Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in praise of an article written by Howard Dodson in Africana Heritage, a periodical from the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, in New York City. I praise the piece because it touches on a very little known subject, that being the lives of Afro-Colombians in the Americas, a people with a rich and radiant culture who are so often ignored by mainstream Colombia.

Their presence in the region dates back to the age of European exploration of the Americas and, in particular, the transatlantic slave trade. Dodson pointed out in his article that, ``the Afro-Colombian population had become so marginalized that for the overwhelming majority of Colombians as well as the world's people they were invisible.'' With over a quarter of the population being of African descent, there is no way this society should have been treated the way they were for so many years.

He also describes how the system might now be changing: ``presence of Afro-Colombians as part of the Colombian nation may be at an all time high.'' The Afro-Colombian people understand their history, their identity and national heritage and the need to keep it alive for the generations to come. For such a rich and vibrant culture to dissolve with time would be a detriment to an entire race of people.

What makes these people so unique is the one thing that may have kept them in isolation for so many years, their African ancestry. For years, the nation has been in denial about its connection to the people of Africa. However, the connection is so strong that, ``what makes Colombia's culture distinctly Colombian is likely the African presence in it,'' as noted by Dodson. The people of African descent in the Americas have carried with them over the Atlantic aged traditions and concepts unknown to the western hemisphere prior to their arrival.

The plight of Afro-Descendent populations in Latin America and the Caribbean is one that I take special interest in, for their struggles have long gone on ignored for so many years. That was why I sponsored the bipartisan historic resolution H. Con. Res. 175 recognizing, for the first time ever, the struggles of African-descendent populations in Latin America and the Caribbean. This in turn urged the United States and the international community to support social development and economic programs targeting these groups.

Usually denied the most basic necessities, African-Descendent populations, particularly in Latin America, are among the poorest, least educated, and most marginalized groups in the region. In terms of the Afro-Colombian population, they have the shortest life expectancies and the lowest literacy rates of any group in Colombia. Displacement, guerilla and military violence, and fragile economics make the struggle of these groups even more difficult.

I enter into the Record the article by Howard Dodson for his continuing effort to give a face to the often ignored Afro-Descendent population in Latin America. Dodson took it upon himself to research and get a first hand account about the situation below our borders. I believe that this is an ideal opportunity for African Americans to reach out to their brothers and sisters in Haiti, Cuba, Brazil, Colombia and the rest of the hemisphere, for they are experiencing the same second-class treatment African Americans received in this country forty years ago. We need to come together to safeguard access to healthcare, education and basic human rights.

[From the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, 2006]

Colombians Rediscover Their African Roots

(By Howard Dodson)

I returned to Colombia after a 40-year hiatus this past

November. What was new there that I did not see during my

visits from decades ago was the emergence of the

consciousness of the Afro-Colombian population within the

nation and an Afro-Colombian consciousness among Afro

descendants. Forty years ago, indeed 10 years ago, the Afro-

Colombian population had become so marginalized that for the

overwhelming majority of Colombians as well as the world's

people they were invisible. This is no longer the case.

Consciousness of the presence of Afro-Colombians as a part of

the Colombian nation may be at an all time high. And Afro-

Colombians' consciousness of themselves as a critical but

neglected segment of the Colombian national identity,

heritage, and future is also at an all time high.

When I visited Colombia in the 1960s, I was a Peace Corps

volunteer in Ecuador. All of my travels in Latin America

during my two-and-a-half-year tour of duty were partially a

mission of discovery. As an African American living and

traveling in South America for the first time, I was

especially interested in meeting and learning more about

people of African descent who lived in Latin America. In

Colombia, I traveled to the Caribbean and Pacific Coasts and

visited Cartagena, Barranquilla, Santa Marta, Cali, Medellin,

Manizales, etc. I also spent some time in Bogota where I met

a lot of Afro-Colombians, but at the time even they were

reluctant to discuss their Africanness.

While my most recent visit was limited to Bogota and Quibdo

in the Choco region, the context in which it occurred

announced for me the existence of a new era in Afro-Colombian

history and culture. The Universidad Technologica del Choco,

the country's major black university, has launched an

initiative to establish a National Center for Documenting

Afro-Colombian Cultural Expressions. I was invited, in my

capacity as Director of the Schomburg Center for Research in

Black Culture, to participate in a two-day planning symposium

to continue to develop the concept and program for this new

national initiative. I have devoted over 20 of the last 40

years of my life developing the Schomburg Center into the

world's leading research library devoted exclusively to

documenting the global black experience. Organizers of the

planning symposium thought the Center's and my experiences

might be helpful in developing the Center in Quibdo. Over the

last decade, we've placed a special emphasis on the Afro

Latino or Afro descendant populations in South and Central

America.

One recent collaborative effort took place in Colombia. The

staff of the National Archives of Colombia in Bogota

unearthed a plethora of historic documents on slavery and

black people in Colombia during the colonial period. With

funding from the Schomburg Center and York University in

Toronto, Canada the Archives staff was able to digitize

these records. A grant from UNESCO made it possible to

develop these digitized resources into a robust website

and now these historic documents on AfroColombians'

colonial past are accessible to the world on the Internet.

This project was an important beginning, but documenting

the centrality of the African presence in the development

of Colombia's national history and culture will require

much more research and documentation. This is what the

Universidad Technologica del Choco proposes to spearhead

through its National Center for Documenting Afro-Colombian

Cultural Expressions.

Why is such an effort warranted at this time? First of all,

recent scholarship on the African presence in the Americas

has unearthed a startling demographic fact that is forcing

scholars to rethink their understanding of the African

presence in the Americas as well as the historical and

cultural development of the Americas themselves. Between 1492

and 1776, or roughly the first 300 years of what is commonly

referred to as the European colonization of the Americas, 6.5

million people survived the crossing of the Atlantic and

settled in the Americas-North, Central and South America, and

the Caribbean. Of those original 6.5 million settler

pioneers, only 1 million were Europeans.

The other 5.5 million were African. This simple demographic

fact challenges all of our conventional notions about who

were the principle history-and-culture-makers in the Americas

during the colonial period.

Cartagena, Colombia was the principle entrepot for the

Africans who would eventually populate the Pacific Coast of

South America and Colombia (or New Grenada as it was called).

Two hundred plus years later, Colombia's Caribbean and

Pacific Coast provinces still have the overwhelming majority

of the nation's African descended population. Their

marginalized and seemingly invisible state notwithstanding,

they still constitute over 25 percent of the nation's 40

million people.

Of equal importance, over the last decade and a half,

thanks to the Constitution of 1991 and Law 70 of 1993, the

nation has committed itself to ending black marginalization,

integrating the African descended population into the

national body politic. While fulfilling those commitments has

been fraught with difficulty, the Afro-Colombian population

has developed a new sense of entitlement and consciousness of

its rights and is actively seeking to have the nation correct

the consequences of centuries of neglect, discrimination, and

invisibility.

While the nation has been in a state of denial about the

African roots of its past, the African presence in the

national culture has been undeniable. Indeed, in the realm of

culture--be it art, music, religion, dance, language,

cuisine, etc.--what makes Colombia's culture distinctly

Colombian is likely the African presence in it. Recent

scholarship has begun this process of documentation, but

more, much more needs to be done if the total integration of

the society is to be realized.

Finally, Afro-Colombians themselves have been in denial

about their African heritages. As a consequence, they

frequently know little or nothing about it. Their historical

and cultural heritage are not included in the textbooks or

taught in the schools. Stereotypical representations of

African descended Colombians have all too frequently

dominated the public media. And Afro-Colombians' unique

cultural heritages have all too frequently been mocked or

denigrated.

The National Center proposes to foster the development of

new scholarship that will reveal the true nature of the Afro-

Colombian historical and cultural legacy. The project is

off to an excellent start. During the two-day planning

symposium, representatives of the National Library, The

Colombian Institute of Anthropology and History, the National

Archives and the Ministry of Culture were in attendance as

were some of the country's leading scholars in the field of

Afro-Colombian Studies. All have gone on record in support of

this effort. Eduardo Garcia Vega, Director of the Universidad

Technologica del Choco, has made a major commitment to the

effort. There is already an academic program in Afro-

Colombian Studies and plans are underway to offer a Masters

Degree in the field. A full floor of the new technology

building that is currently under construction has been

designated to house the Center. It is scheduled for

completion and occupancy in June 2006. Members of the faculty

and staff of the University are already working with the

Rector to make the Center a reality. Finally, Georgetown

University's (Washington, D.C.) Colombia Program and the U.S.

Embassy in Bogota have thrown their full support behind this

effort.

Among the unique features of the Center is that it will

house a 21st century archive. The Center will conduct oral

histories and document through film, audio, and audiovisual

media contemporary Afro-Colombian cultural expressions. And

it will collect and preserve some printed records. But the

central archive of the Center will be a virtual one. Using

the 21st century Internet technology, the Center will

assemble a comprehensive virtual archive of print, audio, and

audiovisual resources documenting Afro-Colombian history and

culture. Developing a virtual resource will allow libraries,

museums and archives that currently house Afro-Colombian

materials to participate in the development of this national

program without having to give up their original materials.

Once online, the materials will be accessible throughout the

country as well as throughout the world. Researchers and

scholars will be able to conduct their research without

having to leave their homes or their institutions. This

national digital archive on Afro-Colombian cultural

expressions will be the centerpiece of the Center's larger

program of research, education, and celebration.

I cannot begin to underscore the importance of this

initiative. While we at the Schomburg Center attempt to

document the global black experience, we are clear that no

single institution can carry out such an ambitious agenda.

Every country in the world that has large African descended

populations needs a Center that is focused on preserving the

records of their past. We have done an extraordinary job of

documenting the African-American experience in the United

States and our collections contain representative

documentation of black people around the world. A national

documentation center such as the one contemplated in Colombia

will go a long way toward preserving the Afro-Colombian

heritage for the Colombian people as well as filling this

important gap in the documentation of the global black

experience.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to address the issue of HIV/ AIDS which remains a matter of global concern, even twenty-five years after the first case was diagnosed. June 5, 2006, as the world recognized the anniversary of AIDS, I am reminded that our duty as a world power is to ensure that this epidemic does not continue to devastate lives.

Present day AIDS education is lacking the appropriate resources to spread the message that this disease is preventable. Without these resources and advocates to stand for the cause, HIV/AIDS will continue to infect millions of people worldwide. It is critical that this country and its leaders begin to increase awareness nationwide so that our constituents will understand the causes as well as effects of AIDS while we continue to be outspoken in the fight to find a cure.

Furthermore, AIDS continues to ravage our communities due to the fact that there is not enough federal or state money placed into health initiatives to treat current patients or to find a cure. With the desperately needed funding for medical programs and treatment centers, many new cases can be prevented and persons who have the virus will receive affordable quality medication.

We all have a calling to service our communities by making policies that increase awareness and target funding towards HIV/AIDS. I will maintain my stance that HIV/AIDS affects us all regardless of class, race or sex. Therefore, we must present a united front in the effort to prevent this disease from spreading and remain committed to increasing appropriations for HIV/AIDS, education and treatment.

[From the Washington Post, June 2, 2006]

Another $10 Billion

The Generals in the global battle against HIV-AIDS are

meeting at the United Nations this week, five years after

another U.N. summit promised an intensified push against the

crisis. The target of mobilizing $7 billion to $10 billion

per year has been met: Last year low- and middle-income

countries spent $2.5 billion of their own money and an

additional $5.8 billion from donors on AIDS treatment and

prevention and the care of orphans. But that money has bought

less than expected. Rather than hitting the ``three by five''

target of getting medicines to 3 million people by 2005, the

world has put only about 1.4 million people on treatment--a

big improvement on the 240,000 who were receiving drugs in

2001 but still well less than half of the number who need

medicines immediately. Equally, better-financed prevention

efforts have succeeded in driving down infection rates among

young adults, notably in Kenya, Uganda, Zimbabwe and Haiti.

But last year there were 4.1 million new infections

worldwide. The plague is still advancing.

The summiteers in New York therefore confront a daunting

problem. The latest U.N. estimate, which may prove as

optimistic as the last one, is that fighting the disease will

soon require $20 billion to $23 billion a year, more than

twice the current spending. What's more, this is not a

temporary commitment: Once people go on antiretroviral

treatment, they need medicines for years; caring for orphans

is also a long-term proposition. Assuming that some of the

extra resources will be provided by middle-income countries,

the rich world may need to reach into its taxpayers' pockets

for an extra $10 billion a year. Official development

assistance, which has already jumped by more than two-thirds

in real terms between 2000 and 2005, would have to grow by a

tenth or so.

Moreover, the effect of that money will be limited unless

the world expands its commitment to other development

efforts. Donor-financed AIDS programs can suck nurses and

doctors out of the rest of the health system, so an increase

in AIDS spending requires a parallel increase in general

health investment. AIDS flourishes in poor societies because

illiteracy and penury make people vulnerable; success against

the virus depends partly on broader progress. As President

Paul Kagame of Rwanda told The Post on Wednesday, there's no

use in giving someone antiretroviral drugs if he has no food.

The imperative to raise extra money for AIDS and other

development objectives raises an institutional issue. To

carry out its commitments of five years ago, the world

created the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and

Malaria, which has raised and spent an impressive $5 billion;

the question is whether this venture should be the vehicle

for the next step-up in AIDS funding. The fund's critics,

notably the Bush administration, rightly say that it has

suffered from poor management, that it has occasionally given

money on the basis of poor grant proposals and that it has

indulged grantees whose performance should have led to a

suspension of disbursements. But rather than snipe at the

fund, the critics should work to improve it. The fund's

structure provides a way of sharing the financial burden

globally. The quality of its grants has recently gone up. And

centralizing AIDS finance simplifies the administrative

burden on stressed officials from poor countries. The fund's

entrepreneurial leader, Richard Feachem, has announced that

he will leave when his term expires this year. The priority

should be to find a replacement who is pushy enough to raise

extra money and sawy enough to solidify the institution's

management.

Mr. Speaker, I rise to enter into the Record a column by Nicholas Kristof: ``The Drumroll, Please'' in the May 23, 2006 edition of The New York Times and his column of March 26, 2006 entitled ``A Woman Without Importance.''

Mr. Kristof uses his New York Times column to bring to our attention important, little known and neglected human rights causes. In the past 12 months many of these causes have come from Mr. Kristofs observations during his many trips to countries in Africa. As a persistent, compassionate journalist advocating for women's rights in Africa, Mr. Kristof has no peer. To me, he is a quiet but powerful voice forcing our recognition that women and girls are without basic human rights in many countries in Africa and other countries as well such as Vietnam, Thailand, and Pakistan.

In a column of March 26, 2006, Mr. Kristoff wrote about Aisha Parveen who at the age of 14 was living in northwest Pakistan when she was hit over the head while walking to school. She awoke to find herself imprisoned in a brothel where she was tortured and imprisoned for 6 years. When she escaped she married a man who helped her. The brothel owner sued the couple claiming he had married the 14-year-old Aisha Parveen. She was accused of adultery and was ordered to go back to the brothel owner.

Girls in Africa are often sold as sex slaves or servants. In some countries girls are inherited or used to payoff debts. Marriages are arranged for them when they are as young as 12 years. They have babies before their bodies are able to deliver a child vaginally. With no medical help most labor for days to deliver a dead baby and are left with terrible birth injuries. If the mother is incontinent because of an injury called a fistula she is shunned by her family and her husband forced to live away from the village.

Mr. Kristof won the Pulitzer Prize for risking his life returning to the Darfur region of southern Sudan again and again to tell the stories of the people suffering from the remaining victims of a concerted effort by the Arab government in Khartoum to eliminate every last one of them. Kristof has chronicled genocide in Darfur as it has continued unabated for three years and goes on now in spite of a newly signed peace accord brokered in part by the United States.

Kristof has told the personal stories of people who have suffered from the rampages of the Janjaweed, the proxy murderers of the Government of Sudan in Khartoum. He has personalized the murders, the maiming, the rapes, the killing of children, by telling the heart breaking stories of people who have lost their homes, their children and parents, husbands and wives, their livestock, their lands and their freedom.

Perhaps because so little print had been spent on Darfur, Mr. Kristoff, decided people were not familiar enough with Africa to become sympathetic to the plight of people who are targets of a ruthless, cruel genocide.

Maybe Mr. Kristof had the idea that more students should make travel to other countries part of their college education and more universities should offer such trips. As he announced in his video a ``win a trip'' contest in March he felt he got a great education from his trips when he was a student that he was sponsoring a ``win a trip'' competition because he had learned so much from his trips to other countries while he was a student that he felt more students needed to experience life in other countries. Kristof's idea of visiting other countries is visiting places where the people of the country live, not visiting tourist places like Paris and London.

In Mr. Kristof's video announcing the ``win a trip'' contest, the camera views him from above as he appears to be standing on a wide sand beach. Mr. Kristof begins by talking about spring breaks and how many American college students spend their spring breaks and summers reveling beaches. But as the camera closes in, it become clear Mr. Kristof is not on a beach and not near an American city or village recognizable to most Americans until the camera broadens its view to take in a skinny donkey with a rider and a few people wearing the long draped clothes and hoods common to desert peoples who are always needing protection from a brutal, relentless sun.

For years Mr. Kristof has used his column in the Times to chronicle the continuing slow genocide in Darfur with the individual stories of people who have been maimed, raped and had children killed in front of them and to stop the genocide in Darfur. He has told the stories of the individuals who have lost everything they had; families, homes, livestock and parents. He has traveled to places in Africa where women are the least of the least and has chronicled stories of women who are shunned by their families if they are raped or worse go to jail even though they are the victims of crime.

The fact that 3,800 aspiring journalists from universities around the country applied to accompany Mr. Kristof on an admittedly ``rough'' reporting trip to ``a neglected area in Africa''

speaks volumes about the esteem in which these students hold Mr. Kristof. The number of applicants wanting to go to Africa gives me enormous hope for Africa and our country. There is no better way for Americans to know Africa than to go there. And for those who will not be able to go themselves they will benefit from the journalists like Casey Parks the winner of the first ``win a trip'' contest who is accompanying Mr. Kristof this summer to Equatorial Guinea, Cameroon and the Central African Republic.

My wish for Ms. Parks is that she has a long career as a journalist who will write so intimately and well of her journey, that the people of Africa will be seen as individual human beings to her readers. My hope for Mr. Kristof is that is he is able to take a different aspiring journalist every year and convince Universities and colleges around the country of the value of establishing programs for students to live in countries they will not visit as tourists to see how the people of these countries live their lives.

[From the New York Times, May 23, 2006]

The Drumroll, Please

(By Nicholas D. Kristof)

In March I opened a ``win a trip'' contest, offering to

take a university student with me on a rough reporting trip

to a neglected area in Africa.

Some 3,800 applications poured in, accompanied by boxes of

supplementary materials, ranging from senior theses to nude

photos. After weeks of sifting through the applications, I

finally have a winner.

She is Casey Parks of Jackson, Miss.--an aspiring

journalist who has never traveled abroad. We'll get her a

passport and a bunch of vaccinations--ah, the glamour of

overseas travel--and start planning our trip.

Casey, who turned 23 on Friday, attended Millsaps College

in Jackson and is now a graduate student in journalism at the

University of Missouri. She has won a string of awards for

her essays and other writing.

In her essay, Casey wrote about growing up poor: ``I saw my

mother skip meals. I saw my father pawn everything he loved.

I saw our cars repossessed. I never saw France or London.''

(The essays by Casey and a dozen finalists are posted at

nytimes.com/winatrip.)

``I so desperately want to leave this country and know

more,'' she wrote. Now she'll have the chance.

We'll most likely start in Equatorial Guinea, bounce over

to Cameroon and travel through a jungle with Pygmy villages

to end up in the Central African Republic--one of the most

neglected countries in the world. We'll visit schools,

clinics and aid programs, probably traveling in September for

10 days. Casey will write a blog about it for nytimes.com and

will also do a video blog for MTV-U.

But the point of this contest wasn't to give one lucky

student the chance to get malaria and hookworms. It's to try

to stir up a broader interest in the developing world among

young people.

One of our country's basic strategic weaknesses is that

Americans don't understand the rest of the world. We got in

trouble in Vietnam and again in Iraq partly because we

couldn't put ourselves in other people's shoes and appreciate

their nationalism.

According to Foreign Policy magazine, 92 percent of U.S.

college students don't take a foreign language class. Goucher

College in Baltimore bills itself as the first American

college to require all students to study abroad, and the

rest should follow that example.

So for all the rest of you who applied for my contest, see

if you can't work out your own trips. Or take a year off

before heading to college or into ajob. You'll have to pay

for your travel, but you can often find ``hotels'' for $5 a

night per person in countries like India, Pakistan, Cambodia,

Laos, Indonesia, Morocco, Bolivia and Peru--and in rural

areas, people may invite you to stay free in their huts. To

get around, you can jump on local buses.

Is it safe? Not entirely, for the developing world has more

than its share of pickpockets, drunken soldiers, scorpions,

thugs, diseases, parasites and other risks.

Twenty-two years ago, as a backpacking student, I traveled

with a vivacious young American woman who, like me, was

living in Cairo. She got off my train in northern Sudan; that

evening, the truck she had hitched a ride in hit another

truck. Maybe if there had been an ambulance or a doctor

nearby, she could have been saved. Instead, she bled to

death.

So, yes, be aware of the risks, travel with a buddy or two,

and carry an international cellphone. But remember that young

Aussies, Kiwis and Europeans take such a year of travel all

the time--women included--and usually come through not only

intact, but also with a much richer understanding of how most

of humanity lives.

There are also terrific service options. Mukhtar Mai, the

Pakistani anti-rape activist I've often written about, told

me she would welcome American volunteers to teach English in

the schools she has started. You would have to commit to

staying six weeks or more, but would get free housing in her

village. You can apply by contacting www.4anaa.org. Then there's New Light, a terrific anti-trafficking

organization in Calcutta. Urmi Basu, who runs it, said she

would welcome American volunteers to teach English classes to

the children of prostitutes. You would have to stay at least

six weeks and budget $15 a day for food and lodging; for more

information go to www.uddami.org/newlight.

In the 21st century, you can't call yourself educated if

you don't understand how the other half lives--and you don't

get that understanding in a classroom. So do something about

your educational shortcomings: fly to Bangkok.

Mr. Speaker, I rise to introduce into the Record an opinion piece by former Navy lawyer Alberto J. Mora entitled ``An Affront to American Values'' which appeared in the Washington Post on May 27, 2006, as well as an Op-Ed of February 20, 2006 in The New York Times entitled ``Senior Lawyer at Pentagon Broke Ranks on Detainees.''

The Times pointed out in its Op-Ed that Alberto Mora in his position as one of the Pentagon's top civilian lawyers ``repeatedly challenged the Bush administration's policy on the coercive interrogation of terror suspects, arguing that such practices violated the law, verged on torture, and could ultimately expose senior officials to prosecution . . .'' The information came from a then newly disclosed document, a memorandum Mr. Mora wrote in July 2004 and made public in an article in The New Yorker magazine on February 19, 2006.

I have repeatedly spoken out against the ``torture policies'' directly traced to Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, Vice President Cheney (who remains a champion of torture) and President Bush who two weeks after the Congress passed a law banning all torture of any person in the custody of the U.S. issued a signing letter stating he was not bound by that law when in his judgment he needs to use torture in his war on terror.

I am immensely gratified to know Mr. Mora challenged the opinions of Secretary Rumsfeld, who is not a lawyer and appears to have a low regard for the law, regarding the legal parameters of the treatment of detainees. But I am most proud and grateful for two excellent questions Mr. Mora asked his clients at the Pentagon which The Times reported: ``Defense Department officials found striking and out of character for a loyal Republican, a supporter of President Bush, Secretary Rumsfeld and the fight against terrorism.''

He asked the questions every one in the Pentagon and the Military of good character should have asked regardless of his or her

party affiliation or loyalty to the President. According to the memo printed in The New Yorker Mr. Mora asked the Pentagon's chief lawyer, William J. Haynes II:

``Even if one wanted to authorize the U.S. Military to

conduct coercive interrogations, as was the case in

Guantanamo, how could one do so without profoundly altering

its core values and character?''

According to the Times article after trying to rally other senior officials to his position, Mr. Mora met again with Mr. Hayes on January 10, 2003. His question to Mr. Hayes that day is another every person of good moral character should be asking:

``Had we jettisoned our human rights policies?''

I will here answer both of Mr. Mora's questions: NO. The U.S. Military can not adopt coercive tactics as were used at Guantanamo without profoundly altering its core values and character. Look at what occurred at Haditha, Iraq.

YES. As to prisoners in our custody with President Bush, Vice President Cheney and Secretary Rumsfeld in full charge of the Iraq war, the Military has abandoned its 200 year history and jettisoned its human rights policies.

Mr. Mora retired on December 31, 2005. I am pleased he is still speaking out for American values and still asking very good questions. In his opinion piece in The Washington Post he asks the American people to consider some very good questions about the continued detention and treatment of ``unlawful combatants'' at Abu Ghraib and the treatment of detainees at Guantanamo.

In naming his piece ``An Affront to American Values'' I knew immediately Mr. Mora has not changed his mind about the way the President Bush and Secretary Rumsfeld are directing the military to treat prisoners in military custody no matter how they are named; unlawful combatants, detainees or high-value targets. Perhaps he is now making his arguments to the American people because his opinions were heard but clearly disregarded by the Pentagon's Chief Lawyer. And Mr. Mora believes he was right. I believe he was right. I believe Bush- Cheney-Rumsfeld, Attorneys (the President can do anything he wants) John Wu, David Addington Cheney's Attorney, and now Chief of Staff, and Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez were very wrong on the treatment and labeling of prisoners and remain wrong. I agree with Representative John Murtha; we lost the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people at Abu Ghraib.

We also lost American support of the war in part because of what Americans did at Abu Ghraib. We lost more Americans because of treatment of detainees at Guantanamo. We will lose still more with incidents like the massacre of innocent men, women. Have we had turned our marines into murderers who shot two-year old babies? They are in a war based on lies, run by a Secretary of Defense who has no idea of how to get them out, who doesn't give them what they need to protect themselves, enough help to hold territory they fight for and stays in the hanger where he plane lands when he visits the troops.

In the Post opinion piece Mr. Mora reminds us of how we treated Japanese Americans during World War II and just how we came to treat these innocent people as if they were criminals and spies because of their ancestry. He reminds us how we did this crime in violation of the United States Constitution and how the U.S. Supreme Court abdicated its judicial responsibility in the famous Korematsu decision, in which it endorsed the patently unconstitutional detention of American citizens.

Americans unconstitutionally detained Japanese Americans because Mr. Mora writes; ``in our quest for security'' when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, ``in what will always be regarded as an act of national shame, military authorities rounded up 120,000 American citizens and incarcerated them on the presumption of disloyalty. . . .''

Korematsu reminds us that when threats and fear converge, our laws and principles can become fragile. They are fragile today.

Mr. Mora writes that in the summer of 2002, U.S. authorities held in detention at Guantanamo and elsewhere people President Bush, Vice President Cheney Secretary Rumsfeld and perhaps others believed had information needed to prevent further terrorist attacks. These same people believed the detainees could be called ``unlawful combatants'' and ``interrogation methods'' constituting cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment could be applied at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo and other locations. We know the treatment may have reached the level of torture in some instances.

The American public knows torture occurred as do the members of the Congress who supported John McCain's anti torture amendment which became law and is now the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005. The American people have read the testimony and perhaps heard the testimony of some of the innocent people who suffered U.S. ``rendition'' to another country like Syria and have returned after being tortured and attempted to sue the U.S. government for their treatment. There is not an iota of fact showing that torture yields good evidence. Senator John McCain who was tortured for more than five years testified to that. Experts in torture all agree people who are tortured will say anything to make the pain stop.

I am ashamed for my country because The Detainee Treatment Act had to be introduced and voted on because this proud country has always had a policy of acknowledging the basic human rights of prisoners of war. The United States does not execute prisoners of war and does not torture, humiliate, starve, degrade or otherwise treat prisoners of war in a way that is inhuman.

Our military has always been bound by the Uniform Military Code, the Geneva Conventions and the Laws of War. In addition, as Mr. Mora writes:

``It is astonishing to me, still, that I should be here

today addressing the issue of American cruelty--or that

anyone would ever have to. Our forefather, who permanently

defined our civic values, drafted our Constitution inspired

by the belief that law could not create but only recognize

certain inalienable rights granted by God--to every person,

not just citizens, not just here but everywhere. Those rights

are a shield that protects core human dignity. Because this

is so, the Eighth Amendment prohibits cruel punishment. The

constitutional jurisprudence of the Fifth and Fourteenth

Amendments outlaws cruel treatment that shocks the

conscience. The Geneva Conventions forbid the application of

cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of all captives, as do

all of the major or human rights treaties adopted and

ratified by our country during the last century.''

I find it shocking as well. What I also find shocking and disheartening is an answer Secretary Rumsfeld gave the other day when asked if the prohibition against torture had been put into the field manual and into practice; his answer was ``not yet.'' The reason that it was not yet in the field manual for the military in Iraq and Afghanistan? The Pentagon was still arguing about certain terms like ``unlawful combatant.'' The Secretary of Defense doesn't get it. The anti-torture law applies to any person in the custody of Americans wherever they are. The fact that Rumsfeld is holding up the implementation of the anti-torture act and the implementation of human rights military policy of the past 200 years, the conduct we agreed to when we signed treaties and the treatment of prisoners we agreed to when we signed and then ratified the Geneva Conventions, leaves our men and women fighting Mr. Bush's Iraq war in great danger of being charged with criminal offenses. In fact, it is happening now.

The American people must fight back. They must let this Administration know how much they object to what is happening to our proud military's moral character. American's must know this President relies on a Secretary of Defense that has no regard for Generals that have served in combat and understands the Uniform Code of Military Justice and the rules governing how our military treats prisoners of war. Our men and women in combat are at grave risk when such crucial decisions are made by men who have never served in the military and will not take the advice of those who have.

Mr. Mora asks: `` In this war, we have come to a crossroads--much as we did in the events that led to Korematsu: Will we continue to regard the protection and promotion of human dignity as the essence of our national character and purpose or will we bargain away human and national dignity in return for an additional possible measure of physical security?''

Mr. Mora tells us as he attempted to tell his boss at the Pentagon why it matters for us to care about the human rights of prisoners and our national dignity. He writes:

``We should care because the issues raised by a policy of

cruelty are too fundamental to be left unaddressed,

unanswered or ambiguous. We should care because a tolerance

of cruelty will corrode our values and our rights and degrade

the world in which we live. It will corrupt our heritage,

cheapen the valor of the soldiers upon whose past and present

sacrifices our freedoms depend, and debase the legacy we will

leave to our sons and daughters. We should care because it is

intolerable to us that anyone should believe for a second

that our nation is tolerant of cruelty. And we should care

because each of us knows that this issue has not gone away.''

An Affront to American Values

(By Alberto J. Mora)

In response to the 3,000 murders on Sept. 11, 2001, our

nation went to war. In Afghanistan, our targets were the al-

Qaeda perpetrators and the Taliban regime that aided and

abetted them. In Iraq, the target was an unstable tyrant who

had a history of using chemical weapons and who could be

trusted to cheat on and retreat from his international

commitments. I supported both engagements as Navy general

counsel. I support them still as a private citizen. I regard

each as a prudent and even necessary use of force. The

terrorist threat, and the threat

posed by weapons of mass destruction in reckless hands, can

never be underestimated.

And yet, there have been times in our nation's history

when, in our quest for security, our fear momentarily

overcomes our judgment and our power slips the discipline of

the law and our national values.

One such moment occurred in 1942, after the Japanese attack

on Pearl Harbor. In what will always be regarded as an act of

national shame, military authorities rounded up 120,000

American citizens of Japanese ancestry and incarcerated them

on the presumption of disloyalty. These citizens were

stripped of their rights and held in detention camps for the

duration of the war. Many lost businesses and property. When

we recall this event--and it is relevant to our current

situation--we also recall with shame the Supreme Court's

abdication of its judicial responsibilities in the notorious

Korematsu decision, in which it endorsed the legality of the

patently unconstitutional detention.

Korematsu reminds us that when threats and fear converge,

our laws and principles can become fragile. They are fragile

today. In the summer of 2002, at Guantanamo and elsewhere,

U.S. authorities held in detention individuals thought to

have information on other impending attacks against the

United States. Unless this information was obtained, it was

believed, more Americans--perhaps many more--would die. In

this context, our government issued legal and policy

documents providing, in effect, that for some detainees

labeled as ``unlawful combatants,'' interrogation methods

constituting cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment could be

applied under the president's constitutional commander in

chief authorities. Although there is debate as to the details

of how, when and why, we know such cruel treatment was

applied at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo and other locations. We

know the treatment may have reached the level of torture in

some instances. And there are still questions as to whether

these policies were related, if at all, to the deaths of

several dozen detainees in custody.

It is astonishing to me, still, that I should be here today

addressing the issue of American cruelty--or that anyone

would ever have to. Our forefathers, who permanently defined

our civic values, drafted our Constitution inspired by the

belief that law could not create but only recognize certain

inalienable rights granted by God--to every person, not just

citizens, and not just here but everywhere. Those rights form

a shield that protects core human dignity. Because this is

so, the Eighth Amendment prohibits cruel punishment. The

constitutional jurisprudence of the Fifth and Fourteenth

Amendments outlaws cruel treatment that shocks the

conscience. The Geneva Conventions forbid the application

of cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment to all captives,

as do all of the major human rights treaties adopted and

ratified by our country during the last century.

Despite this, there was abuse. Not all were mistreated, but

some were. For those mistreated, history will ultimately

judge what the precise quantum of abuse inflicted was--

whether it was torture or some lesser cruelty--and whether it

resulted from official commission or omission, or occurred

despite every reasonable effort to prevent the abuse.

Whatever the ultimate historical judgment, it is established

fact that documents justifying and authorizing the abusive

treatment of detainees during interrogation were approved and

distributed. These authorizations rested on three beliefs:

that no law prohibited the application of cruelty; that no

law should be adopted that would do so; and that our

government could choose to apply the cruelty--or not--as a

matter of policy depending on the dictates of perceived

military necessity.

The fact that we adopted this policy demonstrates that this

war has tested more than our nation's ability to defend

itself. It has tested our response to our fears and the

measure of our courage. It has tested our commitment to our

most fundamental values and our constitutional principles.

In this war, we have come to a crossroads--much as we did

in the events that led to Korematsu: Will we continue to

regard the protection and promotion of human dignity as the

essence of our national character and purpose, or will we

bargain away human and national dignity in return for an

additional possible measure of physical security?

Why should we still care about these issues? The Abu Ghraib

abuses have been exposed; Justice Department memoranda

justifying cruelty and even torture have been ridiculed and

rescinded; the authorizations for the application of extreme

interrogation techniques have been withdrawn; and, perhaps

most critically, the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005, which

prohibits cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, has been

enacted, thanks to the courage and leadership of Sen. John

McCain.

We should care because the issues raised by a policy of

cruelty are too fundamental to be left unaddressed,

unanswered or ambiguous. We should care because a tolerance

of cruelty will corrode our values and our rights and degrade

the world in which we live. It will corrupt our heritage,

cheapen the valor of the soldiers upon whose past and present

sacrifices our freedoms depend, and debase the legacy we will

leave to our sons and daughters. We should care because it is

intolerable to us that anyone should believe for a second

that our nation is tolerant of cruelty. And we should care

because each of us knows that this issue has not gone away.

The writer, who retired as Navy general counsel last year,

wrote a memo to Pentagon officials two years before the Abu

Ghraib scandal that warned against circumventing

international agreements on torture and detainee treatment.

This article is excerpted from remarks he made upon receiving

a 2006 John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to enter into the Record ``Witness for Justice #269'' entitled Invisible People, published May 22, 2006 by the United Church of Christ of Cleveland, Ohio. The statement, one of a series of observations on the state of justice in the U.S. today, eloquently written by Carl P. Wallace, Executive Associate of this Church on 700 Prospect Ave. in Cleveland, criticizes the ineffectiveness of the current administration in contending with the devastating impacts of Hurricane Katrina. Mr. Wallace warns us, ``Right before our eyes we are losing our children'' as they continue to remain invisible in the eyes of the relief and aid workers in the Gulf Coast. Katrina orphaned thousands of children whose ordeal is prolonged due to inadequate health care, public education and housing services. ``One in three sheltered children in the Gulf Coast region has some type of chronic illness.'' Almost none of them have health care coverage. Highlighting the fact that one-fourth to one-fifth of the children in America are growing up in poverty, Mr. Wallace suggests, and I concur, that the 1.9 trillion dollars of tax cuts would be better employed to provide health care for 9 million uninsured children and mitigate child poverty.

I also join Mr. Wallace in questioning the reason behind this invisibility of our children. Are they invisible because ``they do not vote, lobby or pay taxes?'' Is it acceptable to allow these children to be neglected, even abused? What happened to compassion and human kindness? Mr. Wallace ends on the hopeful note that through prayer and action ``the invisible can be made visible.'' The Children's Defense fund has already released a ``Call to Action for Katrina's Children,'' that focuses on providing immediate health and health services and quality public education, as well as, creating an enduring support base for such endeavors.

I join Mr. Wallace in all his concerns and call upon my colleagues in the Congress to alleviate the suffering of children affected by Hurricane Katrina.

[From Witness for Justice #269,

May 22, 2006.]

Invisible People

(By Carl P. Wallace)

Ever wonder what it would be like to be invisible? You

could go around and nobody would see you. Nobody would know

you existed. Do you remember playing hide and seek? Wow. If

you were invisible you could always win the game because no

one would be able to find you. ``Ollie Ollie ump fee. I'm

coming to find you.'' What a game. Those who could hide the

best always won the game. It was great being invisible until

you discovered that if no one cared to find you, you really

did not win. Regrettably, there is a similar game being

played in the Gulf Coast. Our children appear to be

invisible. But it is no game. It is a situation of life and

death. And right before our eyes we are witnessing the most

devastating reality of what it means to be invisible in the

richest country in the world. Right before our eyes we are

losing our children.

We are literally losing our children due to the lack of

adequate health care, public education and housing. There are

over 125,000 displaced families in the Gulf Coast. In a Red

Cross shelter north of Birmingham, Alabama there are over

2,000 children who have lost their parents. In a FEMA trailer

park outside of Baton Rouge 700 of the 1,670 residents are

children. In the richest nation in the world one-fifth to

one-fourth of our children are growing up in poverty. Of the

1.9 trillion dollars of tax cuts, which will give the richest

1 percent of all tax payers $57 billion each year, we could

instead provide health care for all 9 million uninsured

children and end child poverty in America. Wow! Centuries ago

Jesus said, ``Let the little children come to me, and do

nothing to hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to

such as these.'' (Matthew 19:14). Maybe we missed Jesus'

request.

Sometimes I wonder where our priorities are. A wise man

once said: ``Where your heart is there also is your

treasure.'' Are our children our treasure? It is extremely

painful to note that one-in-three sheltered children in the

Gulf Coast region has some type of chronic illness. Are our

children our treasure? In the Gulf Coast region one-half of

the children who had some level of health coverage do not

have any now. Are our children our treasure? Did the need for

health care coverage just disappear? Have a heart. I guess

invisible people don't need health care.

Let's think about it. Perhaps our children are invisible

because they do not vote, lobby or pay taxes. Let's think

about another point. Can you imagine what it must be like to

be undocumented and in this situation? Is there such a thing

as double invisibility?

The Children's Defense fund released a ``Call to Action for

Katrina's Children.'' It calls in part for: immediate

emergency mental health and health services for children and

their families; quality public education and after-school and

summer education; as much attention focused on constructing

levees of support for strong health care, family and public

education as they will for the construction of the physical

levies that will hold back the water in future storms; and,

prayer for Katrina children and families and for leaders who

work for justice. Prayer and action will make a difference.

Our children must be made visible.

Maybe, just maybe, if we lift our voices to make their

needs known our children will not disappear right before our

eyes. Maybe, just maybe if we take action we will not lose

the least of these. Maybe, just maybe we will find our

treasure. The invisible can be made visible.

``Ollie, Ollie ump fee. We're coming to find you!''

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to enter into the Record, an op-ed piece, entitled Consider the Living, published May 29, 2006 by Bob Herbert of the New York Times. Herbert eloquently points out the hypocrisy of the Bush administration on the issue of the war in Iraq. Herbert declares that the fastest way to end this war is to ``start sending the children of the well-to-do to Baghdad, and start raising taxes to pay of the many hundreds of billions that the war is costing.'' The claim that chaos would ensue if we pull out of Iraq is just an excuse to continue the reckless actions of the current administration. Recalling President Bush's challenge to the insurgents to ``bring 'em on,'' Herbert counters that we have lost nearly 2,500 Americans in the war and tens of thousands of Iraqis, and they are still ``bringing 'em on.'' The ones suffering the most in the war are the non-combatants, Iraqi residents who are ``like sheep in a slaughter farm.'' Even after three years parts of Western Iraq are not under U.S. control. Is this what we are to looking forward to? Is the next three years going to cost us 2,500 more American lives as well as billions more of taxpayers money? Not to mention that casualties on the Iraqi side and the atrocities that are byproducts of war.

My colleagues, I join Mr. Herbert in urging you to take decisive measures to bring a swift end to this fiasco. Let us stop this needless waste of lives.

[From the New York Times, May 29, 2006]

Consider the Living

(By Bob Herbert)

Pretty soon this war in Iraq will have lasted as long as

our involvement in World War II, with absolutely no evidence

of any sort of conclusion in sight.

The point of Memorial Day is to honor the service and the

sacrifice of those who have given their lives in the nation's

wars. But I suggest that we take a little time today to

consider the living.

Look around and ask yourself if you believe that stability

or democracy in Iraq--or whatever goal you choose to assert

as the reason for this war--is worth the life of your son or

your daughter, or your husband or your wife, or the co-worker

who rides to the office with you in the morning, or your

friendly neighbor next door.

Before you gather up the hot dogs and head out to the

barbecue this afternoon, look in a mirror and ask yourself

honestly if Iraq is something you would be willing to die

for.

There is no shortage of weaselly politicians and misguided

commentators ready to tell us that we can't leave Iraq--we

just can't. Chaos will ensue. Maybe even a civil war. But

what they really mean is that we can't leave as long as the

war can continue to be fought by other people's children, and

as long as we can continue to put this George W. Bush-

inspired madness on a credit card.

Start sending the children of the well-to-do to Baghdad,

and start raising taxes to payoff the many hundreds of

billions that the war is costing, and watch how quickly this

tragic fiasco is brought to an end.

At an embarrassing press conference last week, President

Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain looked for all

the world like a couple of hapless schoolboys

who, while playing with fire, had set off a conflagration

that is still raging out of control. Their recklessness has

so far cost the lives of nearly 2,500 Americans and tens of

thousands of innocent Iraqis, many of them children.

Among the regrets voiced by the president at the press

conference was his absurd challenge to the insurgents in 2003

to ``bring 'em on.'' But Mr. Bush gave no hint as to when the

madness might end.

How many more healthy young people will we shovel into the

fires of Iraq before finally deciding it's time to stop?

How many dead are enough?

There is no good news coming out of Iraq. Sabrina Tavernise

of The Times recently wrote: ``In the latest indication of

the crushing hardships weighing on the lives of Iraqis,

increasing portions of the middle class seem to be doing

everything they can to leave the country.''

The middle class is all but panicked at the inability of

the Iraqi government or American forces to quell the

relentless violence. Ms. Tavernise quoted a businessman who

is planning to move to Jordan: ``We're like sheep at a

slaughter farm.''

Iraqis continue to be terrorized by kidnappers, roving

death squads and, in a term perhaps coined by Mr. Bush,

``suiciders.''

The American ambassador, Zalmay Khalilzad, acknowledged

last week that even at this late date, there are parts of

western Iraq that are not controlled by American forces, but

rather ``are under the control of terrorists and

insurgents.''

Now we get word that U.S. marines may have murdered two

dozen Iraqis in cold blood last November.

No one should be surprised that such an atrocity could

occur. That's what happens in war. The killing gets out of

control, which is yet another reason why it's important to

have mature leaders who will do everything possible to avoid

war, rather than cavalierly sending the young and the healthy

off to combat as if it were no more serious an enterprise

than a big-time sporting event.

Nothing new came out of the Bush-Blair press conference.

After more than three years these two men are as clueless as

ever about what to do in Iraq. Are we doomed to follow the

same pointless script for the next three years? And for three

years after that?

Leadership does not get more pathetic than this. Once there

was F.D.R. and Churchill. Now there's Bush and Blair.

Reacting to the allegations about the murder of civilians,

the commandant of the Marine Corps, Gen. Michael Hagee, went

to Iraq last week to warn his troops about the danger of

becoming ``indifferent to the loss of a human life.''

Somehow that message needs to be conveyed to the top

leaders of this country, and to the public at large. There is

no better day than Memorial Day to reflect on it. As we

remember the dead, we should consider the living, and stop

sending people by the thousands to pointless, unnecessary

deaths.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to address the issue of third world debt relief for the Record. In the article, Can Developing Countries Be Financial Saviors of Rich Nations?, published in Volume XXIV No. 1230 (May 24-30, 2006) issue of The New York CaribNews, Mr. Tony Best cites Dr. Jeremy Siegel, a professor of the Wharton School of Business. Addressing the possibility that the baby boomers' selling their savings stocks and bonds would lead to a weakening of the assets of the rich nations, Dr. Siegel claims that the best solution is to allow investors from developing countries to buy up these excess stocks to maintain the market prices. Mr. Best asserts that some of ``the highest growth rates in dollar terms in market capitalization was in the emerging markets'' of Macedonia, West Bank and Gaza, Fiji, Nigeria, Jamaica, Botswana, Trinidad and Tobago, India, Kenya, Bermuda and Tanzania. As Mr. Best claims, if the global market is integrated so that ``the selling of assets from the old in the rich world to the young in the developing world is no more difficult than today's sales of assets by elderly folks'' America's trade deficits in the developing world would not be a cause for concern. The increasing investments in America from the growing markets would be balanced by the existing trade deficits and debts owed by the developing countries to the U.S.

[From the New York CaribNews,

May 24, 2006]

Can Developing Countries Be Financial Saviors of Rich Nations?

(By Tony Best)

It may not be a case of reverse Robin Hood, meaning

stealing from the poor and giving it to the rich. But

investors and stock markets in relatively poor nations of the

Caribbean and Africa may in the long run be the next

financial saviors of future prosperity in the world's

wealthiest nations. Add Asia, Latin America and the Middle

East to that list and the prospects would become clear, very

clear.

So, while people in G-8 nations and their affluent

neighbors may not steal from such developing and relatively

poor nations as Jamaica, Thailand, Trinidad and Tobago,

Barbados, Uzbekistan, Nigeria, Botswana, Pakistan, Swaziland,

Bermuda, Jordan and at least 40 other emerging markets, some

economists in the U.S., Britain and elsewhere in the

developed world are offering a bit of advice: keep your eyes

on these economies because they are poised to help make up

the shortfall of buyers of assets in the rich world. One such

economist is Dr. Jeremy Siegel, a professor at the

prestigious Wharton School of Business in the U.S. He

believes that with many baby boomers in North America and

Europe, persons born between 1946-64, getting ready or

planning their retirement, they may sell off their stocks and

bonds in large quantities to finance their retirement and

that in turn can create a huge gap in the assets of rich

nations.

``The sale of these assets will lead to a sharp fall in

prices, because there are too few people in the smaller

generations that followed the boomers to buy all of those

assets at today's prices,'' stated The Economist as it

explained Siegel's theory.

The upshot: unless the baby-boomers delay their retirement,

they could ``see their standard of living in retirement

halved, relative to their final year of work,'' the Economist

added. Siegel warns a huge sell-off of stocks and bonds by

the baby-boomers can trigger a 40-50 percent fall in stock

prices with a smaller pool of investors coming along in the

rich countries to take up the financial slack. That's where

the developing countries may come in, goes the argument. Some

figures tell an interesting story.

Although the top 10 stock markets in terms of

capitalization are in the U.S., Japan, U.K., France, Germany,

Canada, Spain, Switzerland, Hong Kong and China in that

order, some of the highest growth rates in market

capitalization in dollar terms between 1983-2003 were in

emerging markets. Macedonia, West Bank and Gaza, Fiji,

Nigeria, Jamaica, Botswana, Trinidad and Tobago, India,

Kenya, Bermuda and Tanzania are on that list. For instance,

Fiji's growth was put at 760 percent; Jamaica's 297 percent;

Trinidad and Tobago's 170 percent and Bermuda 92 percent.

When it came to the highest growth in value traded between

1998-2003, Zimbabwe, Jordan, Jamaica, Israel, Trinidad and

Tobago, United Arab Emirates, Barbados, Malaysia, South

Africa, and Sri Lanka were listed among the 44 nations with

the best performance. For instance while Zimbabwe had growth

of 623 percent; Jamaica 507 percent, Trinidad and Tobago 128

percent; Barbados, 121 percent; and South Africa 76 percent,

Germany's pace of expansion was 51 percent and Canada's 42

percent.

Of course, it would take decades before those countries

have the financial power to fill the financial gap but then

who would have predicted in 1980 that China, India and Dubai

would have become such economic giants as to drive fear in

the hearts of protectionist lawmakers on Capitol Hill in

Washington who worry about their ability to buy U.S.

companies. Dr. Siegel is writing a new book called, ``The

Global Solution,'' and in it he is insisting that by the

middle of the 21st century most multinational companies must

find new investors outside of North America, Europe and

Japan.

``The challenge is to integrate global markets so that

selling assets from the old in the rich world to the young in

developing countries is no harder, no more unusual, than

today's sales of assets by elderly folks,'' stated The

Economist. ``From this perspective, America's external

deficits, particularly with some developing countries may be

both long-lasting and nothing to worry about.'' It goes

without saying that investors in developing countries

shouldn't forget that protectionist tendencies in the rich

nations are alive and well and can retard growth.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to enter into the Record, an editorial, entitled From Civil Rights to Immigrant Rights, published in the May 16, 2006 edition of the New York Carib News, by Basil Wilson on the CaribOpinion page. Mr. Wilson raises some pertinent issues and questions about the highly polarized immigration debate. The Republican immigration bill wants to criminalize illegal immigrants and individuals and organizations that support them. Claiming that illegal immigrants are a costly burden on legitimate taxpayers, legislation is being discussed to deny medical services to undocumented workers. Fearing that ``Latinization of America'' is a threat to American values, the conservatives plan to militarize the southwestern border but policing 1,900 miles border is very difficult, not to mention costly.

The shocking revelation is that this anti-immigrant sentiment is not only backed by economic concerns but also by academic ideology. Samuel P. Huntington and the like are ``for immigration provided the dominant culture of white Protestantism is preserved.'' Recalling the Know Nothing Party of the 1840's whose goal was to expunge the ``foreign and unassimilatable Irish Catholics,'' Mr. Wilson deplores the generalization of the supremacists that Mexican immigrants are unwilling to be integrated into American society. Even if that were the case, the history of Black America proves that assimilation alone is not the answer. The civil rights movement abolished the institutionalized segregation but racism has not disappeared from America. More importantly the power relation with white America has not changed. ``The black commitment to integration did not ease the white backlash and the immigrant assimilation will not mitigate the resistance to the browning of America.'' The struggle of today's immigrants is about first class citizenship. The 11.5 million immigrant workers who are an integral part of the American society deserve their rightful place.

I join Mr. Wilson in urging that the movements for civil rights, immigrant rights and social justice should join forces to free America from the grip of its historical racism.

[From the New York CaribNews, May 16, 2006]

From Civil Rights to Immigrant Rights

(By Basil Wilson)

The mass demonstrations on May 1, 2006, dramatized the

rights of immigrants and their capacity to mobilize on the

part of Hispanic Americans. Mass numbers took to the streets

in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Phoenix, etc. The mass

mobilization has unsurprisingly triggered a white backlash

from segments of white civil society who were opposed to any

form of legalization of undocumented workers. Like the civil

rights movement of the 1960s, the immigrant rights movement

that has been launched in 2006, seeks legislation in Congress

to redress their grievances.

Paradoxically, it was the proposed bill passed in the House

of Representatives on December 17, 2005 which precipitated

the immigrant rights movement. The Republican Bill sought to

criminalize visitors staying beyond their stay or crossing

the borders illegally. The proposed legislation seeks to

criminalize individuals and organizations that provide

support for illegal immigrants. This extreme legislation

reveal the high state of polarization in the country

regarding what is to be done with 11.5 million illegal

immigrants who take part in the day to day life of American

society. The immigration debate like the civil rights debate

evokes deep emotions among white Americans who view the

Latinization of America as constituting a threat to

Protestant hegemony.

Republican conservatives have somewhat sanitized their

position since immigrants have taken to the streets.

Representatives in the House like Tancredo and Sensenbrenner

insist that they are for legal immigration but vehemently

oppose amnesty as that would undermine the rule of law in the

country. The salient issue for the conservative wing of the

Republican Party is the sealing of the borders. Since the

1996 immigration legislation, the United States Congress has

allocated billions of dollars to protect the 1,900 mile

border between Mexico and America. The Immigration and Custom

Enforcement division under the rubric of Homeland Security

has been using state of the art technology, helicopters, and

increased patrols to stem the tidal wave of immigrants

streaming across the unsealed border. There is strong

sentiment among conservatives to build a wall and to

militarize the border to thwart illegal aliens from crossing

the southwest border. The truth of the matter is that the

policing of 1,900 mile border is a trying task. That

situation becomes even more challenging when so many Mexican

and Central American workers find themselves succumbing to an

increasingly immiserated state.

Republican conservatives make the case that illegal

immigrants are a costly burden on the backs of legitimate

taxpayers. The accusation is that illegal aliens are

overcrowding the public school system and clogging the

emergency wards of hospitals. There is even legislation

underway in the House of Representatives to prevent hospitals

from providing emerging service to undocumented workers.

The level of polarization is not driven just by economics.

Economics provide a respectable cover for the debate. The

recent study authored by the Harvard scholar, Samuel

Huntington, Who Are We? The Challenge to America's National

Identity unmasks the true roots of the national hysteria.

Huntington in 1996 wrote. For the Harvard scholar, the new

danger was the clash of civilization between Islam and the

West. Those fault lines were particularly volcanic and the

war in the Middle East is manifestation of that collision

between Islamic civilization and the encroaching military arm

of western civilization. The Huntingtons of the world are

preoccupied with the preserving of American military hegemony

and the only way that the hegemony can be sustained is for

America to pursue policies aimed at the subjugation of

peoples committed to the post-colonial principle of self-

determination.

Huntington's point of departure vis-a-vis migration is

identical to his position on world civilization. He is for

immigration provided the dominant culture of white

protestantism is preserved. Huntington's position is that the

volume and cultural distinctiveness of the new immigration

poses a threat to American civilization. His wrath is aimed

not just at immigrants but Mexican immigrants in particular.

In his view, the former epochs of mass migration were

unthreatening because the Irish wave of the

1840s and the Southern Europe phase of 1890-1920s were

assimilatable unlike the present wave of Mexicans.

The previous immigrant waves generated the same

histrionics. In the 1840s, the Know Nothing Party was created

to purge the country of the foreign ad unassimilatable Irish

Catholics. White Anglo-Saxon Protestants argued that Italians

and Jews were not assimilatable. Italians and Jews were not

seen as white and were not given that status until after

Hitler's genocide in World War II.

Huntington sees the Mexicans as constituting a threat to

values that made America great--the values of hard work, love

of family, and a unitary cultural system. According to

Huntington's weltanschauung, the concentration of Mexicans in

the southwest constitutes a threat to American loyalty. He

perceives that the loyalty to Mexico, the difference in

culture, the language clash will invariably lead to two

Americas. He throws data into the mix and argues that

Mexicans have not shown a propensity to learn the language or

a willingness to show loyalty to America. In the 2004

Presidential election, a majority of the Hispanic community

supported the war in Iraq. In contrast blacks overwhelmingly

opposed the war.

The response to the mass mobilization on the part of the

Hispanic community on May 1, 2006 and previous demonstrations

reflects the deep asundering in the American society. The

detractors have been critical of Mexican or other foreign

flags. The singing of the national anthem in Spanish sparked

vehement emotions and brought to the fore issues of

patriotism and dual loyalties.

White America likes to be flattered. Martin Luther King and

the civil rights leadership understood the importance of

flattery to persuade a majority of Americans to the

correctness of toppling Jim Crow. Black people sought to be

assimilated into America. The civil rights movement was about

building an integrated society consolidating the cultural

system. The immigrant movement is about Mexicans and others

taking their rightful position in American society.

Immigrants have taken great risk to enter America's borders

to become American. One sees the magnetic force of American

culture and by the second generation of immigrants, they

become indistinguishable from indigenous Americans.

The black commitment to integration did not ease the white

backlash and the immigrants to assimilation will not mitigate

the resistance to the browning of America. There is a

convergence of the civil rights movement, the immigrant

rights movement and the movement for social justice. Although

the civil rights movement accomplished the abolition of de

jure segregation with the passage of the Civil Rights Bill in

1964, the Voting Rights Act in 1965, the Housing Rights Act

of 1968 and the Immigration Legislation of 1965,

institutionalized racism has not disappeared.

Racism persists but in a less truculent form. In the post

civil rights era, the black community finds itself in a far

more variegated state. There has been some expansion in

the ranks of the black middle class. The working class has

become more precarious and even though there is a

reduction in poverty, there has been a sharp rise in the

ranks of the incarcerated. Nonetheless, there has been no

change in the power relationships with white America.

Power is far from being variegated.

There is increased black representation in politics but the

black community finds itself still in a state of

powerlessness. Black people are not catching hell in America

because of the massive influx of legal and illegal

immigrants. There are sectors of the economy where illegal

immigrants occupy niches such as in construction that black

workers could fill that void. There are black spokespersons

who see illegal immigrants as the reason why black men are

being left behind.

The immigrant struggle is synonymous with the black

struggle. The struggle of the immigrants is about first class

citizenship. In American society, like so many other

societies, there is a need to have someone beneath to stomp

on perennially. That is what whites sought to do with blacks

from the genesis of the society until now. That is what poor

whites relished in the Jim Crow years and continue to sustain

that asymmetrical relationship. If black labor is degraded,

then all labor is degraded. The immigrant movement is about

worker's rights and the recognition that illegal workers who

have been for decades are entitled to emancipation from

deportation, to live in human dignity. That is a condition

that black people and all people of color in American society

can identify. The caricaturizing of Mexicans is no different

from age-old dehumanization of black people. Huntington and

others of his ilk are oblivious to their supremacist

worldview which is so entangled with America's view of

military hegemony.

This other worldview is possible but the possibility for

this other world is enhanced if white supremacy on the

national stage and on the world stage is obliterated. It will

only come about when America recognizes the pluralistic state

of the world and that America's role is not about the

building of walls or engaging in inhumane forms of mass

deportation. America has had to adapt to the millions of

Africans who came ashore beginning in 1619 and now constitute

an integral part of America's multi-racial society.

The 12 million immigrants must become an integral part of

America. The change in status from their undocumented

precarious position will enable them to have access to higher

education and social programs to improve the conditions of

their existence. America is split down the middle on the

rights of immigrants. This is a difficult time for America.

It is confused about its role in the world. Frederick

Douglass, the great abolitionist recognized that no entity

gives up power willingly. The significance of the black and

brown movement is the capacity to forge links with the other

America to force America from the trappings of white

supremacy. The test of the immigrant movement will be its

staying power. The battle for immigrant rights has only just

begun.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to repealing the estate tax. It is fiscally irresponsible and would drive higher an already swelling deficit. Repealing the estate tax lacks rigidity that is desperately needed to reduce the national deficit and balance the budget. On the heels of passing consecutive tax cuts for the wealthy, repealing the estate tax would grant further tax relief to the most affluent in our country while the poor and the working class continue to struggle to make ends meet. Contrarily, estate tax repeal would save the estate of Vice President Dick Cheney between $13 million and $61 million. It would save the estate of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld between $32 million and $101 million. The estate of retired Exxon Mobil chairman Lee Raymond would save a comfortable $164 million. Additionally, tax relief for the wealthy does not materialize in gains for the poorest in America.

I urge my colleague in the Senate, Jon Kyl, to abandon the pursuit of legislation that would permanently repeal the estate tax for the wealthiest Americans. If adopted, Sen. Kyl's bill would plunge the government into another trillion dollars into the red during the first decade (2011-2021) that the legislation would be in effect.

As boomers are retiring from the market place, Congress should mount a concerted effort to preserve Social Security and Medicare rather than giving tax cuts to the wealthy who are not demanding them. Health care needs are not being met by employers and a growing number of Americans are without adequate access to vital care. Repealing the estate tax will not bring these services and other needs to the most disadvantaged in our nation. Repealing the estate tax is misguided public policy. Democrats and Republicans should focus on strengthening education, Social Security, Medicare and restoring discipline to budget spending.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to introduce an op-ed article written by Harold Meyerson, titled ``Estate Tax Lunacy'' in the Washington Post on May 31, 2006.

[From the Washington Post, May 31, 2006]

Estate Tax Lunacy

(By Harold Meyerson)

Spring has given way to summer's full-furnace heat in

Washington, apparently taking with it any scintilla of sense

that Congress may yet possess.

In the House, Republicans who could not even raise an

eyebrow at reports that the National Security Agency has been

conducting warrantless wiretaps of Americans became instant

civil libertarians when the FBI conducted a search of a

congressman's office.

The Senate, meanwhile, is scheduled next week to take up

legislation by Arizona Republican Jon Kyl that would

permanently repeal the estate tax on the wealthiest

Americans. If enacted, Kyl's bill would plunge the government

another trillion dollars into the red during the first decade

(2011-2021) that it would be in effect.

Behind the scenes, the action has been on the Democratic

side in the Senate, as the party's leadership has sought to

dissuade Montana's Max Baucus, ranking Democrat on the

Finance Committee, from forging a halfway-house compromise

with Kyl that would deplete revenue by only $500 billion to

$600 billion during that decade. The Republicans would need

Baucus to bring roughly a half-dozen Democrats along with him

to reach the magic number of 60 votes required to overcome

any filibuster that the vast majority of Democrats would

mount to block any such measure.

Even a paltry $500 billion, of course, is a lot of money to

drain from public coffers just when boomers are going onto

Social Security and Medicare and the number of employers

providing health insurance, if present trends continue, might

have dropped to a virtuous handful. To cover those and other

needs, Congress will either plunge us deeper into debt or

increase some other levies--payroll taxes, say--that will

come out of the pockets of the 99 percent of Americans whom

the estate tax doesn't touch.

A decades-long campaign by right-wing activists

(brilliantly documented by Yale professors Michael Graetz and

Ian Shapiro in their book ``Death by a Thousand Cuts'') has

convinced many Americans that the estate tax poses a threat

to countless hardworking families. That was always nonsense,

and under the estate tax revisions that almost all Democrats

support--raising the threshold for eligibility to $3.5

million for an individual and $7 million for a couple--it

becomes more nonsensical still. Under the $3.5 million

exemption, the number of family-owned small businesses

required to pay any taxes in the year 2000 would have been

just 94, according to a study by the Congressional Budget

Office. The number of family farms that would have had to

sell any assets to pay that tax would have been 13.

On the other hand, an estate tax repeal would save the

estate of Vice President Cheney between $13 million and $61

million, according to the publicly available data on his net

worth. It would save the estate of Defense Secretary Donald

Rumsfeld between $32 million and $101 million. The estate of

retired Exxon Mobil chairman Lee Raymond would pocket a cozy

$164 million. As for the late Sam Walton's kids, whose

company already makes taxpayers foot the bill for the

medical expenses of thousands of its employees, the cost

to the government for not taxing their estates would run

into the multiple billions.

The Baucus split-the-difference measure wouldn't repeal the

estate tax, but it would still cut the tax rates on the

estates of the super-rich by 15 percent. The Montana senator

spent much of last week trying to line up a handful of his

Senate Democratic colleagues to support his proposal, in the

hope of being able to announce an unshakable 60 votes

favoring this folly when the debate begins next week.

Why any Democrat would back such a measure, however, is a

deep mystery. From the policy standpoint, it would make it

vastly more difficult both to shore up programs that

Democrats believe need shoring up--better educating the

nation's children, for one--and to get the nation's fiscal

house in order. Politically, backing the measure is even

wackier. The Democrats are running this year as the party of

comparative fiscal sanity and greater economic equity and

security. Baucus's compromise would undermine all those

premises. Republicans might very well attack Democratic

senators up for reelection this year for failing to repeal

this hideous death tax, as they call it, but any Democratic

senator who can't rebut that charge in what is shaping up as

a very Democratic year should probably be in another line of

work.

Last Friday Baucus's staffers assured the Democratic Senate

leadership's staff that their boss would back off his

compromise campaign. Still, given Baucus's penchant for

mischief (it was largely he who rounded up enough Democratic

votes to enact Medicare Part D and its Big Pharma giveaway),

those assurances have met with some skepticism on Capitol

Hill. The Democrats' capacity to undermine themselves has not

vanished with the final days of spring.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to enter into the Record, my heartfelt support for the ``Muslims Care'' campaign, launched by the Council on American-Islamic Relations, CAIR, to promote volunteerism in the Islamic community. CAIR is asking Muslims across the country to volunteer their time for raising health awareness, helping the needy and supporting activities for youth. Using verses from the Qur'an and Hadith, the ``Muslims Care'' tool kit (available in www.muslims- care.org) is encouraging local mosques to participate and promote volunteering programs such as blood drives, health awareness, student tutoring, etc.

First of all, the ``Muslims Care'' program has a community benefits focus, which can potentially bring together people from a multitude of backgrounds and interests. Moreover, it offers an opportunity to weave Muslims and Islamic identity into the American sociocultural fabric, a viable approach to counter the misinformation that is out there about Islam and Muslims. Lastly, a recent survey, conducted by CAIR, showed that the majority of Americans promised to change their views about Islam if Muslims are seen to be concerned about healthcare, education, economy, issues that plague the average American. The ``Muslims Care'' campaign is an excellent way to overcome this us/them mentality and the prejudices about Islam and Muslims.

I heartily support this undertaking by CAIR, as well as their other programs that promote cross-cultural dialogue to enhance the understanding of Islam.

U.S. Muslims Launch Annual Volunteerism Campaign

Washington, DC., May 25, 2006.--A prominent national

Islamic civil rights and advocacy group today called on

American Muslims to support its second annual campaign,

called ``Muslims Care,'' designed to promote volunteerism in

the Islamic community.

In its summer-long initiative, the Council on American-

Islamic Relations (CAIR) will offer Muslims the resources and

information they need to help improve the communities in

which they live. This year, CAIR will again ask Muslims

across the country to focus on health awareness, helping the

needy and activities for youth.

Visitors to CAIR's campaign website, www.muslims-care.org,

will be able to download a toolkit containing information

about how to become a volunteer and suggesting volunteer

activities such as blood drives, health awareness fairs and

student tutoring. CAIR is suggesting that community members

visit the website to submit local volunteer opportunities and

see what activities are available in their state.

The ``Muslims Care'' kit also offers advice to Islamic

religious leaders about how they can promote volunteerism in

local mosques and suggests partnering with established

volunteer groups such as the American Cancer Society and Big

Brother/Big Sisters.

Local Islamic leaders and imams (prayer leaders) are being

encouraged to give Friday sermons on the importance of

volunteerism. The ``Muslims Care'' toolkit has sample verses

from the Quran, Islam's revered text, and hadith (Islamic

traditions) to incorporate in the sermons. One tradition

quotes

Islam's Prophet Muhammad as saying, ``The upper hand (of

giving) is better than the lower hand (at receiving),'' as an

encouragement to provide for those less fortunate.

``As Muslims, we are encouraged to work to improve the

communities in which we live,'' said CAIR Communication

Coordinator Rabiah Ahmed.

Ahmed cited a recently-conducted CAIR opinion survey

showing that a majority of Americans said they would change

their views about Islam and Muslims if they perceived that

Muslims were more concerned about issues such as healthcare,

education and the economy.

CAIR, America's largest Islamic civil liberties group, has

32 offices and chapters nationwide and in Canada. Its mission

is to enhance the understanding of Islam, encourage dialogue,

protect civil liberties, empower American Muslims, and build

coalitions that promote justice and mutual understanding.

Mr. Speaker, I rise to introduce into the Record the commentary entitled ``It's Time To Engage With Iran'' written by David Ignatius and published in the May 25, 2006 issue of the Washington Post.

Much of the diplomacy of the last 5 years has been confrontational, characterized by threats, ultimatums and labeling or ``name calling'' of leaders or countries perceived as threats by the Bush administration.

With this threat diplomacy in mind, Mr. Ignatius offers some literary and policy advice. Quoting the last line of E.M. Forester's novel Howards End, Mr. Ignatius suggests ``Only connect'' as a good foreign policy for the United States.

Ignatius suggests only connect is a useful injection in thinking ``about U.S. strategy toward Iran and the wider conflicts between the West and the Muslim world.'' I agree.

The U.S. could certainly have benefited from connections with our traditional allies before we invaded Iraq. Instead President Bush and Vice President Cheney unhelpfully labeled France, Germany and our other long-time and steadfast allies as ``the old Europe.'' Unbelievably, for a time, otherwise reasonable and sane members of Congress and of the administration insisted on calling french fries, freedom fries.

The Bush administration's arrogance and hubris led the President and Vice President not merely to rebuff the countries who refused to let America lead them into war with Iraq but took every opportunity to disconnect from them. At every opportunity the Bush administration let our long-time friends know our connection with them did not matter. If they were not with us, they were against us. I believe there are those in Congress who regret the attitude represented by these words. Our ``coalition of the willing'' has few member countries left and those that are left have few soldiers fighting in Iraq.

During the first days of the Bush administration, the U.S. refused to meet with Iran at all. China finally convinced the U.S. to meet with Iran but when we did, our representatives sat in the conference room and announced the U.S. would not deal with Iran and then spoke no more. During the 1\1/2\ years we did not deal with Iran it forged ahead on its nuclear research and perhaps produced enriched plutonium. We just don't know.

Ignatius writes that ``we are in the early stages of what the Centcom commander, Gen. John Abizaid, calls `the first war of globalization, between openness and closed societies.''' General Abizaid's advice was to ``expand openness and connection.'' According to Ignatius, General Abizaid called al-Qaeda ``the military arm of the closed order.'' The extremist mullahs in Tehran are leaders of a closed order.

Ignatius writes that America's best strategy is connection and to play to its strengths, which he believes are the open exchange of ideas, backed up by unmatched military power.

I believe we have nothing to fear from connecting with Iran, North Korea, China and Russia. We have much to fear from antagonizing these countries. Vice President Cheney recently called Russia ``irresponsible,'' which angered President Putin of Russia. Name calling and labeling should not be used by any member of the administration. It is a backward, undiplomatic form of communications employed by schoolyard bullies not by high officials of a country like ours which must learn to live in peace with the other great powers in the world.

We connected, engaged, with the Soviet Union in 1973 through the Conference for Security and Cooperation in Europe, CSCE, even while conservatives warned that it was a dangerous concession that the Soviets might interpret as weakness. Instead the CSCE helped speed the fall of the Soviet Union. President Nixon was warned by conservatives not to go to China and yet an era of great diplomacy with China followed his trip.

The column by David Ignatius points out that Ahmadinejad's letter to President Bush ``clearly had the backing of Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khameini.'' In the words of Ignatius ``that's like having the support of Vice President Cheney for a peace feeler.''

According to Karim Sadjadpour, an Iranian analyst with the International Crisis Group, opinion polls show that 75 percent of Iranians favor relations with the United States.

There is no guarantee that a policy of engagement will work. But there are no other good options. We can have engagement with Iran and hope they will accept a package we can offer with our allies that will keep them from developing nuclear weapons, or we can learn to live with Iran as a nuclear power, or we can go to war with Iran. War with Iran would have unintended consequences we cannot imagine. It should be obvious that the first of these is the best option.

It's Time To Engage With Iran

(By David Ignatius)

``Only connect.'' That was the trademark line of E.M.

Forster's great novel ``Howards End.'' And it's a useful

injunction in thinking about U.S. strategy toward Iran and

the wider conflicts between the West and the Muslim world.

We are in the early stages of what the Centcom commander,

Gen. John Abizaid, calls ``the first war of globalization,

between openness and closed societies.'' One key to winning

that war, Abizaid told a small group of reporters at the

Pentagon yesterday, is to expand openness and connection. He

called al-Qaeda ``the military arm of the closed order.'' The

same could be said of the extremist mullahs in Tehran who are

pushing for nuclear weapons.

America's best strategy is to play to its strengths--which

are the open exchange of ideas, backed up by unmatched

military power. The need for connection is especially clear

in the case of Iran, which in isolation has remained frozen

in revolutionary zealotry like an exotic fruit in aspic. Yet

some in the Bush administration cling to the idea that

isolation is a good thing and that connectivity will somehow

weaken the West's position. That ignores the obvious lesson

of the past 40 years, which is that isolation has usually

failed (as in the cases of Cuba and North Korea), while

connectivity has usually succeeded (as in the cases of the

Soviet Union and China).

A telling example was the decision to engage the Soviet

Union in 1973 through the Conference for Security and

Cooperation in Europe. At the time, some conservatives argued

that it was a dangerous concession that the Soviets might

interpret as a symbol of weakness. But the CSCE provided a

crucial forum for dissidents in Russia and Eastern Europe,

and with astonishing speed the mighty edifice of Soviet power

began to crumble. Similar warnings about showing weakness in

the face of an aggressive adversary were voiced when

President Richard Nixon went to China in February 1972.

I cite this Cold War history because the moment has come

for America to attempt to engage revolutionary Iran. The

invitation for such a dialogue came this month in a letter to

President Bush from Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad--a

man whose rabble-rousing, Israel-baiting career gave him the

credentials, if that's the right word, to break a 27-year

Iranian taboo on contacts with the Great Satan.

Ahmadinejad's letter clearly had the backing of Iran's

supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. In the American

context, that's like having the support of Vice President

Cheney for a peace feeler. My own Iranian sources say there

is broad consensus in Tehran that it is time for talks with

the United States. ``Iran wants to start discussions the same

way the Chinese wanted discussions'' with Nixon, an Iranian

businessman named Ali Ettefagh told me in an e-mail this

week. ``Great Satan doesn't sell anymore. More than half the

population was not born 27 years ago, and the broken record

does not play well.'' The Iranian offer of dialogue, he says,

``ought to be taken as an opportunity, if only to air out

grievances and amplify differences.''

I suspect Iran wants dialogue now partly because it

perceives America's position in Iraq as weak and its own as

strong. That may be true, but so what? Washington should

still take yes for an answer. The United States and its

European allies this week are crafting a package that, one

hopes, will include everything the Iranian people could

want--except nuclear weapons. The bundle of goodies should

stress connectivity--more air travel to Iran, more

scholarships for students, more exchanges, Iranian membership

in the World Trade Organization. The mullahs may well reject

these incentives as threatening, but that's the point. Their

retrograde theocracy can't last long in an open world. This

very week, about 40 police officers were injured in a clash

with demonstrators at two Tehran universities. One of the

hand-lettered protest signs captured in an Iranian photo

said: ``This is not a seminary, it is a university. ``

Karim Sadjadpour, an Iranian analyst with the International

Crisis Group, noted in Senate testimony last week that

opinion polls show 75 percent of Iranians favor relations

with the United States. ``Embarking on a comprehensive

dialogue with Iran would provide the U.S. with the

opportunity to match its rhetorical commitment to Iranian

democracy and human rights with action,'' Sadjadpour said.

He's right.

There's no guarantee that a policy of engagement will work.

The Iranian regime's desire to acquire nuclear weapons may be

so unyielding that Tehran and Washington will remain on a

collision course. But America and its allies will be in a

stronger position for responding to Iranian calls for

dialogue. Openness isn't a concession by America, it's a

strategic weapon.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to enter into the Record, information about the new Environmental Performance Index (EPI) ranking that was researched by experts at Yale and Columbia Earth Institute, and revealed in the World Economic forum in Davos, Switzerland in early 2006. ``The index draws on available data to measure 133 countries on 16 indicators in six established policy categories: environmental health, air quality, water resources, and sustainable energy.'' EPI is the brainchild of Daniel Esty, director of the Yale Center for Environment Law and Policy and Hilhouse Professor of Environmental Law and Policy, who has high hopes for the project. An overarching score and ranking such as the EPI can be instrumental in drafting environmental policies. For example Haiti has an EPI of 114 whereas the Dominican Republic, a country of similar geography and natural resources, has a ranking of 54. A comparative analysis of these two countries would be extremely helpful to policymakers who are trying to improve the environmental standards of Haiti. EPI also provides an evaluation of the performances of the current governments in terms of their environmental standards. EPI is an excellent resource that encourages discourse and is a potentially useful tool for preparing environmental legislation.

I would like to draw the attention of the Congress to this resource.

Worldwide Environmental Rankings: Will Nations Compete To Be Green?

At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in early

2006, a new global survey was unveiled that assigns a

numerical ranking to individual nations based on their

environmental practices and outcomes.

The Environmental Performance Index (EPI), which has

prompted both praise and controversy in the international

environmental community, draws on available data to measure

133 countries on 16 indicators in six established policy

categories: environmental health, air quality, water

resources, biodiversity and habitat, productive natural

resources, and sustainable energy. A team of experts at Yale

and Columbia University's Earth Institute analyzed the data

to produce the rankings.

The EPI is the brainchild of Daniel C. Esty, director of

the Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy and

Hillhouse Professor of Environmental Law and Policy. Esty, a

member of RFF's Board of Directors, believes that it will be

a critical tool in bolstering successful pollution control

and natural resource management worldwide. (Full text of the

report and a summary for policymakers are available at

www.yale.edu/epi.)

Resources asked Esty to explore the policy aims and

outcomes of the EPI with Senior Fellow Jim Boyd. Their

conversation follows.

Boyd: Give me the big picture as a place to start. What was

your primary motivation for doing this? And how does your

ranking system relate to other performance measures, such as

national welfare accounting?

Esty: Our goal is to shift environmental decisionmaking

onto firmer analytic foundations. We're trying to make

policymaking--across the full spectrum of pollution control

and natural resource management issues--more empirical, more

fact based, and more durable.

One of our motivations was to provide a counterbalance to

the emphasis on GDP growth, which is taken so seriously, not

only by economists, but also by decisionmakers in government.

We believe the index provides a fairly clean and clear look

at current government performance across a spectrum of core

environmental challenges.

Boyd: One of the things that will immediately jump out at

people is the fact that the United States ranks 28, not far

from Cyprus. That's a little surprising to me personally, but

how do you view that?

Esty: When I present the EPI in the United States, people

are often surprised--even shocked--that the United States

ranks as low as 28. When I present the EPI in Europe, people

are often surprised--even shocked--that the United States

ranks as high as 28. The United States does very well on some

issues, like provision of drinking water--it really is

unsurpassed in the world in terms of the percentage of the

population that has access to safe water. But it does much

worse, if not quite poorly, on a range of other issues, like

greenhouse gas emissions. So, if you are sitting in America,

where the air looks pretty clear and the drinking water looks

pretty clean, you might say, gee, why aren't we closer to the

top? But in Europe, where people are very much focused on the

U.S. failure to step up to the climate change challenge,

people think the United States should rank about 130 out of

133 countries.

Boyd: Certain things that you are measuring are more

amendable to control by government or society, while others

seem more like a country's natural resource inheritance, such

as its geography or climate. Are areas for improvement things

that all countries can act on--or are some countries stuck

with their bad environmental luck?

Esty: All six of the core policy areas that we are looking

at represent important challenges that governments can be

held accountable for: the quality of their air, water, land-

use, and biodiversity, how they manage productive natural

resources, habitat protection, and energy and climate change.

Clearly, some governments are better positioned to hit the

established targets because of their underlying natural

resource endowments or, for example, because of their

relatively low population density so they don't strain the

resources of their land--a good example would be Sweden. But

are these things

that governments should be looking at? Absolutely. Are

governments being held accountable for these things? All

across the board.

Boyd: When you come up with a ranking like this, there's a

power in boiling it all down to that one number. Talk to me

about your philosophy of doing that versus disaggregating

what you have done and going deeper on the specific issues.

Esty: What we found is that there is enormous power in

presenting a single, overarching score and a ranking related

to that. This is what attracts top-tier government officials,

presidents, ministers, and the media. Everyone loves

rankings, and everyone wants to know who is up and who is

down. From a policy point of view, however, that's just a

hook to draw people into a dialogue.

What we are really excited about--and where I think we are

succeeding--is what comes after people look at that top-line

number, when they get a chance to drill down to the

underlying rankings that relate to the core policy categories

and even below that, to the issue-by-issue analyses that are

the foundation of the index. The rankings lure people into a

policy dialogue that can surface best practices that put some

nations nearer the top of the ladder.

Boyd: Tell me your thoughts on how this work relates to the

Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, issued in 2005.

Esty: The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment and the EPI share

a common vision of a more data-driven approach to

environmental decisionmaking, where we really look at on-the-

ground facts and results so that policy priorities can be

based on good information and good science. What

differentiates the EPI and gives it particular traction is

that it is aligned not on an ecosystem basis, like the

Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, but rather on a national

basis. National-state boundaries are the true lines of

accountability.

In our index, where countries rank low, there's no ducking,

there's no hiding. The political officials find they are

called upon to answer for poor performance, and we think

that's a very powerful tool. No one wants to be at the bottom

of the rankings: every country would like to be higher up. We

made particular efforts to group countries with regard to

appropriate peers so that they are not ranking themselves

against the top of the spectrum, per se, but against others

that are similarly situated.

Take Haiti, for example, which ranks really quite low on

our scale, at 114 out of the 133 countries we ranked. It's

not Haiti's job to figure out why it is not number 2, like

Sweden, or number 3, like Finland. But it is interesting, if

you are Haiti, to figure out why you are doing so much worse

than the Dominican Republic, at number 54. These are two

countries that share an island, that have a lot in common.

And obviously, something is going seriously wrong in Haiti

with regard to natural resource management and pollution

control. But for a poor country, the Dominican Republic is

doing quite well. So we think there is some learning there

for Haiti, and perhaps for the Dominican Republic as well,

because across 16 issues, there are probably some things that

Haiti is doing better.

Boyd: Inherently this is a global data exercise. Comment on

the increasing availability of spatial data on environmental

conditions, but also about where a government, particularly

the U.S. government, stands on its ability to produce and

present information that people like you would find

useful.

Esty: We are moving into an era of information-age

environmental protection, which is exciting. There is a great

deal of data that weren't out there before, which gives us a

much better handle on problems, the chance to track trends,

and a better basis for evaluating policies and understanding

what's working and what's not. Having said that, I think the

U.S. government still underinvests in producing relevant

data.

Boyd: In that regard, how close a connection is there

between the top five countries in the ranking and the quality

of the data you are getting about those countries? Or is

there no correspondence?

Esty: Much better data sets are available for the top 30

countries--basically the ones that are part of the

Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the

Paris-based, ``developed country'' think tank. Beyond that,

the data become very thin, and frankly, after about 130

countries, it becomes so thin that we can't include all the

countries that we would like. So if this move toward a more

data-driven approach to environmental protection is to gain

further traction, we are going to have to collect data on

many more countries. We are also going to have to go after

some issues that aren't tracked at all, not even in the most

developed countries. These include exposure to toxic

chemicals, waste management practices, releases of

SO2 and acid rain, recycling rates, lead and

mercury exposure, and wetlands loss.

Boyd: In principle, a country could do poorly because it is

using its resources to produce commodities, like cutting

trees for lumber. How do you handle the fact that some of

those crops and therefore the benefits of that land use are

exported? In effect, you are measuring the negative

consequences in one country but countries elsewhere are

benefiting from that degradation. Is there any way to factor

that into your index?

Esty: We took a hard look at this question in the context

of exporting dirty businesses and whether countries benefit

because someone else is willing to take up the challenge of

producing things like steel or aluminum. And it turned out to

be very difficult to get at that and hard to do consistently

with our model, which centers on the government's

responsibility for what it can achieve within its borders.

For example, the United States imports steel from Korea but

the numbers don't exist to allow us to shift some of the

public health and environmental burdens that Korea faces back

to this country. It's a weakness of the structure and means

that in some respects we haven't captured the full picture.

Boyd: When you unveiled the index at the World Economic

Forum in Davos, what indications did you get that the

environment is present in the minds of these world leaders?

Esty: It's a very exciting place to release a study because

you have lots of people producing reports, businesses

releasing statements, major world leaders talking about

critical questions, and business leaders like Bill Gates

speculating on the future of the information world. So the

competition for air space is tough. In that regard, we were

very pleased, first by the good turnout for the release in

Davos itself, and then, by the stories around the world in

the weeks that followed that came from more than 100

countries and appeared in more than 500 newspapers. To date,

there have more than half a million downloads of the report

from our website.

Speaking more broadly, business leaders overseas take

environmental protection very, very seriously, incorporating

it into their operating strategies--it's one of their top

concerns, falling behind only globalization and competitive

strength. A dominant theme at Davos was the rise of India and

China and the enormous implications this will have, both

positive and negative. Obviously, it means that many, many

people will rising out of poverty, and hundreds of millions,

if not billions of new consumers will be driving the economy

of the world. But it also means vast consumption of natural

resources and potentially significant rats of pollution,

locally and at a global scale, threatening to exacerbate

problems like climate change.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to pay a special tribute to the late Joseph D. Peters, a sports pioneer who demonstrated leadership and commitment to extending the reach of sports as a positive force for social change. Peters was born on June 2, 1938 in Wilmington, Delaware and he passed away on January 9, 2006 at his home in New York City.

His commitment to service began in 1962 when he joined the United States armed forces. He was a former director of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) Sports Project. As director he was responsible for many projects including The International Freedom Games track and field meet and the Martin Luther King All-Star basketball classic.

Peters was inspired by the legendary baseball great Jackie Robinson, who in 1947 broke the color barrier in Major League Baseball. This inspiration was very much reflected in his philosophy on sports. He viewed sports as much more than athletic competition; sports had a deeper purpose and he dedicated his life to making people realize that. He strongly believed that sports were capable of bringing people together and bridging the gaps that divided nations. He also knew how influential sports could be on the home front as well.

Sports have provided economic opportunities and hopes for many disadvantaged but athletically gifted young people. For athletic competition whether as amateurs or professionals has provided a way to move forward when all else around may have seemed to be standing still.

Peters was diagnosed with stomach cancer after the disaster of Hurricane Katrina, yet he continued working to organize a special benefit basketball game in which the Argentine and French Olympic gold and silver medal winners would challenge NBA stars for the benefit of the victims. This was another extension of his sports philosophy.

Peters also attempted to organize a U.S.-Cuban baseball game aimed at bringing the two countries together by engaging in an activity common to both countries. He knew the influence and power that such an event would have on people. We need to continue to believe in his philosophy because it is important to see what further impacts sports can have on our world.

Peters' ambitious initiatives were not always successful, but neither his passion or his resolve ever faded. His dedication was an inspiration not only to athletes but to many others in our community who are seeking ways to make a contribution.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to pay tribute to a truly remarkable woman, Ms. Katherine Dunham. A woman of astounding grace and character, Ms. Dunham has altered for the better both our country and world. We recently lost Ms. Dunham on May 21, 2006, at the age of 96 at an assisted living facility in New York.

Born Katherine Mary Dunham in Chicago, III on June 22, 1909, and raised in Glen Ellyn, Ill, Dunham was fascinating from the very beginning. The author of a published short story in a magazine edited by W.E.B. DuBois at the young age of 12 she had the gift for the written word. She was class poet in high school, and later wrote a memoir entitled, ``A Touch of Innocence''.

Ms. Dunham was an enchanting beauty who often danced with a sound sense of rhythm and eroticism. Dunham was always combining and changing methods of dance, the sign of the true innovator within. Katherine Dunham was a pioneer in the first in many areas for blacks. She was among the first black artists to form a ballet troupe and achieve renown as a modem dancer and choreographer on Broadway and in Hollywood. She was responsible for exposing to mass audiences the other side of black artistic expression, a side rarely seen. She made people in the 1930's and 1940's see and understand black dance as ``more than tap and minstrelsy''.

She was also one of the first black choreographers to work for the Metropolitan Opera. Many admired Dunham because she amassed so much in a country and time where few opportunities for blacks existed.

She will forever remain an inspiration to many who seek guidance in her wisdom and words. She was noted for her no nonsense approach to the way of life as stated here, ``Don't be nervous, don't be tired and above all, don't be bored. Those are the three destroyers of freedom''. Her insight goes far beyond dance and choreography, but into the real human dilemma. It was stated that, ``she was speaking less about dance and more about an area of equal concern: human rights''. All those who knew her dignified heart of compassion could not help but follow her lead.

As a human rights activist, she spoke out publicly about the United States' position on deporting Haitian refugees. Dunham was so passionate about the matter that in 1992 she went on a 47 day hunger strike to prove her point. One notable activist, Harry Belafonte stressed the notion that, ``She didn't perform miracles; she performed acts of human kindness, which should be viewed as a miracle in itself''.

With age Ms. Dunham sought to spread her knowledge to especially young people. She wanted them to grow up with the adequate capabilities and skills necessary to live in today's ever-changing world. She kept a small museum of artifacts about her career with her in East St. Louis, Ill., where she educated local children including Jackie JoynerKersee, the Olympic long jumper, and filmmakers Reginald and Warrington Hudlin.

When asked about her work with the youth she felt she was ``trying to steer them into something more constructive than genocide''. In a way, maintaining relations with the youth of today kept Dunham youthful, a quality she never lost. In a New York Times report done on her a few years back, she mentioned, ``Did you ever see photographs of elderly divas trying to look sexy?''

I enter into the Record with pleasure the article published in the Washington Post and New York Times for their in-depth look at Katherine Dunham for both her artistic and humanitarian efforts. She has truly left her mark on our society and I will always remember her for that. We must keep her memory alive in our hearts and minds so that generations after us will know who she was and what she did. One cannot speak of dance and innovation without mentioning Katherine Dunham, for she has without a doubt moved our world.

[The Washington Post, May 23, 2006]

Moving the World

(By Sarah Kaufman)

It was a bitterly cold winter day three years ago when I

last saw the pioneering choreographer Katherine Dunham teach.

She was rolled into the Howard University dance studio in her

wheelchair, bundled up like a prized antique. First a thick

fur blanket was peeled off, then a woolen wrap, and then

Dunham herself was revealed, somewhat hunched, wearing lots

of gold jewelry. Peering through her oversize glasses at the

more than 100 students sitting on the floor in front of her,

she got right to work.

``Think of everything you learn from me today as part of a

way of life,'' she announced in a low, raspy voice. ``Now--

breathe.''

This was not as simple as it sounds. For Dunham, a tireless

activist who died Sunday at the age of 96, invested every

aspect of her life--indeed, you could say, every breath--with

meticulous attention and an unflinching eye.

And on this day in January 2003, that eye didn't see much

it liked. Dunham hollered at the dancers to tilt their heads

back, to hold their stomach muscles in, to undulate with the

breath inside them. Then, unsatisfied with the beat that the

drummers alongside her were producing, she leaned out of her

wheelchair, grabbed one of their drumsticks and began keeping

time on the table in front of her.

A few beats later, that tiny old lady had all the drummers

grooving together and the whole room full of young adults

breathing in unison.

Dunham's dance technique and her way of life went hand in

hand. She was inquisitive, blazingly energetic and exacting

as a dancer and a choreographer, but she didn't leave those

qualities behind after the curtain fell. Her whole long life

was about questions and activism and energy. The path that

led her to Broadway, Hollywood and concert stages around the

world eventually took her to Haiti, where she lived for a

number of years, working feverishly and, to her great

distress, ultimately unsuccessfully to bring about change for

that nation's desperately poor people.

In her unparalleled career in dance, where she educated the

world about the power of African dance as found throughout

the diaspora, Dunham mixed academic research and showbiz

flair. An anthropologist as well as a choreographer, she

studied dance in the Caribbean islands, blending movements

she found there with Western dance. Her style was not

scholarly; she reveled in eroticism. She sought not to re-

create specific rites but to transport the audience the way a

spiritual experience might. And she wasn't afraid to use sex

to do this. A sensuous performer, she frequently wore

costumes that revealed well-muscled thighs and ample curves.

There were other dancers interested in Afro-Caribbean

arts--Pearl Primus, also an anthropologist, for one--but

Dunham had the most far-reaching success, perhaps because of

her utter fearlessness. She founded her company in the 1930s,

when a predominantly black dance troupe was unheard of. Her

voluptuousness as a dancer made her especially marketable--

because, let's face it, audiences at that time were not

especially sensitive to the art she was creating. She caught

the eye of ballet master George Balanchine, who created the

role of the sexpot Georgia Brown for her in the 1940 Broadway

hit ``Cabin in the Sky.'' Dunham and her company performed in

other Broadway revues, and she also made her mark

choreographing for film, in 1943's ``Stormy Weather'' and

several others, in Hollywood and abroad.

But her twin artistic achievements were her body of

choreography--works such as ``L'Ag'Ya,'' a story of love and

death, and ``Shango,'' drawn from Trinidadian cult rituals--

and the development of her own method of dancing.

``Dunham technique'' became part of the bedrock of American

modern dance, like the techniques of Martha Graham, Jose

Limon and Merce Cunningham. Through her own flamboyance and

interpretive beauty as a performer, as well as her rigor as a

teacher, she raised African-based dance to a new level.

Growing up in an America that offered few opportunities for

blacks, Dunham served as an inspiration to black artists who

saw her achievements as especially formidable given the

racism of the times.

``She set the bar for attaining excellence in art and she

instilled in us a great sense of pride in our blackness,''

said singer Harry Belafonte, speaking by phone yesterday from

California. Belafonte and his wife, Julie, were close friends

of Dunham's for half a century, he said. Julie was a member

of Dunham's company; Harry credits Dunham with encouraging

him to investigate the music of her beloved Haiti.

Without Dunham's effort to ``reveal to me the beauty of

that music,'' Belafonte said, he would never have recorded

songs like the gentle, lilting ode ``Yellow Bird.''

However attuned she was to musical beauty and island

mysticism, Dunham could breathe fire in the studio. She was a

legendary taskmaster, and even in her nineties, during that

class I witnessed at Howard as part of the International

Association of Blacks in Dance Conference, she was capable of

whipping her students into a lather.

``Now think of your anal opening!'' she cried at one point.

``Does everyone know what your anal opening is? Think of a

pole from the top of your head through that hole. That's your

strength! ``

``Don't be nervous, don't be tired and above all, don't be

bored,'' she lectured them. ``Those are the three destroyers

of freedom of movement.''

She called on the dancers to be ``strong and easy at the

same time,'' swaying in her wheelchair, her arms floating,

responding to the drumbeat with a remarkable fluidity.

Her eyes never strayed from the dancers, who by the end of

the class were trying to keep up the relentless tempo on

their tiptoes, with bent knees, stamping and shimmying their

shoulders, adding turns if they could. Dunham technique seeks

to balance tricky polyrhythmic equations, with the head

nodding out one beat and torso and legs keeping time with

another.

The trick, say those who have mastered it, is to move with

such musical and muscular intricacy that you achieve complete

freedom. Dunham was scheduled to teach for an hour; she kept

at it for two.

Not long after that class, I visited Dunham in her

Manhattan apartment. She was in bed, where she spent much of

her time when she wasn't making appearances. She suffered

from crippling arthritis and had had both kneecaps replaced.

Reclining against a mound of pillows, wearing a peacock-blue

top, and fixing me with her dark, wide-set eyes, she spoke

not of weakness but of strength.

``There is a need in the body to express itself,'' she

said. ``Every culture has its own form of physical

expression. An unfortunate thing about today--about Western

dance--is it's too competitive in feeling. I don't dance

because I can do this movement better than you. I do it

because it's what I feel, and want to do.''

``When I first saw however-present and powerful dance

was,'' she said, ``it came as a wonderful revelation.''

Pressed regarding about her views on dance, though, it

became clear she was speaking less about dance and more about

an area of equal concern: human rights.

``It's a real job to recognize dance at all,'' she

continued. ``Until our Western need to compete begins to slow

down and becomes a need to feel and love and express motion

and care for our inner selves as well as our outer selves . .

. if we can find a way to live in union with other people --

'' She looked out the window at her view of the skyline. ``We

have to love ourselves, love what we are doing, and find a

way to express these things in unity with other people.''

Dunham banged up against politics as she sought to spread

her teaching in the island she so loved.

``Long before she could teach the healthy minds, she needed

the healthy bodies,'' Belafonte said. She found herself

feeding the students, seeing to their health care and

welfare, and eventually spreading this concern into a

wholesale human rights activism that included a hunger strike

of 47 days in 1992 to protest the U.S. policy of deporting

Haitian refugees. Sadly, most of her good works there came to

naught without government support to sustain them.

``She didn't perform miracles, she performed acts of human

kindness,'' Belafonte said. ``Which should be viewed as a

miracle in itself.''

Mr. Speaker, with the President's proposed agreement with India on civil nuclear cooperation, there has been much discussion as to what Congress' position should be concerning this matter. I find it appropriate to bring to the attention of Congress a May 23 article written by Will Marshall, President of the Progressive Policy Institute, and Wesley Clark, a candidate for the Democratic Presidential nomination in 2004, a retired Army general, and former supreme allied commander of NATO. The article entitled ``Warming to the India Nuclear Deal'' comprehensively discusses the proposed agreement, determining that it is a great opportunity to create a strategic partnership with India.

The Marshall and Clark article encourages the Senate to support Bush's proposed agreement, but also to articulate several commitments by the Administration on which the support is conditioned, most importantly a fresh

burst of energy in promoting the international nonproliferation system.

This deal is a great opportunity for the United States to form a truly beneficial partnership with India, an up-and-coming 21st century power. India has proved its stability as a multi ethnic democracy with an ever-growing economy, a middle-class that is well-versed in English, a lively technology sector, and a tremendous domestic market.

Advocates of arms control argue that the removal of a ban on the supply of fuel to India's civilian nuclear-power sector should not compromise nonproliferation efforts. However, it is clear that admonishing India for its failure to join the Non-Proliferation Treaty, NPT, is not enjoying the success that it should and therefore must be modernized.

The need for efforts to improve the NPT is confirmed by the inception of several new nuclear states and the potential for the establishment of even more in the near future.

Considering India's exceptional nonproliferation efforts, a United States-India partnership in designing a superior global nonproliferation system should prove to be beneficial worldwide.

Mr. Marshall and Mr. Clark encourage a push for NPT reforms, including more effective inspection and control of nuclear activity across the globe. They cite the critical reform as disallowing states who agree not to build nuclear weapons to then develop civilian nuclear energy programs. A loophole such as this permits countries, such as Iran, to insist upon a ``right'' to produce their own nuclear fuel supplies, as opposed to acquiring their supply from already established nuclear powers.

The article cites a simple solution to the problem: internationalize the nuclear fuels cycle. U.S. officials can organize an adequate source of fuel to countries that agree not to produce nuclear weapons and submit to rigid inspections through an international consortium. India should be at the forefront of this effort.

Mr. Marshall and Mr. Clark also encourage the Senate to demand that the U.S., along with other nuclear powers, move in the direction of disarmament. The current administration has failed to do this, and has in fact done the opposite.

I thank Mr. Marshall and Mr. Clark for their thorough analysis of the President's proposed agreement with India. Their views on the matter are greatly respected.

I therefore submit for the Record a piece from the May 23 issue of the Hill for our consideration.

[From the Hill, May 23, 2006]

Warming to the India Nuclear Deal

(By Will Marshall and Wesley Clark)

At first glance, President Bush's proposed agreement with

India on civil nuclear cooperation is a no-win proposition

for the U.S. Senate. Rejecting the deal could chill relations

between the world's biggest democracies; approving it might

shred America's credibility as a leader of global efforts to

restrain nuclear proliferation.

Senators can escape this dilemma, however, by offering the

White House a deal of their own: support for the India

agreement conditioned on concrete commitments by the Bush

administration to breathe new life into the international

nonproliferation system.

Under the deal struck last summer, the United States would

lift its ban on supplying expertise and fuel to India's

civilian nuclear-power sector. India agreed to place 14 of

its 22 nuclear reactors under safeguards with the

International Atomic Energy Agency. The deal is intended to

remove the chief irritant in U.S.-India relations: America's

longtime policy of banning sales of civilian nuclear

technology and fuel to any country--most prominently India--

that has refused to sign the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation

Treaty (NPT).

U.S. leaders should not miss the best opportunity since the

Cold War ended to forge a true strategic partnership with

India. As a stable, multiethnic democracy with a brisk

economic growth rate, a vibrant technology sector, an

English-speaking middle class and a potential domestic market

four times larger than America's, India is fast emerging as a

21st century power of the first rank.

Arms-control advocates, however, warn that closer U.S.-

India ties should not come at the price of undermining the

nonproliferation framework. Yet U.S. efforts to punish India

for spurning the NPT have manifestly failed. More important,

it's clear that the NPT cannot survive in its present terms

and needs fundamental revision.

Since the treaty's inception, four new states have elbowed

their way into the exclusive nuclear club, and such scofflaw

regimes as North Korea and Iran are pounding on the door.

Without bold action now to strengthen and modernize the NPT

framework, we could be looking at as many as 20 nuclear-armed

states within the next decade or two.

So instead of persisting in vain attempts to punish India--

which, unlike rival Pakistan, has an exemplary

nonproliferation record--the United States should enlist New

Delhi's help in designing a fairer and more effective global

nonproliferation system.

The Senate, for example, should insist on boosting spending

on the Cooperative Threat Reduction programs aimed at

securing Russia's loose nuclear materials. It should also

press the Bush administration to push for overdue NPT

reforms, including stronger inspections, tighter control of

nuclear know-how and a closer watch on the activities of

nuclear-trained scientists and engineers worldwide.

The key reform is to close the NPT loophole that allows

states to develop civilian nuclear energy programs if they

agree not to build nuclear weapons. The problem comes when

countries demand, as Iran has done, a ``right'' under NPT to

develop their own nuclear fuel supplies rather than acquiring

what they need from the nuclear powers. As Ashton Carter and

Stephen LaMontagne point out, ``Enrichment and reprocessing

facilities low states to cross into a proliferation `red

zone,' putting them dangerously close to a nuclear weapons

capability.''

Carter and LaMontagne offer a simple solution:

Internationalize the nuclear fuels cycle. Building on

Russia's offer to provide nuclear fuel for Iran, the United

States should organize an international suppliers consortium

to provide a reliable source of fuel for nuclear energy

plants (and a repository for spent fuel) to countries that

forswear nuclear weapons and submit to robust inspections.

India, as a former leader of the nonaligned nations, could

show its commitment to nonproliferation by helping to build

support for such an approach among the developing nations.

The Senate also should insist that the United States hold

up its end of the nuclear bargain. Under the NPT, the nuclear

``haves'' are obliged to move toward disarmament. Yet the

Bush administration has gone in the opposite direction. It

has rejected the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, failed to

engage the other nuclear powers in talks aimed at mutual cuts

in nuclear arsenals and even launched new programs for

developing nuclear ``small'' bombs and ``bunker-buster''

weapons.

Finally, the United States should offer similar terms to

Pakistan, providing it is willing to return to the NPT, put

its nuclear programs under international safeguards and offer

a full accounting for the worldwide nuclear bazaar operated

by A.Q. Khan.

If accompanied by imaginative U.S. efforts to update and

strengthen the global nonproliferation system, the proposed

deal with India could become a cornerstone of a comprehensive

post-Cold War strategy--but only if elected leaders at both

ends of Pennsylvania Avenue have the insight and courage to

seize this opportunity.