As funding for abstinence-only education rose under Bush, critics from both the left and the right increasingly voiced their concern that the lack of an established definition or common understanding of both what it means to be abstinent and what specifically constitutes sex or sexual activity was causing confusion among educators, young people and policymakers alike.

Some abstinence-only proponents contended that the failure to go beyond vaginal intercourse and spell out a broader range of proscribed sexual behaviors placed individuals at risk not only of psychological and moral harm, but also of physical harm from sexually transmitted infections (STIs).

Some opponents of abstinence-only education, for their part, began questioning and even taunting the administration, demanding to know just how broad was the range of noncoital behaviors that it was willing to condemn.

At about the same time, media reports—fueled by anecdote rather than evidence—began to create something of a social panic by claiming that oral sex was virtually rampant among affluent, suburban middle school students.   more »

• The 110th Congress will not only continue the Iraq war but increase the numbers of troops engaged in the operation. Because of the strong public opposition to the war conscription will not be considered.

Accordingly, the Armed Services Committees of both houses will propose legislation to boost recruitment. The house will expand the age range for military recruitment to 12 to 59.

The youngest and the oldest -- those below 14 and above 55 -- will not serve in a combat zone, but will replace troops in Germany, Japan or other bases around the world.

• The Senate will tap a superabundant source of cannon fodder -- the penitentiaries! The 2.2 million potential recruits include such made-to-order troops for the front lines as murderers, rapists, vandals, etc., all guaranteed to fight with reckless abandon.   more »

Since the US invasion of Iraq, by one widely reported estimate, as many as 655,000 Iraqis have been killed, in air strikes, by bombs, in death-squad executions and generalized civil strife. Now, add one by hanging: the kangaroo-court trial and execution of Saddam Hussein.

In life, even in prison, he inspired many loyalists to fight for his legacy; but his death is certain to spark even fiercer violence, not just from his remaining lieutenants and senior Baath party officials but throughout the broader Sunni Arab community in Iraq.

It pushes any hope of Sunni-Shiite reconciliation farther away, inflames passions on both sides and solidifies the image of the United States in Iraq as a bloodthirsty occupier.

Convicted of war crimes by a puppet Iraqi regime that dispensed with niceties such as evidence and rebuttal, Saddam Hussein was blamed by his fiercest critics--such as Kanan Makiya, author of Republic of Fear, and others with strong motive to inflate the scale of Saddam's crimes--of killing 300,000 Iraqis during his thirty-five-year rule (1968-2003).

In less than four years, George W. Bush has more than doubled that, with no end in sight. As war criminals go, Bush wins hands down.   more »

The Friedman lesson for the President appears to be, "It's not your fault, sir, it's theirs. You and I weren't wrong about the war; they weren't ready for the gift you were giving them."

I have often been disturbed by Friedman's dismissive tone coupled with his weird obsession with all things Arab. With this piece my reaction went from disturbed to outrage.

As I read through Friedman's 15 rules for dealing with "Middle Easterners" (as he terms the objects of his condescension), I wondered, "what if an Arab had written a comparable piece about Jews?" The reaction would have been swift and justifiable condemnation.

European imperialists wrote this way about their subject natives. And whites, at one time, wrote much the same was about blacks. But, this is the 21st century and here, in the "enlightened" New York Times, is bigotry and condescension on display - passing as enlightened analysis.   more »

In the desert, just across the Mediterranean sea, is a vast source of energy that holds the promise of a carbon-free, nuclear-free electrical future for the whole of Europe, if not the world.

We are not talking about the vast oil and gas deposits underneath Algeria and Libya, or uranium for nuclear plants, but something far simpler - the sun. And in vast quantities: every year it pours down the equivalent of 1.5m barrels of oil of energy for every square kilometre.

Most people in the West think of solar power as a few panels on the roof of a house producing hot water or a bit of electricity.

Two German scientists, Dr Gerhard Knies and Dr Franz Trieb, calculate that covering just 0.5% of the world's hot deserts with a technology called concentrated solar power (CSP) would provide the world's entire electricity needs, with the technology also providing desalinated water to desert regions as a valuable byproduct, as well as air conditioning for nearby cities.   more »

US economic dominance was not enough for two segments of the American neoconservative movement, consisting of ultra-nationalists (Cheney, Rumsfeld and Bolton) and the Ziocons (Wolfowitz, Feith and Perle), a term coined by James Petras.

They wanted the US to take advantage of the unipolar moment – opened up by the demise of Soviet Union – to make its political dominance irreversible.

There were two components to the neocon plan. First, they began to work on plans to extend US military superiority to a point where no potential rival would dare to challenge its hegemony in any region of the world.

In violation of international laws, the US would enforce its total hegemony by waging preventive wars against any country that acted contrary to its economic or political interests.   more »