Delegate Challenge…

Wis. Democrats oust delegate over McCain support

By RYAN J. FOLEY, Associated Press Writer Fri Jul 25, 5:07 PM ET

MADISON, Wis. – Wisconsin Democrats on Friday ousted a delegate to their national convention for saying she would vote for Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain in November

Embarrassed by a defection in their ranks, the Wisconsin Democratic Party’s administrative committee voted 23-0 to strip Debra Bartoshevich of her status as a delegate to the Denver convention next month.

Bartoshevich was elected by party activists as a pledged delegate for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton from the 1st Congressional District in southeastern Wisconsin. But after Clinton dropped out of the race, Bartoshevich told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel she would support McCain over Democratic Sen. Barack Obama.

The June comments from Bartoshevich, a 41-year-old nurse and mother of two from Waterford, were seized on by the McCain campaign as evidence of his appeal to former Clinton backers. Within hours, the Wisconsin Democratic Party passed a resolution at its state convention supporting a challenge of her credentials with the national committee.

The party’s rules and bylaws committee said the state party could decide the matter, clearing the way for Friday’s vote. Committee members agreed Bartoshevich had lost her privilege to be one of the state’s 92 Democratic delegates because of her comments and affiliation with “Citizens for McCain,” a branch of his campaign designed to recruit independents and Democrats.

During a teleconference before the vote, Bartoshevich asked the committee to allow her to attend the convention as a delegate for Clinton. She noted that she donated her time and money to Clinton and still believes the former first lady is the best candidate.

She said she made the comments backing McCain during an emotional time shortly after Clinton dropped out of the race and as a first-time delegate was unfamiliar with party rules. She said she had not decided who to ultimately support and was still open to backing Obama if he won her over. “I’d like to go to the convention and listen,” she said.

She said her sister was a McCain supporter who signed her up for “Citizens for McCain.”

“You reached right back and hugged them. I have a problem with that,” committee member Dottie LeClaire responded.

The committee accepted a challenge that stated Bartoshevich violated rules requiring delegates to support the party’s nominee and be faithful to the party. Bartoshevich will be replaced by Marilyn Nemeth of Racine, who finished second to Bartoshevich in the delegate election earlier this year.

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1) Given our discussions on delegates, do you think the state party should have tossed out that delegate? Why or why not?

2) Should a person who supported one candidate in a primary automatically support the winner if is not their candidate? Why or why not? Why did the party expect this person to do that?

3) Are conventions really a place to go to decide to vote for a candidate? How might this be an inappropriate attitude to have at a convention?

Do Parent’s Love Lives Affect The Dating Rules They Set For Their Children?

No assignment on this one, but kind of an interesting read if you’re interested…

From the Wall Street Journal:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121434807055501441.html?mod=yhoofront

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What the Dating Rules You Set
For Your Kids Say About You

Researchers have known for a while that closeness to parents is linked to less risky sexual behavior by teenagers.

Now, they’re turning their microscopes on the dating rules parents set, with some surprising results: The limits you place on your teenager’s dating may say more about your own love life than your teen’s needs. Also, parents’ satisfaction with their own life roles shapes the kind of rules they set.

Parents who are involved in stable romantic relationships with spouses or partners tend more than other parents to set rules limiting teen dating behavior, such as curfews, minimum ages for dating, limits on places teens can go and explicit rules against sexual activity, says a new study of 169 parents and 102 teens by Stephanie Madsen, an associate professor of psychology at Maryland’s McDaniel College. While the reason isn’t clear, the author suggests these parents may hold more conservative beliefs in general; many of the rules involved sexuality.

Ironically, in what other researchers have called the “Romeo and Juliet” effect, such rules may tend to drive teenage lovers closer; teens of these parents reported closer, more positive relationships.

Parents who are unhappy, dissatisfied or insecure in love, however, go beyond limits and try to dictate or control how their teens treat their dates, the study found. These parents try to influence their kids to value certain things and act in specific ways. Parents would tell teens to open doors for dates, “act like a gentleman” (or a lady), or resist letting a date “walk all over” them. The goal may be to launch their teens on a romantic path happier than their own, Dr. Madsen says. But kids often regard this advice as intrusive, and again, it tended to have the opposite effect. The teens affected weren’t particularly content with their dating relationships.

The research rings true to me. As a single working parent of two, my love life is near the bottom of my list of priorities. Like the parents in the study, I find myself prescribing behaviors to my teenage son, like “be a gentleman” — advice he listens to respectfully. But, I suspect, he keeps his own counsel.

A better way for parents to expend their energy, Dr. Madsen says, is to emphasize constant, warm oversight over just setting rules. She calls this setting “supervisory” rules, or keeping up a free flow of communication without intruding too much. This means asking teens to disclose plans, check in by phone and inform parents when plans change. In such cases, the adults were focusing on their roles as parents rather than their own love lives. These parents also had the healthiest relationships with their children.

Debby Shulman and her husband, Allen, fall into this category. When their 16-year-old son dates, says the Northbrook, Ill., mother, “he can’t leave one place without calling and letting me know where he’s going.” She knows his friends’ parents and checks in with them now and then. “It’s a great way to keep tabs on the kids without making them feel you’re breathing down their necks.” Dr. Madsen says supervisory parents also may arrange to meet their teen’s dates and sometimes the date’s parents.

Some 64% of parents in Dr. Madsen’s study had dating rules for their 17-to-19-year-olds, the age of the teens in the study. The rest generally either had teens who weren’t dating or gave their teens autonomy in dating. Marni Kan of the research group RTI International says many parents may be setting rules in response to research showing parental supervision and communication with teens protects against risky sexual behavior.

More recent studies have fine-tuned those findings by drawing a line between supervision and meddling: Parental oversight seems to have positive effects mainly when teens volunteer information about themselves — suggesting a trusting, respectful relationship is the real foundation for the gains.

95 Year Old Nazi sought for trial

Ever since World War II and the initial trials of Nazi war Criminal at Nuremburg, many European Nations and Jewish groups have attempted to hunt down these Nazi and try them for the war crimes they are suspected of. Now that there are so few remaining, and those that are still alive are aging quickly, there is a renewed push to bring them to justice

Austria accused of shielding Nazi suspect

By WILLIAM J. KOLE, Associated Press WriterFri Jun 20, 12:39 PM ET

Milivoj Asner caused a stir just by showing up at a soccer game: The frail 95-year-old is ranked No. 4 on a leading list of most-wanted Nazi war crimes suspects.

Now Austria’s most notorious far-right politician, former Freedom Party leader Joerg Haider, has touched off an even bigger scandal by praising Asner as a “treasured” neighbor who should be allowed to live out his days in peace.

“This could only happen in Austria,” Efraim Zuroff, chief Nazi hunter for the Simon Wiesenthal Center, told The Associated Press.

Officials in southern Austria, where Asner lives openly despite being indicted for crimes against humanity in his native Croatia, contend the retired police chief is mentally unfit for questioning, extradition or trial.

But Asner’s recent appearance at a “fan zone” near his home in the southern city of Klagenfurt — where he reportedly looked fit and lucid as he and his wife watched Croatia play in the European Championship — has some questioning whether this alpine country with a tortured World War II past is shielding him from justice.

Asner stands accused of persecuting hundreds of Jews, Serbs and Gypsies and dispatching them to their deaths in WWII-era Croatia, which was ruled by a Nazi puppet regime.

“Austria has the habit of closing its eyes,” renowned Nazi hunter Serge Klarsfeld told French television Thursday. The Asner case, he said, is fresh proof the country is a safe haven for suspected war criminals.

Haider’s impassioned defense of Asner has only reinforced that impression.

Haider, who brought the Freedom Party into Austria’s coalition government in 2000 on a platform tinged with anti-Semitic and xenophobic undertones, is the governor of the province of Carinthia where Asner lives.

“He’s lived peacefully among us for years, and he should be able to live out the twilight of his life with us,” Haider told the newspaper Der Standard this week.

“This is a nice family. We really treasure this family,” he was quoted as saying.

Such praise is unconscionable, said Zuroff, who has been pressuring the Austrian government to arrest Asner and hand him over for trial as part of “Operation: Last Chance” — an effort to bring aging top suspects to justice before they die.

“This is clearly a reflection of the political atmosphere which exists in Austria and which in certain circles is extremely sympathetic to suspected Nazi war criminals,” Zuroff said in a telephone interview from Israel.

Asner, he added, “has never showed any remorse for actions which affected the fates of hundreds of people.”

Asner’s indictment alleges he actively enforced racist laws while police chief in the eastern Croatian town of Pozega in 1941-42, and sent his victims to a Croat-run death camp. The Wiesenthal Center ranks him No. 4 on a list of 10 top Nazi fugitives.

Asner has maintained his innocence, and in an interview aired Thursday on state-run Croatian television, declared: “My conscience is clear.”

“I am ready to come to face the court in Croatia, but I’m not in the best health,” Asner said, adding that if the judges were honest, “they would have to acquit me.”

He acknowledged he participated in deportations of Serbs, Jews and Gypsies, but insisted the deportees were sent to their homelands and not to camps.

Austria’s Justice Ministry said it is reviewing a request from Zuroff to make a fresh assessment of Asner’s physical and mental state and prove he is suffering from dementia as experts have ruled in the past.

Without a new evaluation declaring him physically and mentally fit, “our hands are tied,” said ministry spokesman Thomas Geiblinger.

Croatia demanded Asner’s extradition in 2005, the year he was formally indicted. But the Austrians demurred, first on the grounds that he was an Austrian citizen. Later, they claimed the statute of limitations for his alleged crimes had expired.

Austria eventually conceded that Asner was not an Austrian citizen, which normally would have opened the way for his extradition. But in 2006, independent experts declared Asner mentally unfit, and they did so again in April.

Among those challenging that assessment is Gerhard Tuschla, a reporter for Austrian public broadcaster ORF. Tuschla said he recently interviewed Asner, who began living under the name George Aschner after fleeing Croatia for Austria in 1945, and found him to be “a jovial, whiskey-drinking old man.”

“We suspected from the very beginning that he might have been faking it — making a specific effort to appear as unfit as possible,” Zuroff said. “That might be easier to fake than physical issues.”

Austrian authorities have angrily denied they are giving Asner safe haven.

Manfred Herrnhofer, a federal court spokesman in Klagenfurt, said officials are merely trying to comply with complicated extradition guidelines “and in no way are protecting a suspected Nazi war criminal.”

“Austria is a constitutional state, not Guantanamo. We don’t toss our principles overboard for political gain,” he said.

The affair comes just as Austria takes over the chairmanship of the Task Force for International Cooperation on Holocaust Education, Remembrance and Research — a 25-nation panel dedicated to maintaining the memory of Nazi atrocities.

Members who met in the western city of Linz this week credited Austria with making huge strides toward coming to terms with its complicity in crimes after Hitler’s Germany annexed the country in 1938.

“I think that Austria is quite advanced in a number of areas where other countries are still struggling,” said Yehuda Bauer, a Holocaust scholar at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem who serves as the task force’s honorary chairman.

Yet right-wing politicians like Haider still exert influence, and efforts to establish an institute in Vienna to house the archives of Wiesenthal, who died in 2005, have bogged down in a dispute over funding.

Austria needs to take Asner into custody and hand him over if it wants to demonstrate it has truly overcome its dark past, Zuroff said.

“The Austrians have totally mishandled this,” he said. “I really can’t think of a worse way to remember the Holocaust than to not arrest a leading Nazi war crimes suspect.”

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Associated Press Writer Veronika Oleksyn contributed to this report from Linz, Austria.
DIscussion Questions: (Answer at least one in complete sentences and thoughts)

1)Why do you think that the authorities are going after a 95 man nearly 60 years after the end of WWII?

2) Should the Austrian Government be forced to handover this suspect? Why or why not?

Women in Al Qaida

Al-Qaida’s stance on women sparks extremist debate

Not that Islamic Extremist Terrorist groups ever had credibility, but an interesting viewpoint comes across in this AP article. As news reports begin to circulate about women becoming sucide bombers, the leaders of Al-Qaida have refused to acknowledge that women are even members of their group. Muslim Women should take this message seriously – that the way of extremism is the way of further degradation, humiliation and lack of a female voice in the Arab world.

Al-Qaida’s stance on women sparks extremist debate

By LAUREN FRAYER, Associated Press Writer

Muslim extremist women are challenging al-Qaida’s refusal to include — or at least acknowledge — women in its ranks, in an emotional debate that gives rare insight into the gender conflicts lurking beneath one of the strictest strains of Islam.

In response to a female questioner, al-Qaida No. 2 leader Ayman Al-Zawahri said in April that the terrorist group does not have women. A woman’s role, he said on the Internet audio recording, is limited to caring for the homes and children of al-Qaida fighters.

His remarks have since prompted an outcry from fundamentalist women, who are fighting or pleading for the right to be terrorists. The statements have also created some confusion, because in fact suicide bombings by women seem to be on the rise, at least within the Iraq branch of al-Qaida.

A’eeda Dahsheh is a Palestinian mother of four in Lebanon who said she supports al-Zawahri and has chosen to raise children at home as her form of jihad. However, she said, she also supports any woman who chooses instead to take part in terror attacks.

Another woman signed a more than 2,000-word essay of protest online as Rabeebat al-Silah, Arabic for “Companion of Weapons.”

“How many times have I wished I were a man … When Sheikh Ayman al-Zawahri said there are no women in al-Qaida, he saddened and hurt me,” wrote “Companion of Weapons,” who said she listened to the speech 10 times. “I felt that my heart was about to explode in my chest…I am powerless.”

Such postings have appeared anonymously on discussion forums of Web sites that host videos from top al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden. While the most popular site requires names and passwords, many people use only nicknames, making their identities and locations impossible to verify.

However, groups that monitor such sites say the postings appear credible because of the knowledge and passion they betray. Many appear to represent computer-literate women arguing in the most modern of venues — the Internet — for rights within a feudal version of Islam.

“Women were very disappointed because what al-Zawahri said is not what’s happening today in the Middle East, especially in Iraq or in Palestinian groups,” said Rita Katz, director of the SITE Intelligence Group, an organization that monitors militant Web sites. “Suicide operations are being carried out by women, who play an important role in jihad.”

It’s not clear how far women play a role in al-Qaida because of the group’s amorphous nature.

Terrorism experts believe there are no women in the core leadership ranks around bin Laden and al-Zawahri. But beyond that core, al-Qaida is really a movement with loosely linked offshoots in various countries and sympathizers who may not play a direct role. Women are clearly among these sympathizers, and some are part of the offshoot groups.

In the Iraq branch, for example, women have carried out or attempted at least 20 suicide bombings since 2003. Al-Qaida members suspected of training women to use suicide belts were captured in Iraq at least three times last year, the U.S. military has said.

Hamas, another militant group, is open about using women fighters and disagrees with al-Qaida’s stated stance. At least 11 Palestinian women have launched suicide attacks in recent years.

“A lot of the girls I speak to … want to carry weapons. They live with this great frustration and oppression,” said Huda Naim, a prominent women’s leader, Hamas member and Palestinian lawmaker in Gaza. “We don’t have a special militant wing for women … but that doesn’t mean that we strip women of the right to go to jihad.”

Al-Zawahri’s remarks show the fine line al-Qaida walks in terms of public relations. In a modern Arab world where women work even in some conservative countries, al-Qaida’s attitude could hurt its efforts to win over the public at large. On the other hand, noted SITE director Katz, al-Zawahri has to consider that many al-Qaida supporters, such as the Taliban, do not believe women should play a military role in jihad.

Al-Zawahri’s comments came in a two-hour audio recording posted on an Islamic militant Web site, where he answered hundreds of questions sent in by al-Qaida sympathizers. He praised the wives of mujahedeen, or holy warriors. He also said a Muslim woman should “be ready for any service the mujahedeen need from her,” but advised against traveling to a war front like Afghanistan without a male guardian.

Al-Zawahri’s stance might stem from personal history, as well as religious beliefs. His first wife and at least two of their six children were killed in a U.S. airstrike in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar in 2001. He later accused the U.S. of intentionally targeting women and children in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“I say to you … (I have) tasted the bitterness of American brutality: my favorite wife’s chest was crushed by a concrete ceiling,” he wrote in a 2005 letter.

Al-Zawahri’s question-and-answer campaign is one sign of al-Qaida’s sophistication in using the Web to keep in touch with its popular base, even while its leaders remain in hiding. However, the Internet has also given those disenfranchised by al-Qaida — in this case, women — a voice they never had before.

The Internet is the only “breathing space” for women who are often shrouded in black veils and confined to their homes, “Ossama2001″ wrote. She said al-Zawahri’s words “opened old wounds” and pleaded with God to liberate women so they can participate in holy war.

Another woman, Umm Farouq, or mother of Farouq, wrote: “I use my pen and words, my honest emotions … Jihad is not exclusive to men.”

Such women are al-Qaida sympathizers who would not feel comfortable expressing themselves with men or others outside their circles, said Dia’a Rashwan, an expert on terrorism and Islamic movements at the Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies in Cairo.

“The Internet gives them the ideal place to write their ideas, while they’re hidden far from the world,” he said.

Men have also responded to al-Zawahri’s remarks. One male Internet poster named Hassan al-Saif asked: “Does our sheik mean that there is no need to use women in our current jihad? Why can we not use them?”

He was in the minority. Dozens of postings were signed by men who agreed with al-Zawahri that women should stick to supporting men and raising children according to militant Islam.

Women bent on becoming militants have at least one place to turn to. A niche magazine called “al-Khansaa” — named for a female poet in pre-Islamic Arabia who wrote lamentations for two brothers killed in battle — has popped up online. The magazine is published by a group that calls itself the “women’s information office in the Arab peninsula,” and its contents include articles on women’s terrorist training camps, according to SITE.

Its first issue, with a hot pink cover and gold embossed lettering, appeared in August 2004 with the lead article “Biography of the Female Mujahedeen.”

The article read:

“We will stand, covered by our veils and wrapped in our robes, weapons in hand, our children in our laps, with the Quran and the Sunna (sayings) of the Prophet of Allah directing and guiding us.”

Taken From:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080531/ap_on_re_mi_ea/al_qaida_s_women&printer=1;_ylt=AkTQH0KniYN7_StqXzEt8bsUewgF

Discussion Questions: (Answer at least one)

1. Why have women taken a larger role in Al Qaida? What does this say about the changes that have taken place in the organization?

2. Setting aside your potential distaste of Al Qaida (as well as mine), would this organization benefit by a more deliberate inclusion of women? Would this fundamentally change the way that the group operates?

3. Can Al Qaida continue to operate without including women more deliberately? Why or why not?