nation is weakest in periods of disunity, like those preceding the Civil War and during the Vietnam War. Hence the call for civility.

But what does “civil” mean? Derived from the Latin word for citizen, it originally described the relations of citizens to each other or the body politic. From there it came to mean something shared by citizens (a civil society) or marked by group activity. It developed into a term for a stable and well-organized community no longer primitive, or an educated and cultured society no longer rustic. Finally, it morphed into an adequate sense of politeness, courtesy, and social convention (a civil tongue), or, as my Webster’s puts it, “a sufficient but not noteworthy consideration for others.”

That word “sufficient” is key. Civility doesn’t require a wholesale embrace of opinions foreign to one’s own. Yet it’s more than mere etiquette. In the language of the proposed “Declaration on Civility,” the term “blends passion, commitment, and tolerance” and “requires respect for others [and] listening and dialogue in dealing with those who hold differing opinions.” But it “does not require citizens to give up cherished beliefs or water down convictions.” As Dr. Abshire explained it to me, “It doesn’t mean that the red-shirt guys put on blue shirts” or that “you give up your position,” but simply that “you deal with those differences.”

The Abshire-Kampelman proposal shouldn’t raise hackles under shirts of either color. In his inaugural address in 2001, President George W. Bush observed that “civility is not a tactic or a sentiment. It is the determined choice of trust over cynicism, of community over chaos.” Sen. John F. Kerry, in his comments following the election, called on his followers to “join in common effort, without remorse or recrimination, without anger or rancor,” noting that “America is in need of unity and longing for a larger measure of compassion.”

On a theoretical level, then, this is clearly a winning idea. But can theory translate into practice? Only if the signers of this Declaration are willing to stand strong against the headwinds of a growing absolutism that, convinced of its rightness, brands everything unlike itself as wholly wrong. The battle won’t be against other personalities. It will be against an attitude of infallibility that oversimplifies issues, overlooks nuance, and shuns complexity. The signers of this Declaration will demonstrate true civility when they find the moral courage not to lash back when taunted, not to stop respecting those who show little respect, and not to surrender depth as they seek clarity.

But why stop with these signers? The United States is filled with people ready to take a stand for civility. They’re fed up with the politics of invective. They long for the courtesy and consensus they remember in elder generations. Committed and passionate, they won’t give up their opinions, but they’ve had it with rudeness and personal attack. If the essence of this “Declaration on Civility” could be put before them — on a single page — it could well launch a grassroots, trickle-up movement that would take even the drafters of this Declaration by surprise. If you agree, let me know — and watch this space for further news on this development.

©2004 Institute for Global Ethics

“There is an element out there that thinks they can take certain liberties. That didn’t used to be the case. We have to really begin anew to determine what that covenant of civil behavior in our arenas is going to be all about.”

– National Basketball Association (NBA) commissioner David Stern, announcing disciplinary penalties, fines, and suspensions against 11 players for their involvement in violent fighting last Friday night. The brawl, which erupted in the closing minutes of a game between the Detroit Pistons and the Indiana Pacers, found fans and players alike throwing punches. Stern denounced the violence as “shocking, repulsive, and inexcusable,” saying it represented “‘the worst’ of the 20,000 to 25,000 games he has presided over in his more than two decades as commissioner,” reported the Associated Press. Some of the players complained that the penalties were too harsh or unfair. Police are reviewing tapes of the violence with an eye to filing charges against fans who got involved, according to press reports. (“NBA Suspends Artest for Rest of Season,” AP, Nov. 22)

WASHINGTON
Through an elaborate web of kickbacks, smuggling, tricks, and favors, the regime of deposed Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein pocketed more than $21 billion in illicit profits, a U.S. Senate subcommittee was told last week.

The new figure is twice as high as previous estimates of $10 billion to $11 billion, but includes a longer timeframe, examining documents and deals from the 1991 Gulf War until 2003, reported the BBC.

While about $4 billion of the alleged fraud occurred early on, the vast majority — an estimated $17.3 billion — took place once the United Nations’ Oil-for-Food (OFF) program was put in place in 1996.

The Oil-for-Food program was designed to slap Saddam Hussein with tight sanctions, choking off his avenues of self-enrichment while allowing limited sales of oil to fund humanitarian needs.

Instead, the program apparently pushed cash toward Saddam, who implemented a system of kickbacks and oil vouchers given to terrorist groups and foreign dignitaries alike, who then were able to sell their allocations to oil companies and pocket the commissions, reported the New York Times.

Chief among those implicated is the United Nation’s head of the Oil-for-Food program, Benon Sevan, who has denied any wrongdoing. The names of implicated U.S. officials and firms have not been released.

“The magnitude of fraud perpetrated by Saddam Hussein in contravention of U.N. sanctions and the OFF program is staggering,” said Sen. Norm Coleman (R-Minnesota), chairman of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. “This is like an onion — we just keep uncovering more and more layers.”

Last week’s warning from the Senate subcommittee noted that the fraud was so vast — with many deals attributed to the governments of Iraqi neighbors Jordan, Syria, and Turkey — that someone should have suspected that something was afoot.

“How was the world so blind to this massive amount of influence-peddling?” Coleman asked.

The United Nations, which has refused to turn over some documents while it also investigates the alleged fraud, fended off accusations of stonewalling last week, at the same time contending that the Senate figures “look exceedingly high,” reported the Washington Post.

Coleman and the subcommittee’s ranking Democrat, Sen. Carl Levin (Michigan), criticized the United Nations for withholding information until it begins releasing reports in January.

“We are concerned that the U.N.’s nondisclosure policy is being used as both a sword and a shield, sharing such ‘internal records’ when it favors the U.N., but then declining to do so when such disclosure could have negative implications,” the senators wrote in a letter.

WASHINGTON
Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives last week decided to alter their rules to insulate Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas) from being forced to step down if he is indicted on criminal charges.

DeLay masterminded a redistricting plan for his home state that favored Republicans, helping to oust five incumbent Democrats in November’s election, giving Republicans a larger majority in the House.

But three of Delay’s top aides, as well as several companies who made contributions to his political action committee, have been indicted on criminal conspiracy charges related to financing the redistricting plan. It is alleged that illegal contributions helped elect state legislators who helped carry out the redrawing of districts.

DeLay was sharply rebuked twice last month by the House ethics committee, which criticized him for trying to influence a colleague’s vote in 2003 and for improperly trying to direct the activities of a federal agency in 2003.

With the controversial Republican leader facing possible criminal charges, his supporters in the House pushed last week to revise a 1993 rule that would require him to step aside temporarily if indicted.

The abandoned rule was meant to capitalize on Democratic ethics scandals in the 1990s, reported the Times. The new one, Republicans insisted last week, is designed to shield their own from politically motivated indictments by “crackpot” attorneys, according to the measure’s champion, Rep. Henry Bonilla, also of Texas.

The new rule allows a Republican steering committee to review any indictment against a party leader, committee head, or subcommittee head, and then recommend what action, if any, should be taken, reported the New York Times.

While the watered-down rule passed easily in a closed conference, not all Republicans welcomed the change.

“This is a mistake,” Rep. Christopher Shays of Connecticut said last week. “Every time we start to water down what we did … we are basically saying the revolution is losing its character.”

Campaign-finance watchdog group Democracy 21 blasted Republicans for the change, saying, “With this decision, we have gone from DeLay being judged by his peers to DeLay being judged by his buddies.”

WASHINGTON
PR executive Michael Scanlon, the second of two men accused of bilking Indian tribes out of tens of millions of dollars, refused to answer questions last week at a U.S. Senate hearing into his actions.

Invoking his constitutional right against self-incrimination, Scanlon refused to explain his involvement with the Tigua tribe of El Paso, Texas, which sued him for fraud, reported the Washington Post.

Scanlon is accused of double-crossing the Tigua by covertly convincing the state of Texas to shut down the tribe’s casino, then offering his services to the Tigua — at a cost of $4.2 million — to help get it reopened.

Scanlon’s alleged partner in the scheme was lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who refused to answer Senate questions when subpoenaed in September.

The alleged conspiracy is part of a sprawling web of back-stabbing, solicitation, and exploitation in which Scanlon and Abramoff stand accused of bilking six Indian tribes that operate casinos of at least $66 million, reported the Post.

Abramoff and Scanlon, a former press secretary for House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas), boasted of their Washington connections, promising the tribes access to Capital heavy hitters and help with getting legislation passed that would help their causes, according to press reports.

When the Tigua tribe said it could not pay the high fees demanded by the men, Abramoff allegedly urged tribe elders to take out life insurance policies naming a school that Abramoff founded as the beneficiary. Under the plan, the school then would pay Abramoff’s lobbying fees, reported the Post.

The tribe rejected the idea.

Rep. Bob Ney (R-Ohio), who was lobbied by the men on behalf of the Tigua tribe, said he had been conned just as badly as the others. “Jack Abramoff repeatedly lied to advance his own financial interests. I too was misled,” Ney told the Senate Indian Affairs Committee last week.

“They went to El Paso selling salvation and instead delivered snake oil,” added Sen. John McCain (R-Arizona), who will be assuming command of the committee as it pursues Scanlon and Abramoff.

Special to Newsline from Canadian correspondent Errol P. Mendes

CHICAGO
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) last week filed civil fraud lawsuits against former Canadian newspaper baron Conrad Black and his associate David Radler.

The lawsuits allege that Black and Radler orchestrated a fraudulent and deceptive scheme to appropriate more than $85 million in alleged “non-compete” payments from Hollinger International to themselves and other senior executives over the past four years.

In addition, the lawsuits assert that the two Hollinger officials made misstatements and omitted material facts to the company’s board and audit committee and in regulatory filings.

The Globe & Mail is reporting that Stephen Cutler, director of the SEC enforcement division, said Black and Radler treated the public company as their personal piggy bank, cheating and defrauding shareholders through a series of deceptive schemes and misstatements.

The SEC is seeking to ban both men from running any public companies and to take away Black’s voting power at Hollinger by placing his controlling shares in a voting trust.

Black’s private holding company, Ravelston Corp., has stated that Black intends to make a vigorous defense against the civil fraud charges and expects to be vindicated.

PROVIDENCE, Rhode Island
A local television reporter was convicted of criminal contempt last week for refusing to reveal who provided him a videotape related to an FBI sting of the city’s former mayor in 2001.

Jim Taricani, a four-time Emmy winner, faces up to six months in prison for his repeated refusal to finger the person who provided the videotape, which showed a top aide to former Providence Mayor Vincent Cianci, Jr., accepting a $1,000 bribe.

Cianci, the aide, and at least seven others ultimately were convicted of corruption and other charges stemming from the federal sting operation, reported the New York Times.

Federal Judge Ernest Torres ordered Taricani to turn over the name of his informant last March, slapping him with a $1,000-a-day fine for civil contempt until the information was provided.

After the fine had climbed to $85,000, Judge Torres changed tactics two weeks ago, saying the penalty was not yielding the wanted results and switching the contempt charges from civil to criminal.

Last week, Torres found Taricani guilty of criminal contempt, setting a sentencing date for December 9.

“I wish all my sources could be on the record, but when people are afraid, a promise of confidentiality may be the only way to get the information to the public, and in some cases, to protect the well-being of the source,” Taricani said outside the courthouse after the verdict. “I made a promise to my source, which I intend to keep.”

Taricani’s lawyers may appeal the conviction, but must wait until after sentencing, according to the Times.

The case is one of a growing number of court actions trying to force reporters to reveal sources.

With at least two major cases — one involving outed CIA agent Valerie Plame, the other concerning government nuclear physicist Wen Ho Lee — currently doing battle over such issues, the debate is raging.

While some say journalists have become too lax in granting protection to anonymous sources leveling spurious charges, others argue that anonymity is more important now than ever before.

These cases suggest “an atmosphere where the government is keeping a lot more secrets, the courts are keeping a lot more secrets, and you’ve got whistle-blowers and other people who are within the government seeing something going on who say, ‘You know, I really feel this information should get out,” Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press executive director Lucy Dalglish told the Times.

Sen. Christopher Dodd (D-Connecticut) hopes to introduce a “shield law” granting federal protection to journalists who refuse to identify anonymous sources; 31 states currently have such laws, according to the Times.

LOS ANGELES
Trendy clothing retailer Abercrombie & Fitch agreed last week to pay $40 million to settle charges that it discriminated against minority workers and job applicants in a push to promote an “all-white” public image.

A&F, which has denied any deliberate discrimination, will also hire a vice president of diversity as well as up to 25 diversity recruiters — efforts aimed at fostering a more inclusive work environment.

The settlement follows class-action suits filed against A&F by minority and female employees and applicants, who said they were shunted into backroom or after-hours jobs while their white colleagues were put front and center.

In an unusual move, the settlement also requires A&F to diversify the images used in its catalogs and marketing materials — a bid to encourage a wider pool of job applicants, reported the New York Times.

“Abercrombie had a back-of-the-bus mentality,” Kimberly West-Faulcon, Western regional counsel for the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, told the Times. The settlement’s emphasis on encouraging diversity “sends a message to young people that we’re moving past this kind of thing.”

“I love this settlement,” added lead plaintiff Eduardo Gonzalez. “It’s a landmark thing for an American icon. They were portraying this image that all-American is all white. That’s not the case.”

While the $40-million payout to minority individuals may not look good on the company’s books, retail analyst Robin Murchison said the settlement ultimately may help the company boost its profits.

“Their profile, their image is going to evolve,” Murchison told the Times. “It will still be the cool kids. You can walk onto any Ivy League campus and there’s a lot more going on than Waspy-looking guys and girls. I think they’ll tap into that. I actually think it will work to their advantage.”

DULUTH, Minnesota; NEW YORK; and GREAT FALLS, Montana
As the Thanksgiving holiday approaches in the United States, a few headlines last week took a break from the standard gloomy fare to provide a glimpse of good deeds. Among the stories:

• A police dog in Minnesota last week recovered his eyesight following an outpouring of donations from newspaper readers and others alerted to his situation. Officer Michelle Rafferty, who works with the dog, had planned to pay for the costly $2,500 cataract surgery herself, but was overwhelmed by more than $20,000 in donations volunteered last month by the public. “It has blown me away and changed my life forever,” Rafferty told the Associated Press.
• The New York Times does a quick check-in on food companies’ limited efforts to integrate recycled products into their packaging materials, focusing on an announcement last week from Starbucks saying the Seattle-based company will begin using cups with recycled material starting next year. While the new cups will consists of only 10-percent recycled material, the step should save “approximately five million pounds of virgin tree fiber a year,” reported the Times.
• The University of Great Falls in Great Falls, Montana, received a surprise $2.3 million donation from a part-time janitor who died on Halloween at the age of 102, the university announced last week. Genesio Morlacci, who became a janitor at the school after selling his dry-cleaning business, stipulated that 95 percent of his bequest be reserved for student scholarships. “This is the largest single gift ever received by the university. Students on this campus will benefit from every hour of the 18-hour days he worked,” said university president Eugene McAllister, according to the AP. “He only had a third-grade education, but he knew his numbers,” Morlacci’s longtime friend Bill Foy added. “He wasn’t afraid to work hard.”

From the U.K. Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development:

“While 83 percent of employers have a clear anti-bullying policy in place, when bullying does happen, the focus is almost exclusively on supporting the victim, with little support, advice, and guidance being offered to those accused of bullying, according to ‘Managing Conflict at Work,’ a new report from the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD)….

“Employers are also training human resource professionals to tackle the problems, but are leaving line managers, who are more likely to spot the problems before they escalate to a damaging level, ill-equipped and unprepared…..

“Imogen Haslam, CIPD Professional adviser, says: ‘It is great that employers are supporting victims, and employers with anti-bullying policies have taken a step in the right direction. But there is no hope that the problem will be reduced and the alleged perpetrators of bullying will not change if employers simply isolate them….’

“…Bullies are often oblivious to their actions, and therefore the problem will not stop unless they realize they are behaving inappropriately. Haslam encourages employers to clearly define and communicate the behavior they expect from all staff. This will help identify unacceptable behavior making it easier to deal with a problem when it arises….

“The report paints a fascinating picture of what constitutes bullying and who has been accused of bullying:

• “Line managers make up 38 percent of those accused of bullying.
• “Peers of victim make up 37 percent of those accused of bullying.
• “Department managers make up 22 percent of those accused of bullying.
• “Subordinates of the victims of bullying make up 13 percent.

“‘With more than 10 percent of bullies being subordinates, it is clear they are not simply managers or those at the top, but they are made up from a much wider pool — for example, secretaries keeping information from their boss and teams colluding in making a manager seem unprofessional. Employers should ensure they are aware of the different types of bullying which can be subtle as well as obvious and put measures in place to help deal with these problems as they arise,’ says Haslam.

“Conflict at work costs employers nearly 450 days of management time every year — equivalent to the time of two managers full time — and almost 4 percent of grievance and disciplinary cases are related to bullying or harassment incidents

“The figure of 450 days of management time does not take into account the significant associated costs of mismanaged conflict at work, including lost productivity, sickness absence, and higher than expected turnover of employees….”

“Never cut what you can untie.”

– Joseph Joubert (French essayist and moralist, 1754-1824)

Press reports following the U.S. presidential election indicated that “moral values” was the top concern of many voters. But follow-up research by the Pew Research Center found that the framing of exit polls — giving respondents a set list from which to choose, instead of asking them to self-identify their concerns — may have been largely responsible for the statistic. A snapshot of Pew’s findings follows:

Source: Pew Research Center post-election survey of 1,209 U.S. voters.

Predictably, Yasir Arafat’s death has rekindled an old debate: Was he a terrorist or a freedom fighter? Will he be remembered as the godfather of low-intensity warfare against civilians — and as the man who promoted terrorism’s nastiest weapon, the suicide bomber? Or was he a leader who unified a dispersed people and taught them to use the only force available to them in fighting the superior might of their oppressors?

History will render its political judgments on that point. But Mr. Arafat’s death raises another, more dangerous argument that is not political but moral. It’s the argument that tries to equate radical terrorism with democratically controlled military power. Put simply, the argument suggests that however many civilian deaths Mr. Arafat caused in his lifetime — first by personally practicing terrorism and later by permitting and encouraging it — his actions are morally no worse than the actions of Western democracies whose military might kills civilians in Iraq, Afghanistan, and (via their Israeli proxies) the West Bank and Gaza.

In other words, is Mr. Arafat (or, by extension, Osama bin Laden) morally indistinguishable from U.S. President George Bush or British Prime Minister Tony Blair?

To see the subtleties of this argument, we first need to unpack it and separate explanations from moral judgments. You can certainly explain how Arafat and bin Laden capitalized on political outrage and frustration. You can properly describe terrorism as a message system for the disenfranchised. You can note how it uses global publicity to go over the heads of its enemies’ leaders and address their citizens. You can point out the economic, political, and even religious pressures inciting terrorists to take action — and how those actions included bombing busses in Tel Aviv or flying airliners into tall buildings in New York. You can acknowledge that military actions by Western nations in reaction to 9/11 have been early, crude responses against wily enemies who took democracy’s defenses by surprise. You can even admit that, as a result of Western military actions, civilian lives have been lost in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Palestinian Territories — perhaps more than were lost in the 9/11 attacks, though perhaps fewer than Saddam Hussein, the Taliban, and Hamas had previously destroyed over the years.

But explanation is not moral argument. Knowing where something comes from is different from determining whether or not it’s right. For that, we need to look at two things: motives and trends.

Motives. The motive that leads Western democracies into war is not the desire to kill noncombatants. It is not to capture and torture innocent citizens. Neither the Congress in Washington nor the Parliament at Westminster would vote to approve kidnappings and beheadings, or the videotaping of them. By contrast, such things are explicitly approved by terrorists, who are motivated by a desire to spread fear through the media by extreme acts of carnage, often against defenseless individuals. But if their motive is to air their grievances, don’t they have the moral right to use any means necessary to achieve their freedom? No. To say otherwise is to agree that “the end justifies the means” — a cynical and discredited philosophy that ignores the long-term downsides of corrupt and violent means. Unethical motives typically lead to unethical end results.

Trends. The moral equivalency argument also suggests that the Western militaries use increasingly lethal weapons in careless disregard for human life. That view has little support from military history. Following millions of casualties in World War I, the West has grown more and more concerned about wartime death tolls among troops and noncombatants. One result is that technology now creates weapons that reduce the risk to the troops using them and increase the accuracy against the enemy. Smart bombs, for instance, make the atomic bombs dropped on Japan, the firebombing of Dresden, and the carpet-bombing of Vietnam seem old-fashioned and barbaric. And the outcry against landmines and cluster bombs reflects genuine moral concern within democracies. Most would agree that such a trend-line toward reduced casualties is a good thing. Within terrorists organizations, by contrast, the trend-line is the reverse: the more collateral damage, the better.

But what about implementation? How well are Western democracies doing at putting these motives and trends into action? Pretty well in Afghanistan, not so well in Iraq, and even less well in the Palestinian territories. And in the broader areas of human rights, two issues — the Abu Ghraib prison scandals in Iraq, and the holding of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay — remind us that the United States has lots of room for moral improvement.

As there will always be room. War itself raises profound moral challenges — although, by that token, so does the pacifism that puts democracy at hazard by refusing to defend its principles, practices, and peoples. Democracy in wartime is not morally pristine. But that doesn’t mean it is morally indistinguishable from terrorism. If we surrender to the argument of moral equivalence, we abandon every effort to improve the moral condition of nations and citizens — an effort to which democracies, unlike terrorist organizations, are deeply committed.

©2004 Institute for Global Ethics

“We recognize the seriousness of the problems we are facing and are moving quickly to correct them. Unfortunately, we must also adjust staff levels based on the realities of the marketplace and our current situation.”

– Michael Cherkasky, the new chief executive of insurance firm Marsh & McLennan, announcing that the company will 3,000 jobs as it tries to recover from a scandal involving alleged rigged fees and conspiracy. In addition to the lower-level workers cut loose, three of the firm’s top executives — former chairman and chief executive Jeffrey Greenberg, president and chief operating officer Roger Egan, and chairman and chief executive of global placement Christopher Treanor — will also be looking for work, reported the Associated Press. (“Marsh & McLennan to Cut 3,000 Jobs,” Reuters, Nov. 9)

WASHINGTON
A U.S. federal judge last week ruled that the Bush administration wrongly swept aside the Geneva Conventions and acted unconstitutionally in the handling of “enemy combatants” taken during the war in Afghanistan after 9/11.

The decision by U.S. District Court Judge James Robertson abruptly shut down the trial of Salim Ahmed Hamdan, a former chauffeur for Osama bin Laden now being held at a U.S. facility in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

Hamdan and hundreds of other Guantánamo detainees have been classified as enemy combatants, rather than prisoners of war, in a sweeping move by the Bush administration, leaving them unprotected by the Geneva Conventions of 1949.

Robertson noted that under the Geneva Conventions, prisoners of war can only be deemed enemy combatants by a lawful tribunal, not by a head of state. “The president is not a ‘tribunal,’” the judge wrote.

Since Hamdan’s trial was based on his improper detention as an enemy combatant, it too was illegal, Robertson ruled, bringing the proceeding to an immediate halt, reported USA Today.

Following a June rebuke by the Supreme Court, U.S. officials began holding hearings on each detainee’s status as an enemy combatant. Those reviews were also ruled illegal last week by Robertson, who said the evidentiary rules presumed non-POW status and were unfairly restrictive, reported USA Today.

While last week’s ruling dealt solely with Hamdan, it throws into doubt the legitimacy of all of the government’s trial-related activities in Cuba, where detainees have largely been without access to lawyers or knowledge of the charges against them, according to press reports.

Justice Department spokesman Mark Corallo said the government would immediately appeal the ruling, insisting that “the process struck down by the district court today was carefully crafted to protect America from terrorists while affording those charged with violations of the laws of war with fair process.”

Robertson concluded just the opposite, warning that “the government has asserted a position starkly different from the positions and behavior of the United States in previous conflicts — one that can only weaken the United States’ own ability to demand application of the Geneva Conventions to Americans captured during armed conflicts abroad.”

WASHINGTON
The U.S. ambassador to Kuwait demanded that energy-services giant Halliburton award a fuel-supply contract to a Kuwaiti company now suspected of overbilling the firm — and U.S. taxpayers — by $61 million, according to internal State Department documents made public last week.

The information implicates then-ambassador Richard Jones in an effort to pressure Halliburton in 2003, when the company was servicing a $2.5-billion contract awarded by the government without competition.

As part of that contract, Halliburton needed to supply fuel for U.S. and coalition operations in Iraq. Halliburton asked three companies to bid on the contract, placing its order with Altanmia less than 24 hours later, reported the Associated Press.

The award came after Jones told unidentified officials to “get off their butts and conclude deals” with Altanmia. “Tell them we want a deal done with Altanmia within 24 hours and don’t take any excuses.”

Jones’s email appeared to conflict with the conclusion of Mary Robertson, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ contracting officer overseeing the fuel contract handled by Halliburton subsidiary KBR, reported the AP.

“My ethics will not allow me to direct KBR to go sole source to a contractor when I know there are other potential sources that can provide the fuel,” Mary Robertson protested at the time, saying the KBR deal would result in higher-than-necessary costs for taxpayers.

A subsequent audit of the contract found that KBR, Altanmia, or both had overcharged on the contract by at least $61 million.

State Department spokesman Kurtis Cooper last week insisted that agency officials never “participated in decision-making regarding the contracts,” although Jones is a career State Department employee, the AP noted.

Documents released last week also indicate that the State Department was warned in summer 2003 that Halliburton officials were soliciting bribes and demanding kickbacks from Altanmia, noted the Reuters news agency.

Altanmia wrote in an email that KBR officials “are on the take; that they solicit bribes openly; that anyone visiting their seaside villas at the Kuwaiti Hilton who offers to provide services will be asked for a bribe.”

In other news, a handful of investigations into Halliburton contracts in Nigeria have concluded that the company was part of a $180-million bribery scandal involving payments to Nigerian officials from 1995 through 2002, reported the AP.

ATLANTA
Georgia last week began weathering a second storm over how its schools teach evolution, with a federal lawsuit getting under way over a sticker that describes evolution as “a theory, not a fact.”

The sticker was inserted into high-school biology textbooks in suburban Atlanta shortly after the local school board dropped a policy prohibiting the teaching of human evolution in required classes, reported the New York Times.

Hundreds of parents, rejecting evolution and subscribing to the “intelligent design” belief that God created humans just as they are today, convinced the school board to warn students against accepting evolution as fact.

“God created earth and man in his image,” parent Patricia Fuller told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, reported the Guardian. “Leave this garbage out of the textbooks. I don’t want anybody taking care of me in a nursing home some day to think I came from a monkey.”

The Cobb County school board said it was not taking a position on the issue, but wanted to make a peace offering with the stickers to parents offended by evolution, according to the Times.

Five parents and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) eventually filed suit, calling the stickers a plug for religious beliefs in public education, a violation of the constitutional separation of church and state.

“The religious views of some that contradict science cannot dictate curriculum,” ACLU attorney Maggie Garrett argued last week as the case went to trial.

Last week’s case comes only a few months after the state’s education chief, Kathy Cox, tried to alter the Georgia’s science teaching standards by replacing the word “evolution” with “changes over time,” earning the ire of thousands of parents and teachers.

“I’m a strong advocate for the separation of church and state,” Jeffrey Selman, a plaintiff in last week’s lawsuit said. “I have no problem with anybody’s religious beliefs. I just want an adequate educational system.”

In related news, the school board of a northwestern Wisconsin city last week rewrote its standards to allow the teaching of creationism, reported the AP.

The decision sparked an outcry from more than 300 biology and religious studies faculty members, whose joint complaint followed a letter sent by 43 deans at Wisconsin public universities, noted the report.

Last month, a Pennsylvania school board agreed to require that alternative theories to evolution be taught in science classes — a move that echoes similar steps taken in Ohio last March.

WASHINGTON
Despite research findings to the contrary, several U.S. states continue to tell women seeking abortions that the procedure could increase their chance of developing breast cancer, the Associated Press reported last week.

The contention, backed by anti-abortion groups but denied by the National Cancer Institute (NCI), appears on government-issued brochures and web sites in Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas. Such information is typically distributed during mandatory waiting periods for women seeking an abortion.

While the purported link between abortion and breast cancer was widely hyped several years ago, meta-analyses by the NCI and by the British medical journal Lancet, later concluded that flawed research — not an actual link — was to blame.

“Having an abortion or miscarriage does not increase a woman’s subsequent risk of developing breast cancer,” states the NCI, according to the AP.

Still, more than a dozen state legislatures continue to debate the issue, with a handful supporting the old research, which retains the backing of the anti-abortion group, Coalition on Abortion/Breast Cancer.

“We’re going to continue to educate the public about this,” said the group’s president, Karen Malec, insisting that any evidence disproving the supposed link is politically motivated.

Bob Johannessen, spokesman for the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals, which currently warns women of the supposed link, says his “pro-life leaning” state may need to rethink its position.

“If there is scientific evidence, and it certainly appears there now is, we would certainly make the necessary changes in that brochure,” Johannessen told the AP. “It’s incumbent on us as the health agency to make sure any information is factually correct.”

LONDON
Thrusting itself into public policy debate, the British medical journal Lancet last week accused Philip Morris of hiding and skewing decades-old research into the risks of second-hand smoke.

The charges are leveled by two Swiss researchers, Pascal Diethelm and Jean-Charles Rielle, and by Martin McKee of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, whose work examined tobacco-industry documents made public after Big Tobacco’s 1998 settlement with the U.S. states.

Some of those papers showed that Philip Morris conducted studies on second-hand smoke in the early 1970s through a German research company, hiding its involvement and suppressing compromising research, reported the Reuters news agency.

“Arrangements were made to conceal the process, not only from the wider public, but also from many within Philip Morris, although some senior executives did know,” McKee concluded.

Philip Morris parent company Altria dismissed the allegations as recycled and untrue, according to Reuters.

“Although we disagree with the allegations that are made (in the Lancet) — they are false, inaccurate and highly misleading — we don’t disagree with the underlying conclusion … that people should be guided by the public health community when deciding to be around second-hand smoke,” a company representative told the BBC.

Lancet editor Richard Horton last week said that very reasoning compelled the journal to publish the charges against Philip Morris.

“Given the continuing debate about the way governments should respond to calls for a ban on smoking in public places, we have published this work early online to inform that discussion as a matter of urgency,” Horton wrote in an editorial, according to Reuters.

“The research conducted in that facility appears to have been selectively reported in order to favorably shape public impressions about the safety of passive smoking,” Horton added.

Scotland last week passed a measure to ban smoking in public places by spring 2006, noted the BBC.

In related news, a U.K. judge last week rejected a challenge by the tobacco industry to block stringent restrictions on cigarette advertising, set to take effect in Britain on December 21.

“Given the enormous health risks and economic costs to society caused by smoking tobacco and a substantial weight of expert opinion as to the effects of advertising, I believe it to have been a responsible and proportionate step,” High Court Justice Richard McCombe ruled, reported the Associated Press.

McCombe gave tobacco companies the right to appeal, a step they said they are considering.