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A BREAKTHROUGH
After Weeks of Wrangling, U.N. Unanimously OKs Iraq Resolution

By the Associated Press

UNITED NATIONS (11/08/2002)--The U.N. Security Council unanimously approved a tough new Iraq resolution today, forcing Saddam Hussein to disarm or face "serious consequences" that would almost certainly mean war.

The vote followed eight weeks of negotiations--and it is seen as a victory for the U.S., which worked with Britain to draft the resolution. Shortly after the resolution was approved, President Bush heralded the unanimous vote, promising "the severest consequences" for Iraqi President Saddam Hussein if he fails a final test to comply.

Speaking outside the White House today, Bush warned Iraq that the "game of cheat and retreat," as he put it, will "no longer be tolerated."

He said if there's any delay or defiance by Iraq, it will be a "clear signal" that the Iraqis have decided not to comply.

Bush also congratulated the Security Council for meeting an an "important responsibility." He said the world had "come together" to say Iraq will not be allowed to have chemical, biological or nuclear weapons.

During the past two months, other Security Council members, specifically Russia and France, had objected to language that they believed would automatically trigger a military strike on Iraq--but they were apparently satisfied by changes that were made.

"This resolution is designed to test Iraq's intentions," said U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. John Negroponte, speaking after the vote.

Strong Message to Baghdad

The broad support sends a strong message to Baghdad that the Security Council-- divided for years over Iraq--expects full compliance with all U.N. resolutions.

"Iraq has a new opportunity to comply with all these relevant resolutions of the Security Council. I urge the Iraqi leadership for [the] sake of its own people...to seize this opportunity and thereby begin to end the isolation and suffering of the Iraqi people," said U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan.

Iraqi television did not broadcast the Security Council meeting live and there was no immediate reaction from Baghdad.

‘No Hidden Triggers’

A breakthrough in negotiations came Thursday when France and the United States reached a critical agreement to address French concerns that the resolution could automatically trigger an attack on Iraq.

Negroponte said the resolution gives international inspectors broad authority to look for Iraq's weapons of mass destruction--to check "anyone, anywhere, anytime."

There are "no hidden triggers" for the automatic use of force against Iraq if it does not comply with the resolution, Negroponte said, emphasizing that should the inspectors report Iraqi violations, the matter would return to the Security Council. The resolution, he said, is "a new powerful mandate" for the weapons inspectors.

President Bush, who spurred the council to action with a Sept. 12 speech to the U.N. General Assembly, said it was up to Saddam to cooperate with inspectors.

"When this resolution passes, I will be able to say that the United Nations has recognized the threat and now we're going to work together to disarm him," Bush said Thursday. "And he must be cooperative in the disarmament."

Blix Preparing to Send Advance Team

Chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix was preparing to send an advance team to Iraq within two weeks, after a nearly four-year absence.

While the United States made some major concessions to critics, the final draft still meets the Bush administration's key demands: toughening U.N. weapons inspections and leaving the United States free to take military action against Iraq if inspectors say Baghdad isn't complying.

At the same time, it gives Saddam "a final opportunity" to cooperate with weapons inspectors, holds out the possibility of lifting 12-year-old sanctions imposed after Iraq's 1990 invasion of Kuwait, and reaffirms the country's sovereignty.

Read the full story with a photo and related story links at ABC News.

 

GREEN PARTY IS NOT EXACTLY FEELING BLUE
It and other minor parties experience unusual success

By Kevin Yamamura, Sacramento Bee Capitol Bureau

CALIFORNIA (11/07/2002)-- Gov. Gray Davis wasn't the only gubernatorial candidate anxious to see the election returns Tuesday night from San Francisco.

Peter Camejo also expected big gains in the City by the Bay. And while the Green Party contender didn't win there -- Davis received 66 percent -- he did manage to place second, a major feat for someone whose "third-party" label implies he should finish otherwise.

Camejo, 62, edged out GOP candidate Bill Simon in San Francisco by 16 percent to 15 percent, capping an evening in which he won double-digit support in nine Northern California counties, including Yolo.

Although uncounted absentee ballots could change the final standings, the Green Party entrant finished election night with 5.3 percent of the vote statewide, the largest third-party gubernatorial showing in the state since Independent Edward Clark took 5.5 percent in 1978.

It was a trend that continued throughout the statewide ballot, as Green Party candidates finished third in six other down-ticket contests. Laura Wells was the party's top vote-getter statewide, receiving 5.8 percent in the state controller's race.

Third-party contenders as a whole enjoyed unusually high support, reflected by the fact that six statewide office winners, from the governor to the treasurer, received less than 50 percent of the vote.

"The first thing that struck me, when I first looked at the results, was how significant the vote was for minor-party candidates in all races," said pollster Mark DiCamillo. "And these were for unknowns. ... I've never seen such a high proportion for minor-party candidates."

DiCamillo said voter dislike of Davis and Simon may have afflicted the down-ticket major-party competitors, in essence creating negative coattails.

"The disaffection for both candidates at the top of the ballot did not serve their parties' interests well," he said.

In an election year in which Simon and Davis found it difficult to connect with voters, Camejo reached out to minorities and the traditional Green Party base. He campaigned heavily in liberal pockets throughout Northern California, on issues such as farmworker rights and peace in the Middle East.

Camejo's 5.3 percent represented a significant improvement over the Green Party's last gubernatorial candidate, Dan Hamburg, who won 1.3 percent in 1998. Camejo attributed his jump largely to increased media attention, a peace platform in a time of possible war against Iraq and Ralph Nader's success as a presidential candidate in 2000.

"It's pretty much established that the Green Party has become the third party in California," Camejo said. "It's not that there aren't other parties, but the Green Party by far is the largest. You just don't see any other party getting 16 percent of a county."

Locally, Camejo received 7 percent support in Sacramento County, compared to 41 percent for Davis and 46 percent for Simon. The Green Party candidate won 11 percent in Yolo County, including 15 percent in the leftward-leaning city of Davis.

Some Democrats quietly feared that Camejo would take away votes from the incumbent governor and possibly turn the election in Simon's favor, but Davis wound up winning by 5 percentage points.

Still, some political analysts believe the Green Party can claim victory because it has gained a significant footing in the Bay Area. The party already claims one San Francisco County supervisor and won its second San Francisco school board seat Tuesday night.

"This Green Party phenomenon is not going to go away in California," said Bill Carrick, a Democratic political consultant. "This is a long-term problem. Particularly in Northern California, there are a lot of voters, both environmentally sensitive voters but also typical liberal Bay Area voters, who vote for the Green Party as a form of protest against more moderate Democrats."

His own client, Steve Westly, faces a fight to the finish against Republican Tom McClintock that remains undecided in part because of Wells' unusually strong performance.

See the original article with photos at the Sacramento Bee.

 

HOW DID WE SURVIVE?
A generational perspective

From fsfranni@pacifier.com via NewHampshireHomeless

Looking back, it's hard to believe that we have lived as long as we have.

As children, we would ride in cars with no seat belts or air bags. Riding in the back of a pickup truck on a warm day was always a special treat.

Our baby cribs were painted with bright colored lead based paint. We often chewed on the crib, ingesting the paint.

We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors, or cabinets, and when we rode our bikes we had no helmets. We drank water from the garden hose and not from a bottle.

We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back when the streetlights came on. No one was able to reach us all day. We played dodge ball and sometimes the ball would really hurt. We played with toy guns, cowboys and Indians, army, cops and robbers, and used our fingers to simulate guns when the toy ones or the BB gun was not available.

We ate cupcakes, bread and butter, and drank sugared soda, but we were never overweight; we were always outside playing.

Little League had tryouts and not everyone made the team. Those who didn't, had to learn to deal with disappointment. Some students weren't as smart as others or didn't work hard, so they failed a grade and were held back to repeat the same grade. That generation produced some of the greatest risk-takers and problem solvers. We had the freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned how to deal with it all.

Almost all of us would have rather gone swimming in the lake instead of a pristine pool (talk about boring), the term cell phone would have conjured up a phone in a jail cell, and a pager was the school PA system.

We all took gym, not PE... and risked permanent injury with a pair of high-top Ked's (only worn in gym) instead of having cross-training athletic shoes with air-cushion soles and built-in light reflectors. I can't recall any injuries but they must have happened because they tell us how much safer we are now.

Flunking gym was not an option... even for stupid kids! I guess PE must be much harder than gym.

Every year, someone taught the whole school a lesson by running in the halls with leather soles on linoleum tile and hitting the wet spot. How much better off would we be today if we only knew we could have sued the school system. Speaking of school, we all said prayers and the pledge (amazing we aren't all brain dead from that), and staying in detention after school caught all sorts of negative attention for about the next two weeks. We must have had horribly damaged psyches. Schools didn't offer 14-year-olds an abortion or condoms (we wouldn't have known what either was anyway) but they did give us a couple of baby aspirin and cough syrup if we started getting the sniffles.

What an archaic health system we had then. Remember school nurses? Ours wore a hat and everything.

I thought that I was supposed to accomplish something before I was allowed to be proud of myself. I just can't recall how bored we must have been without computers, PlayStation, Nintendo, X-box or 270 digital cable TV stations.

I must be repressing that memory as I try to rationalize through the denial of the dangers which could have befallen us as we trekked off each day about a mile down the road to some guy's vacant 20, built forts out of branches and pieces of plywood, made trails, and fought over who got to be the Lone Ranger.

What was that property owner thinking, letting us play on that lot! He should have been locked up for not putting up a fence around the property, complete with a self-closing gate and an infrared intruder alarm. Oh yeah.....and where was the Benadryl and sterilization kit when I got that bee sting? I could have been killed!

We played "king of the hill" on piles of gravel left on vacant construction sites and when we got hurt, Mom pulled out the 48-cent bottle of mercurochrome and then we got butt-whooped. Now it's a trip to the emergency room, followed by a 10-day dose of a $49 bottle of antibiotics and then Mom calls the attorney to sue the contractor for leaving a horribly vicious pile of gravel where it was such a threat.

We didn't act up at the neighbor's house either, because if we did, we got butt-whooped (physical abuse) there too... and then we got butt-whooped again when we got home.

Mom invited the door-to-door salesman inside for coffee, kids choked down the dust from the gravel driveway while playing with Tonka trucks (remember why Tonka trucks were made tough... it wasn't so that they could take the rough berber in the family room), and Dad drove a car with leaded gas.

Our music had to be left inside when we went out to play and I am sure that I nearly exhausted my imagination a couple of times when we went on two-week vacations. I should probably sue the folks now for the danger they put us in when we all slept in campgrounds in the family tent.

Summers were spent behind the push lawnmower and I didn't even know that mowers came with motors until I was 13 and we got one without an automatic blade-stop or an auto-drive.

How sick were my parents?

Of course my parents weren't the only psychos. I recall Donny Reynolds from next door coming over and doing his tricks on the front stoop just before he fell off. Little did his Mom know that she could have owned our house. Instead she picked him up and swatted him for being such a goof. It was a neighborhood run amok.

To top it off, not a single person I knew had ever been told that they were from a dysfunctional family. How could we possibly have known that we needed to get into group therapy and anger management classes? We were obviously so duped by so many societal ills, that we didn't even notice that the entire country wasn't taking Prozac!

How did we survive?

 

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