When good people do something

The world is a dangerous place to live, not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don't do anything about it. ~ Albert Einstein

Stories like these make it all worth it...

DRIVER'S RAMPAGE

Amid chaos, many rushed to aid victims

Bizarre episode's bright side is those who put selves at risk

- C.W. Nevius
Thursday, August 31, 2006

It would be easy to see the tale of a crazed SUV driver who mowed down more than a dozen pedestrians Tuesday in San Francisco and Fremont as another outburst of seemingly random violence in a scary world. But there's another side to the story.

It is about the people on the streets of San Francisco of every race, ethnicity and background who rushed out of offices, apartments and cars to help the pedestrians struck down. They were mechanics from Hayes Auto Repair, nurses from UCSF, a drywall installer from the Western Addition and many others we will never know.

They could have stood on the sidewalk, rubbernecking. These days that could be the expected response. But instead, they ran into the street, tended to the injured and even pulled victims to safety.

It isn't enough to say they didn't have to help. Many of them knew they were actually putting themselves in harm's way by leaving the sidewalk. We heard the story over and over on Wednesday.

Leticia Rentillo, whose apartment is on the corner of Steiner and Sutter, says she and another man were debating about whether to move 78-year-old Richard Hilkert, who was lying in the street after being run down, when onlookers began to shout.

"Get out of the street!'' they yelled. "He's coming back.''

And the driver did. Hilkert was pulled to safety behind a light pole as the driver roared down the street again, swerving over toward the bus stop where a small crowd was huddled and accelerating down the street when he realized that a light post and concrete trashcan would protect the group.

"He was trolling for people," says UCSF nurse practitioner Natalie Olsen, who ran out of a Thai restaurant to tend to the injured.

Earlier in that intersection, he'd hit Leon Stevens with such force that Stevens was blown out of one of his shoes and was knocked about 30 feet down the street. And then, as he lay in the street, the car ran over him.

Emanuel Gowan, a drywall installer and 29-year resident, was standing by his truck when the black SUV slammed into Stevens in the crosswalk.

"I was totally in shock," says Gowan. "I could not believe what was going on in our neighborhood."

The gentrified, tree-lined area with upscale restaurants and blooming flowers in pots is certainly not the place where neighbors would expect such senseless violence. Usually, the biggest problem there is a stolen iPod from a car break-in.

But the residents came through like champs, as they did in other neighborhoods. Olsen and her good friend Tammy Rodvelt, both nurses at UCSF Comprehensive Cancer Center at Mt. Zion, ran out of the Neecha Thai restaurant, where they were eating lunch, to help when they saw that Hilkert was down.

Rodvelt went to Hilkert, while Olsen discovered Stevens crawling on the sidewalk, dazed and in a state of panic.

"I have to get away,'' Stevens told Olsen. "He's coming back. He's going to kill me.''

Olsen was able to calm him down and check for bleeding and head trauma. (He had neither, but his hip and legs were badly hurt.) Someone arrived with a blanket, and others, like Rentillo, offered the use of their building for shelter.

"When I looked down and saw (Stevens) in the street,'' Rentillo said, "my initial thought was that there were already people there and he'd be fine. But then I thought, they might have been walking by. I live here. There really is a strong sense of community here.''

Gowan, the drywaller, asked Hilkert if he was all right.

"I've had better days,'' Hilkert replied.

As all that was happening, the black SUV continued to roar up and down the streets. The driver blasted through the intersection of Steiner and Sutter at least three times, apparently looking for more victims.

"It is,'' Olsen says, "the kind of story that when you relay it to someone, they say, 'How can you live in that hellhole?' ''

Because, they say, if these are the only stories you hear from the streets of the city, you are missing the point.

"You really do get the sense that people are looking out for each other,'' says Rentillo. "Which is nice.''

Gowan had never met Hilkert in his life, but he was on the scene the minute the former book-shop owner was hit, helping to get him out of the street.

"I was worried about getting hit,'' he says, "but he was a gentleman who needed help.''

"You know how you always want to be the kind of person that does that right thing?'' says Olsen. "Well (Tuesday), we were.''

It kind of makes you proud to live here.

Elephant memory

Egads. How insanely sweet and sad is this?

Wis. Zoo Euthanizes 46-Year-Old Elephant

By Associated Press
12:09 PM PDT, September 1, 2006

MILWAUKEE -- Lucy the elephant, believed to be the world's fourth-oldest African elephant in captivity, was euthanized Friday morning after staffers found her lying down in her stall, the Milwaukee County Zoo said.

The medical staff had recently decided that if the 46-year-old elephant were found lying down again, she would be euthanized, spokeswoman Jennifer Diliberti said.

In June, Lucy became ill and was unable to stand up in the African exhibit yard. A crane was brought in to lift the 9,000-pound animal to her feet; she struggled for a few days after that but improved.

Diliberti said Lucy was found lying down in late July but was able to get up on her own.

Brittany, Lucy's companion and the only other elephant at the zoo, was allowed in Lucy's stall after she was euthanized so she could grieve, Diliberti said.

She said the zoo hopes to get another elephant soon as a companion for Brittany, who is in her late 20s. Lucy spent 44 years at the zoo.

"It's just so sad but she had a good, long life here so that's good," Diliberti said.

We built this nuclear fear

Have I mention seeing patterns?

U.S. built major Iranian nuclear facility

By Sam Roe
Tribune staff reporter
August 23, 2006, 9:56 PM EDT

In the heart of Tehran sits one of Iran's most important nuclear
facilities, a dome-shaped building where scientists have conducted secret
experiments that could help the country build atomic bombs. It was
provided to the Iranians by the United States.

That's worth a repeat:::

It was provided to the Iranians by the United States.

The Tehran Research Reactor represents a little-known aspect of the
international uproar over the country's alleged weapons program. Not only
did the U.S. provide the reactor in the 1960s as part of a Cold War
strategy, America also supplied the weapons-grade uranium needed to power
the facility--fuel that remains in Iran and could be used to help make
nuclear arms.

As the U.S. and other countries wrestle with Iran's refusal this week
to curb its nuclear capabilities, an examination of the Tehran facility
sheds light on the degree to which the United States has been complicit
in Iran developing those capabilities.

Though the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations'
nuclear watchdog, has found no proof Iran is building a bomb, the agency
says the country has repeatedly concealed its nuclear activities from
inspectors. And some of these activities have taken place in the
U.S.-supplied reactor, IAEA records show, including experiments with uranium, a
key material in the production of nuclear weapons.
U.S. officials point to these activities as evidence Iran is trying to
construct nuclear arms, but they do not publicly mention that the work
has taken place in a U.S.-supplied facility.

The U.S. provided the reactor when America was eager to prop up the
shah, who also was aligned against the Soviet Union at the time. After the
Islamic revolution toppled the shah in 1979, the reactor became a
reminder that in geopolitics, today's ally can become tomorrow's threat.

Also missing from the current debate over Iran's nuclear intentions is
emerging evidence that its research program may be more troubled than
previously known.

The Bush administration has portrayed the program as a sophisticated
operation that has skillfully hid its true mission of making the bomb.
But in the case of the Tehran Research Reactor, a study by a top Iranian
scientist suggests otherwise.

After a serious accident in 2001 at the U.S.-supplied reactor, the
scientist concluded that poor quality control at the facility was a
"chronic disease." Problems included carelessness, sloppy bookkeeping and a
staff so poorly trained that workers had a weak understanding of "the
most basic and simple principles of physics and mathematics," according to
the study, presented at an international nuclear conference in 2004 in
France.

The Iranian scientist, Morteza Gharib, told the Tribune that management
of the facility had improved in the past three years. When asked
whether sloppiness at the reactor might have contributed to some of Iran's
troubles with the IAEA, Gharib wrote in an email: "It is always possible,
for any system, to commit infractions inadvertently due to lack of
proper bookkeeping."

Jeffrey Lewis, an arms control expert at Harvard University, said
bungling might be to blame for some infractions, but the Iranians clearly
concealed major nuclear activities, such as building a facility to enrich
uranium. "This was not an oversight," he said.

Another overlooked concern about the Tehran reactor is the
weapons-grade fuel the U.S. provided Iran in the 1960s--about 10 pounds of highly
enriched uranium, the most valuable material to bomb makers. It is still
at the reactor and susceptible to theft, U.S. scientists familiar with
the situation said.

This uranium has already been burned in the reactor, but the "spent
fuel" is still highly enriched and could be used in a bomb. Normally,
spent fuel is so radioactive that terrorists cannot handle it without
causing themselves great harm. But the spent fuel in Iran has sat in storage
for so long that it is probably no longer highly radioactive and could
be handled easily, the U.S. scientists say.

The fuel is about one-fifth the amount needed to make a nuclear weapon,
but experts said it could be combined with other material to construct
a bomb.

In an interview, Linton Brooks, head of the National Nuclear Security
Administration, an arm of the U.S. Energy Department, said the U.S.
would like to retrieve the U.S.-supplied fuel, but the top priority has
been to get Iran to suspend its enrichment efforts.

Under the international Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, Iran has the
right to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes. But the UN Security
Council, saying Iran has failed to prove it is not building weapons, has
demanded Iran stop enrichment by Aug. 31 or face economic sanctions. This
week, Iran offered "serious talks" on its nuclear activities but did
not promise to stop enriching uranium.

While Brooks downplayed the proliferation risk of the Tehran Research
Reactor, some experts believe the facility is so important to Iran's
nuclear program that it would be targeted in a U.S. military strike on
Iran.

"Its purpose is mainly advanced training and producing a cadre of
nuclear engineers," said Paul Rogers, an arms control expert at the
University of Bradford in England. "So it's one of the facilities that is
really quite significant."

Exactly how significant is unclear. The Tehran reactor provided the
foundation for Iran's nuclear program, but that program now consists of
numerous other facilities as well. And over the years, Iran has obtained
nuclear aid from various sources, including Russia and the black market
network of Pakistani scientist A.Q. Khan. China also has supplied
research reactors.

Most of the world's nuclear research reactors, which train students or
produce radioisotopes for medicine, fall under IAEA restrictions.
Agency inspectors have visited the Tehran facility several times in recent
years. Iran says its nuclear program, including the U.S.-supplied
reactor, is solely for peaceful purposes.

When arguing for tough penalties on Iran, U.S. officials have pointed
to activities in the U.S.-supplied reactor.

In 2004, John Bolton, the State Department's senior arms control
official at the time, told a congressional panel that Iran's covert nuclear
weapons program was marked by a "two-decades-long record of obfuscation
and deceit." He cited experiments in the reactor as part of the
evidence.

Several months later, Bolton told another congressional panel that Iran
had received technological assistance from companies in Russia, China
and North Korea in an attempt to develop missiles capable of delivering
nuclear weapons.

Countries that provide Iran such weapons-of-mass-destruction technology
"ought to know better," said Bolton, now the American ambassador to the
United Nations. If foreign companies aid Iran, the U.S. "will impose
economic burdens and brand them as proliferators."

What Bolton didn't note: America's role in Iran's nuclear program.

That role has complicated U.S. efforts to gain support for greater
restrictions on Iran. For instance, the U.S. wants Russia to take a firmer
stance on Iran's nuclear program and has been critical of Russian
efforts to help Iran build a nuclear power plant.

But Russia has noted the U.S. had no problem providing Iran a research
reactor and highly enriched uranium when it was politically expedient.

Those who defend the U.S. say it should not be faulted for aiding Iran
in the past. "It's not the international community's fault for helping
Iran exercise its rights in the past" to develop nuclear energy for
peaceful uses, said Lewis, the Harvard expert. "It's Iran's fault for not
living up to its safeguards obligation."

Iran's nuclear program can be traced to the Cold War era, when the U.S.
provided nuclear technology to its allies, including Iran. In 1953, the
CIA secretly helped overthrow Iran's democratically elected prime
minister and restore the shah of Iran to power.

In the 1960s, the U.S. provided Iran its first nuclear research
reactor. Despite Iran's enormous oil reserves, the shah wanted to build
numerous nuclear power reactors, which American and other Western companies
planned to supply.

Yet today, the U.S. argues that Iran does not need to develop nuclear
power because of those same petroleum resources.

In 1979, when the shah was overthrown and U.S. hostages taken, America
and Iran became enemies; Iran's nuclear power program stalled.

The U.S. refused to give Iran any more highly enriched uranium for its
reactor, and Iran eventually obtained new fuel from Argentina. This
fuel is too low in enrichment to be used in weapons but powerful enough to
run the facility. To this day, the reactor runs on this kind of fuel
from Argentina.

In papers filed with the IAEA, Iran states that before the 1979
revolution it gave the U.S. $2 million for additional highly enriched uranium
fuel for its American-supplied reactor but the U.S. neither provided
the fuel nor returned the $2 million.

In 2003, shortly after IAEA officials inspected the U.S.-supplied
reactor, Iran acknowledged it had conducted experiments on uranium in the
reactor between 1988 and 1992--activities that had not been previously
reported to the agency.

The IAEA rebuked Iran for failing to report these experiments and
expressed concern about other activities in the reactor. These included
tests involving the production of polonium-210, a radioisotope useful in
nuclear batteries but also in nuclear weapons.

Inspectors also were curious why some uranium was missing from two
small cylinders. Iran said the uranium probably leaked when the cylinders
were stored under the roof of the research reactor, where heat in the
summer reached 131 degrees Fahrenheit.

When inspectors took samples from under the roof, they indeed found
uranium particles. But inspectors did not think Iran's explanation about
leaking cylinders was plausible.

Eventually, Iran acknowledged the missing uranium had been used in key
enrichment tests in another facility.

See story below the one below

Seems like a theme...

Katherine Harris: Separation of church and state 'a lie'

"...if you're not electing Christians, then in essence you are going to legislate sin," she says in interview.

By Jim Stratton
Orlando Sentinel
August 25, 2006, 11:30 AM EDT

U.S. Rep. Katherine Harris said this week that the separation of church
state is "a lie," that God did not intend for the United States to be a
"nation of secular laws" and that a failure to elect Christians to
political office will allow lawmaking bodies to "legislate sin."

In an interview with the Florida Baptist Witness, the weekly journal of
the Florida Baptist State Convention, Harris described her faith,
saying it animates "everything I do," including her votes in Congress.

She warned that if voters do not send Christians to office, they risk
creating a government that is doomed to fail.

"If you are not electing Christians, tried and true, under public
scrutiny and pressure, if you're not electing Christians, then in essence
you are going to legislate sin," she told interviewers, citing abortion
and gay marriage as two examples of that sin.

Doing so, she said, "will take western civilization, indeed other
nations because people look to our country as one nation as under God and
whenever we legislate sin and we say abortion is permissible and we say
gay unions are permissible, then average citizens who are not
Christians, because they don't know better, we are leading them astray and it's
wrong..."

Harris said that Americans "have internalized" the "lie" that church
and state must not be mixed. In reality, she said, "we have to have the
faithful in government" because that is God's will.

Separating religion and politics is "so wrong because God is the one
who chooses our rulers," Harris said. "And if we are the ones not
actively involved in electing those godly men and women," then "we're going to
have a nation of secular laws. That's not what our founding fathers
intended and that's (sic) certainly isn't what God intended."

Harris, a Republican from Longboat Key, is running against Orlando
attorney Will McBride, retired Adm. LeRoy Collins and developer Peter
Monroe in the GOP Senate primary. McBride and Collins also did interviews
with Florida Baptist Witness. Monroe did not.

Both Collins and McBride, a lay minister and son of a pastor, say their
faith is an important part of their lives, but Harris' responses most
directly tie her role as a policy maker to her religious beliefs

Copyright (c) 2006, South Florida Sun-Sentinel

When fascism comes...

Funny, the word that comes to my mind is Christian Fascism...

The new GOP buzzword: Fascism

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush in recent days has recast the global war on terror into a "war against Islamic fascism." Fascism, in fact, seems to be the new buzz word for Republicans in an election season dominated by an unpopular war in Iraq.

Bush used the term earlier this month in talking about the arrest of suspected terrorists in Britain, and spoke of "Islamic fascists" in a later speech in Green Bay, Wisconsin. Spokesman Tony Snow has used variations on the phrase at White House press briefings.

Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pennsylvania, in a tough re-election fight, drew parallels on Monday between World War II and the current war against "Islamic fascism," saying they both require fighting a common foe in multiple countries. It's a phrase Santorum has been using for months.

And Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld on Tuesday took it a step further in a speech to an American Legion convention in Salt Lake City, accusing critics of the administration's Iraq and anti-terrorism policies of trying to appease "a new type of fascism."

White House aides and outside Republican strategists said the new description is an attempt to more clearly identify the ideology that motivates many organized terrorist groups, representing a shift in emphasis from the general to the specific.

"I think it's an appropriate definition of the war that we're in," said GOP pollster Ed Goeas. "I think it's effective in that it definitively defines the enemy in a way that we can't because they're not in uniforms."

The right term?
But Muslim groups have cried foul. Bush's use of the phrase "contributes to a rising level of hostility to Islam and the American-Muslim community," complained Parvez Ahmed, chairman of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

Conservative commentators have long talked about "Islamo-fascism," and Bush's phrase was a slightly toned-down variation on that theme.

Dennis Ross, a Mideast adviser to both the first Bush and Clinton administrations and now the director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said he would have chosen different words.

"The `war on terror' has always been a misnomer, because terrorism is an instrument, it's not an ideology. So I would always have preferred it to be called the `war with radical Islam,' not with Islam but with `radical Islam,"' Ross said.

Why even mention the religion? "Because that's who they are," Ross said. "Fascism had a certain definition. Whether they meet this or not, one thing is clear: They're radical. They represent a completely radical and intolerant interpretation of Islam."

While "fascism" once referred to the rigid nationalistic one-party dictatorship first instituted in Italy, it has "been used very loosely in all kinds of ways for a long time," said Wayne Fields, a specialist in presidential rhetoric at Washington University in St. Louis.

"Typically, the Bush administration finds its vocabulary someplace in the middle ground of popular culture. It seems to me that they're trying to find something that resonates, without any effort to really define what they mean," Fields said.

Memories of World War II
Pollster Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Research Center, said the "fascist" label may evoke comparisons to World War II and remind Americans of the lack of personal freedoms in fundamentalist countries. "But this could only affect public opinion on the margins," he said.

"Having called these people `evildoers,' fascism is just a new wrinkle," he said.

The tactic recalled the first President Bush's 1990 likening of Iraq's Saddam Hussein to Adolf Hitler.

"I caught hell on this comparison of Saddam to Hitler, with critics accusing me of personalizing the crisis, but I still feel it was an appropriate one," the elder Bush later wrote in a memoir.

It was one of the few times the younger Bush has followed his father's path on Iraq.

Charles Black, a longtime GOP consultant with close ties to both the first Bush administration and the current White House, said branding Islamic extremists as fascists is apt.

"It helps dramatize what we're up against. They are not just some ragtag terrorists. They are people with a plan to take over the world and eliminate everybody except them," Black said.

Stephen J. Wayne, a professor of government at Georgetown University, suggested White House strategists "probably had a focus group and they found the word `fascist.'

"Most people are against fascists of whatever form. By definition, fascists are bad. If you're going to demonize, you might as well use the toughest words you can," Wayne said.

After all, the hard-line Iranian newspaper Jomhuri Eskami did just that in an editorial last week blasting Bush's "Islamic fascism" phrase. It called Bush a "21st century Hitler" and British Prime Minister Tony Blair a "21st century Mussolini."

Copyright 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Fascism should more properly be called corporatism, since it is the merger of state and corporate power.~Giovanni Gentile.