NYC digging up old dirt to avoid paying first WTC first responder claims

So this is how NYC treats their 9/11 heroes? Digging through old medical records in order to avoid paying for first responder medical claims.

New York Post Updated: Sun., Oct. 25, 2009, 1:23 PM home
Toxic WTC tactic

By SUSAN EDELMAN
October 25, 2009

The city is digging into the history of a hero firefighter’s sexually transmitted disease from nearly a decade before 9/11 as part of its legal battle against World Trade Center rescue and recovery workers.

City lawyers grilled a doctor who treated FDNY veteran Raymond Hauber for an STD in 1992. Hauber died in August 2007, at age 47, of esophageal cancer.

The FDNY’s medical board found the firefighter’s cancer was job-related — including his round-the-clock search for victims at Ground Zero — and declared him disabled in the line of duty.

Last October, Mayor Bloomberg signed a law renaming a Staten Island boulevard “Firefighter Raymond W. Hauber Way.”

A lawsuit by Hauber’s family seeking compensation for his death is one of the first of 9,500 toxic-injury claims set for trial next May, and the legal maneuvers have already heated up.

In hardball tactics, lawyers for the city have hired private investigators to snoop on rescue and recovery workers. Law Department spokeswoman Connie Pankratz would not comment, saying, “That’s part of our legal strategy.”

In Hauber’s case, the city subpoenaed Staten Island internist Nader Attia, who last saw the firefighter five years before 9/11. He did not treat Hauber for the gastrointestinal disease GERD, which led to his cancer in 2006.

The firefighter told Attia he was “worried about syphilis” after breaking up with a girlfriend.

Two years later, the bachelor told Attia he feared a gonorrhea infection from another woman. Tests showed he had chlamydia, a common sex-related disease, and not syphilis or gonorrhea.

The doctor testified that the STD was not connected to Hauber’s gastrointestinal disease.

City lawyers also asked Attia about Hauber’s case of jock itch, pimples, an upset stomach from barbecue ribs, and “obesity.” Hauber was an avid outdoorsman who loved to cook.

“This is a desperate grab at straws, throwing mud and trying to confuse things,” said Hauber family attorney Andrew Carboy.

“It makes us feel betrayed,” said Hauber’s brother, Paul.

He recalled that Raymond, who had the day off on 9/11, was at an auto shop when the first plane hit. Raymond raced to his firehouse, Engine Co. 284 in Dyker Heights, Brooklyn, to join the rescue effort, taking only nap breaks the first week, Paul said.

“They’re trying to dig up dirt so they can walk away from it,” he said.

The city says it must probe whether post-9/11 illnesses were triggered by any pre-existing problems to avoid unwarranted payments.

At the same time, the city has filed a motion to block the testimony of FDNY medical-board doctors who assessed Hauber, claiming their deliberations are “privileged.”

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NY Post

52 children rescued in nationwide sex trafficking sweep

Oh this is going to be interesting. I can’t wait till they start naming names.

Federal officials arrest almost 700, including 60 pimps, in a three-day crackdown on child prostitution. The youngest victim was 10, authorities say. Two children are rescued in Riverside.

Oct 26, 2009

Reporting from Washington – Federal officials rescued 52 children and arrested nearly 700 people over the past three days in a nationwide crackdown on child prostitution.

Almost 1,600 agents and officers took part in the raids, which followed investigations in 36 cities, according to the FBI, local law enforcement agencies and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Included in the arrests were 60 pimps, according to the FBI and local police officials.

Authorities say the youngest victim was 10 years old.

In the Los Angeles area, two children were rescued in Riverside and four adults were arrested, said Laura Eimiller, a spokeswoman for the FBI. Four alleged customers of child prostitutes were arrested in Orange County.

“It is repugnant that children in these times could be subjected to the great pain, suffering, and indignity of being forced into sexual slavery for someone else’s profit,” Asst. Atty. Gen. Lanny A. Breuer said in a statement. He added that the latest raids show that “the scourge of child prostitution still exists on the streets of our cities.”

The sweep, dubbed Operation Cross Country, is part of the Innocence Lost National Initiative, started in 2003 to address child sex trafficking in the U.S.

To date, the initiative has rescued nearly 900 children, led to the conviction of 510 pimps, madams and their associates, and seized $3.1 million in assets, according to the FBI.

“We’re having an enormous impact on this business,” said Ernie Allen, president of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

Most of the children recovered through the project have been girls, who usually become victims of traffickers around the age of 12, Allen said.

He estimated that 100,000 children are still involved in sex trafficking in the U.S., adding that the problem is growing partly because of the recession.

LA Times

Albert Gonzalez – From snitch to cyber thief

Remember the students in So FL who hacked the electronic voting machines?

Somehow I get the feeling this story is related?

Miami man indicted in largest-ever scheme to steal credit card numbers

A Miami native who is one of the nation’s most well-known hackers is charged with stealing 130 million credit card numbers — a case prosecutors are calling the largest ever.

BY ROB BARRY

Albert Gonzalez, the Miami cyberthief and former government informant who broke records last year in the largest credit card fraud case in U.S. history, shattered his own mark this week, prosecutors say. The 28-year-old hacker who launched his career cruising Dixie Highway with a laptop to break into the security systems of box stores was indicted Monday in New Jersey in an elaborate scheme to steal more than 130 million credit cards — reselling them on the worldwide black market.

Known in dark corners of cyberspace as “soupnazi,” the Miami native was charged along with two unnamed defendants with targeting customers at convenience store giant 7-Eleven and supermarket chain Hannaford Brothers. The defendants also are accused of infiltrating the computers of a national credit card processing company.

Prosecutors said Gonzalez, who is already in jail awaiting trial in the earlier case, used a sophisticated hacking technique known as “SQL injection” to break into computer systems and steal credit and debit card records, sending the data to California, Illinois, Latvia, the Netherlands and Ukraine.

The data would then be printed on fresh cards and offered to thousands of buyers in cafes and nightclubs around the world.

Prosecutors said the case is the largest credit and debit card data breach “ever charged in the United States.”

PREVIOUS INCIDENTS

The indictment represents the latest brush with the law for Gonzalez, a Cuban American high school graduate who became known to local hackers for his extraordinary computer skills and ability to navigate vast streams of data.

In 2003, he avoided a conviction for credit card theft in New Jersey by agreeing to become an informant for the U.S. Secret Service. But federal agents discovered in 2007 that the man they were using as a key operative was actually carrying out his own secret venture to steal millions of credit cards.

Armed with a laptop and a magnetic antenna, Gonzalez cruised along busy U.S. 1 in Miami tapping into the wireless networks of major retailers, including TJ Maxx, BJ’s WholeSale Club, OfficeMax and Barnes & Noble, and stealing the records of sales made with a credit card, prosecutors say.

He was indicted along with 10 others in federal court in Boston for stealing more than 40 million credit cards — the largest heist of its kind at the time.

Along the way, he amassed more than $1.65 million, a Miami condo, a BMW, a currency counter and a Glock 27. Prosecutors also said Gonzalez buried $1 million in the back yard of his parents’ house in southwest Miami-Dade.

Two others from Miami charged in the case, Christopher Scott and Damon Patrick Toey, have since pleaded guilty.

SOPHISTICATED NETWORK

Since then, prosecutors say they discovered that those weren’t the only computer crimes he was carrying out.

Gonzalez had also launched a plan to reap even more customer accounts in 2006 by tapping directly into a credit card processing computers that handle millions of transactions a day.

The alleged hackers picked their targets by looking at the list of Fortune 500 companies and going to stores to find out what type of payment systems were in place, court records say.

“This is historically the largest incident ever. You combine these two together, and this guy is like the Tony Montana of credit card theft,” said Sean Arries, a security expert with Terremark, Inc. in Miami.

“It absolutely blows me away by the size of it.”

`A SELECT GROUP’

Investigators say Gonzalez and his network are among the most advanced they’ve encountered.

“We’re not seeing a huge array of hackers capable of doing this, but rather a more select group, [and that] demonstrates that there is a level of sophistication involved in these hacks,” said Assistant U.S. Attorney Erez Liebermann of the Justice Department’s New Jersey district office.

Gonzalez’s Miami attorney, Rene Palomino Jr., did not respond to requests for an interview.

No one answered the phone at Gonzalez’s childhood home just west of Coral Gables on Monday evening.

Neighbors said they haven’t seen Gonzalez for years, but that he grew up in the area, attending Coral Terrace Elementary School and South Miami Senior High.

“He was a really, really good kid,” said one neighbor, who did not want to be identified.

Beyond the criminal case, Arries said the cases involving Gonzalez have already forced companies to better protect their customers’ financial data and pay millions in settlements.

“It’s the companies responsibility to secure this sort of information and they were doing a really bad job at it,” Arries said. “They left themselves vulnerable.”

Miami Herald

From snitch to cyberthief of the century

BY SCOTT HIAASEN, ROB BARRY, NIRVI SHAH AND MICHAEL SALLAH
shiaasen@MiamiHerald.com
On May 7, 2008, federal agents swept through Miami-Dade looking for evidence that one of their best informants was also one of the world’s biggest cyberthieves.

Searching three homes and a luxury hotel room in South Beach, they found 14 computers, $400,000 in cash, six firearms, expensive jewelry — and even stumbled on a marijuana grow house.

What they missed was the most compelling evidence in Albert Gonzalez’s life of crime: a three-foot drum buried in his parents’ backyard stuffed with $1.1 million wrapped in plastic bags. The money — like so many other pieces of evidence — wasn’t unearthed until this year by federal agents still unraveling a case that continues to confound even the most seasoned cyberspace investigators.

Federal agents announced after last year’s raids that Gonzalez had orchestrated the largest credit-card heist in the nation’s history — 41 million cards stolen from Americans. But last week, they came back with even more evidence to show Gonzalez had masterminded a fraud three times as large.

Though Gonzalez has been in jail since the raids last year, investigators are still finding new evidence traced to the years the Miami native was ripping off millions of credit cards — while on the Secret Service’s payroll.

For years, Gonzalez was able to hide his activities — skills honed since he was in grade school — using fake identities and encrypted hard drives on computers scattered across the globe.

Even Gonzalez’s lawyer says his client was a step ahead of investigators, including his own federal handlers. “I don’t think the government was prepared to deal with a kid like Albert,” said Rene Palomino Jr.

The charges against Gonzalez — including last week’s indictment — exposed major security breakdowns at credit-card processors and dealt an embarrassing blow to federal agents paying him to help catch other cyberthieves.

The case also offers a glimpse into the intricate network of cybercriminals who reach across continents to buy and sell vast amounts of credit-card data on the worldwide black market.

“This is a magnitude we’ve never seen before by an individual or a small group of individuals,” said Scott Mitic, CEO of TrustedID, an identity-theft protection company in California. “There’s no doubt that this is the heist of the century.”

Though he began hacking for thrills at an early age, Gonzalez’s first real foray into cybercrime began shortly after he graduated from South Miami High School in 1999 and moved to New York.

For a brief time the young man with self-taught skills held a job with a computer company, but soon found he could earn more money by emptying ATM machines with stolen debit cards, said his former lawyer, David Zapp.

“It was a necessity type thing,” said Zapp, who practices in New York. “He had a nice job, then he lost it.”

It wasn’t long before his exploits got him in trouble: Federal agents in New Jersey arrested Gonzalez in 2003 on charges of having more than 15 fake credit and debit cards.

Instead of pressing the case in court, agents for the U.S. Secret Service decided to put his skills to work as a snitch, helping the agency combat a rapidly developing crime: large-scale identity theft.

Because businesses were storing credit-card numbers on computers exposed to the Internet, systems were being breached more often than ever before.

Zapp said agents were not only impressed with Gonzalez’s computer skills, but his demeanor as well. “This guy was not a sullen or street kind of guy. You could tell he had been brought up well. I think most people who dealt with him at that stage in his life felt very protective and fatherly of him.”

Using the screen name CumbaJohnny, Gonzalez helped the Secret Service monitor people on the website known as “ShadowCrew,” a notorious message board where hackers traded software, techniques and stolen data.

The Secret Service wasn’t alone in watching ShadowCrew. The FBI was also snooping on the site. Former agent E.J. Hilbert said he remembers CumbaJohnny, but never knew the hacker was working for the government.

At one point, Hilbert said, he even made a deal to buy stolen information from CumbaJohnny. “I was the bag man,” he said.

After a year, Gonzalez’s work as a snitch paid dividends: 19 ShadowCrew members were indicted in New Jersey in 2004, accused of stealing 1.5 million credit-card accounts.

For Gonzalez, whose father arrived in Florida on a homemade raft from Cuba in the 1970s, the success brought praise from home.

“His parents were very proud of him: He was working for the government,” Palomino said. “He was finally on his way.”

The following month, Gonzalez was allowed by his handlers to move back to Miami, where he bought a condo and soon founded a computer consulting service, records show.

During the next four years, he shuttled between Florida and the New York area, while continuing to work for the Secret Service.

But unknown to agents, Gonzalez was slowly rising to become the leader of a criminal ring far more ambitious than the one he helped bring down, prosecutors say.

Drawing together a loose band of hackers in the U.S. and credit-card traffickers from Eastern Europe, Gonzalez built a criminal enterprise with the ability to move vast amounts of data around the world, indictments say.

He nicknamed his plan “Operation Get Rich or Die Tryin’.” And get rich he did.

Prosecutors say he amassed at least $1.6 million while living in luxury hotels in Miami and New York, spending wads of cash on a lifestyle far removed from his working-class roots.

He threw himself a $75,000 birthday party on South Beach and once complained about having to count $340,000 by hand after his money-counter broke, court records show.

The money came from a variety of sources.

In one scheme, Gonzalez and others cruised up and down U.S. 1 in SUVs loaded with laptops and antennas designed to sweep up credit-card numbers from outside retail stores. Their targets: Barnes & Noble, TJ Maxx, BJ’s Wholesale Club, Office Max, Sports Authority and more.

The stolen data was shipped to a team of people scattered around the country who used the information to make phony credit and debit cards for buying goods and getting cash, investigators say.

One New York man sent more than $300,000 in cash to Gonzalez from fraudulent ATM transactions in California; another accomplice was arrested outside Philadelphia with 80 bogus cards and a duffel bag filled with $208,000 in cash, records show.

But Gonzalez’s methods went beyond prowling the streets in search of big-box stores.

He also targeted two corporate headquarters and a major credit-card processing center, reaping far greater rewards.

By using a method known as “SQL injection” and installing custom programs to crack into computer networks, he devoured reams of credit-card numbers — enough to fill 50 billion typed pages.

The numbers would then be sold overseas with the help of Maksym Yastremskiy, a notorious data-broker from Ukraine. For more than a year, federal agents hunted Yastremskiy from Dubai to Turkey, where he was arrested in July 2007.

When investigators seized Yastremskiy’s computer, they found more than 600 messages between him and Gonzalez — some discussing a “sniffer” program to steal credit-card numbers.

They also found that Yastremskiy paid Gonzalez $400,000 through a website called e-gold, which purports to create an Internet currency system backed with gold.

With Yastremskiy in custody in Turkey, Secret Service agents focused their attention on Gonzalez.

In May 2008, armed with search warrants, agents found their former informant in a room at the chic National Hotel in Miami Beach with two laptops, $22,000 and a Glock pistol.

They also searched Gonzalez’s parents’ home, his condo, and the Palmetto Bay home of an accomplice, where they found 75 marijuana plants, prosecutors say.

Within months of the raids, Gonzalez was indicted in the first record-breaking case. Then, this past week, prosecutors announced yet another record-shattering indictment against Gonzalez, accusing him of stealing an additional 130 million credit card numbers. He is being held in jail in Brooklyn.

In all, he has been accused of stealing at least 170 million credit-card numbers over four years — including at least two years when he was acting as a Secret Service informant, said Palomino.

The case underscores the dangers of using confidential informants in criminal investigations — often the only way to gain information from tightly knit criminal groups.

“The problem with these guys is that they constantly need to be monitored and controlled,” said James Wedick, a former FBI agent who investigated the Mafia and other criminal organizations. “People don’t realize that they are some of the most dangerous people to work with.”

The Secret Service would not comment on Gonzalez’s role as an informant or discuss details of his case.

At least a dozen witnesses have already agreed to plead guilty and testify against Gonzalez, who faces a potential life sentence if convicted.

Palomino describes Gonzalez as remorseful, saying he hoped to reach a plea bargain before the newest indictment was announced Monday.

His parents have also come under scrutiny from federal agents: In court papers, prosecutors claim they helped their son launder money, though they were never charged. Palomino insists they have been cleared of any wrongdoing, saying the ordeal “has taken an extreme toll on them.”

No matter how the criminal case is resolved, their son will be infamous in the world of cybercrime, Palomino said.

“Albert Gonzalez is going to go down as one of the best people as far as hacking in the country. Probably the best in our lifetime,” the lawyer said. “Imagine if Albert had kept on a straight trail what he could have done.”

Miami Herald

Bernie Kerik jailed for trying to taint jury pool

Oh, how the mighty have fallen. Bernard Kerik was Bush’s first nominee for head of Homeland Security and he pretended to be a hero on 9/11, while real hero’s were dying because of his incompetence.

Judge revokes Bernard Kerik bail, sends ex-NYPD top cop to jail for trying to taint jury pool

October 20th 2009
A judge tossed former NYPD commissioner Bernard Kerik in jail for trying to taint the jury pool via the Internet Tuesday – days before the top cop’s corruption trial starts.

Federal Judge Stephen Robinson approved a prosecution request to revoke Kerik’s bail after they discovered non-public documents placed on a Web site affiliated with Kerik’s defense.

“I fear he has a toxic combination: self-minded focus and arrogance,” the White Plains federal judge said.

That combination shows Kerik feels “the end justifies the means” and that “the rulings of the court are inconvenient and are to be ignored,” Robinson said.

Kerik was led away by U.S. marshals after removing his belt, tie and shoelaces, standard procedure for all prisoners.

The former top cop likely will be housed in the Metropolitan Corrections Center, which is located right next to One Police Plaza – the NYPD headquarters where Kerik once reigned.

Kerik was out on bail and set to go on trial next week on charges of going to bat for a mob-linked contractor who secretly paid for his apartment renovation.

The bail revocation request came after Robinson earlier warned Kerik to monitor the contents of Web sites affiliated with his defense.

Prosecutors say his supporters were putting up distorted information designed to curry favor with a potential jury pool.

Prosecutors told the judge Monday the pro-Kerik Web campaign was continuing and asked the judge to revoke Kerik’s bail.

NY Daily News

Gilead reports $114 million in earnings from sales of the flu therapy Tamiflu,

Looks like the swine flu campaign is paying off.

BOSTON (MarketWatch) – Gilead Sciences reported higher third-quarter earnings late Tuesday, its performance stoked by strong sales of its HIV drugs and dramatically increased royalty revenue from its influenza medication Tamiflu.

The anti-viral drug developer /quotes/comstock/15*!gild/quotes/nls/gild (GILD 45.07, -1.05, -2.28%) posted net income of $673 million, or 72 cents a share, compared with $496 million, or 52 cents a share, for the same period in 2008. Excluding various items, Gilead would have reported adjusted earnings of 78 cents versus 55 cents.

Revenue for the quarter rose 31% to $1.8 billion.

Gilead’s results easily topped Wall Street’s expectations. A poll of analysts by FactSet Research pegged Gilead at posting earnings per share of 69 cents, on revenue of $1.76 billion.

The company said sales of the HIV combination therapy Truvada, which contains the drug Gilead Viread, jumped 13% to $621 million. Atripla, which also contains Viread, saw sales leap 42% to $605 million.

Gilead also said it took in $114 million from sales of the flu therapy Tamiflu, up from only $9 million last year. Sales of the product have been swift this year due to the on-going influenza pandemic. Gilead receives royalties on Tamiflu, which is marketed by Swiss drugmaker Roche. /quotes/comstock/11i!rhhby (RHHB.Y 40.07, -0.58, -1.43%)

Market Watch

Iraqi Institute to study mass graves in Iraq

Two new departments to study mass graves in Iraq

By Anwar Umaa

Azzaman, October 7, 2009

Iraq’s Institute for Forensic Medicine has set up two new departments where students are to be specialized in the study and investigation of mass graves, the institute’s dean said.

Dr. Munjid Salahudeen said the departments were needed due to the large number of Iraqis buried anonymously in these graves.

There are two types of mass graves in Iraq. The first were a feature of the former leader Saddam Hussein where tens of thousands of people were killed and buried en masse.

The second type of mass graves came into being under U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq. While Salahudeen made no mention of such graves but many of them have been exposed in the past three years.

“There are seven stages which are a characteristic of mass graves and they range from the time the news about them spreads to the discovery of bones and their DNA tests,” he said.

He said Iraq could not continue relying on foreign assistance in this regard as such investigations “cost a lot of money.”

He said his institute, in coordination with the Ministry of Human Rights, has so far found mass graves in the southern provinces of Basra and Missan.

But of particular interest is the fate of the nearly 600 Kuwaitis who were taken prisoner during the 1991 Gulf war by the former regime and then killed and buried in different mass graves.

Salahudeen said Iraqi teams have so far identified 320 of the missing Kuwaitis “but we still have no information on the others.”

A joint Iraqi and Kuwait forensic team is working to identify the rest, he said.

Azzaman

UN vote sends Gaza war report to Security Council

GENEVA — The U.N. Human Rights Council voted Friday to endorse a Gaza war crimes report and send it to the Security Council, possibly setting up international prosecution of Israelis and Palestinians accused of war crimes.

The council approved a Palestinian-backed resolution after two days of debate on the Goldstone report, which it had commissioned following the Dec. 27-Jan. 18 conflict in which almost 1,400 Palestinians and 13 Israelis were killed.

The resolution passed 25-6, with mostly developing countries in favor and the United States and five European countries — Hungary, Italy, Netherlands, Slovakia and Ukraine _opposing.

Eleven mostly European and African countries abstained, while Britain, France and three other members of the 47-nation body declined to vote. Russia and China, two permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, were among those voting yes.

“The clock on the report starts now,” said Ibrahim Khraishi, the Palestinian Authority’s U.N. ambassador in Geneva, adding that he hoped the Security Council in New York would take up the report.

If the report is considered by the 15-member Security Council, the U.S. is likely to use its veto to block any call for getting the International Criminal Court involved in the dispute over Gaza or taking action against Israel.

The 575-page report, compiled by an expert group led by Judge Richard Goldstone, concluded that Israel used disproportionate force, deliberately targeted civilians, used Palestinians as human shields and destroyed civilian infrastructure during its incursion into the Gaza Strip to root out Palestinian rocket squads.

It also accused Palestinian armed groups including Hamas of deliberately targeting civilians and trying to spread terror through rocket attacks on southern Israel.

In Ramallah, a spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, welcomed Friday’s vote.

“What is important now is to translate words into deeds in order to protect our people in the future from any new aggression,” Nabil Abu Rdeneh said.

Israel and the U.S. called the Goldstone report “flawed” because it ignored Israel’s right to defend its people from Palestinian rocket fire. They warned that the vote could jeopardize Middle East peace prospects.

Israel’s foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, also said endorsing the report could have far-reaching consequences.

“Whoever votes in favor of endorsing the report must understand that next time it will be the soldiers and officers of NATO in Afghanistan, and then Russian soldiers and officers in Chechnya,” Lieberman said late Thursday.

U.S. diplomat Douglas M. Griffiths told the council that Washington was disappointed with the outcome of the vote.

“We’re focused on moving forward in the peace process and we feel that this is a distraction from that,” Griffiths told The Associated Press.

The resolution — which also condemns recent Israeli actions in the Palestinian territories and East Jerusalem — endorses the report’s recommendation that both sides in the conflict should show the Security Council within six months that they are carrying out credible investigations into alleged Gaza abuses. If they are not, the matter should then be referred to prosecutors at the International Criminal Court in The Hague, Netherlands.

ICC prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo had no comment Friday on a possible war crimes probe into the Gaza conflict.

Prosecutors are analyzing a declaration in January in which the Palestinian Authority accepted the court’s authority over territory it controls — something only sovereign nations are allowed to do.

Palestinians filed their recognition in the hope that if the court accepts it, Moreno Ocampo would then have jurisdiction to launch an investigation into war crimes committed by both sides during the Gaza conflict even without an order from the Security Council.

Israel does not accept the court’s jurisdiction.

The U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, urged both sides earlier this week “to carry out impartial, independent, prompt and effective investigations into reported violations of human rights and humanitarian law.”

AP

Steve Earle – Jerusalem

Taliban claim they pose no threat to west

Actually, the Taliban never were a threat to the west, except when they tried to crack down on the opium farmers.

Statement on known Taliban website may indicate that leaders are retreating from alliance with al-Qaida

8 October 2009

The Taliban have issued an English-language statement claiming they pose no international threat – a move that will fuel the debate among American and European policymakers over whether the hardline Afghan insurgent group can be split away from the international militants of al-Qaida.

The statement came amid reports that Barack Obama’s military advisers are shifting the focus of US operations to target al-Qaida in Pakistan while downplaying the threat posed to America by the Taliban.

Published on the eighth anniversary of the first coalition strikes on Afghanistan in 2001, the Taliban communique declares the militants’ aim to be the “obtainment of independence and establishment of an Islamic system”.

“We did not have any agenda to harm other countries including Europe nor we have such agenda today,” said the statement, which was posted on a known Taliban website on Wednesday.

“Still, if you want to turn the country of the proud and pious Afghans into a colony, then know that we have an unwavering determination and have braced for a prolonged war.”

Though the statement’s authenticity is yet to be confirmed, the claim would appear to be evidence at the very least that the Taliban are seeking to influence the strategic argument in the west.

The statements may equally be a sign that senior Taliban figures are reassessing the movement’s longstanding – though often tense – alliance with al-Qaida.

In a recent exchange of emails with the Guardian, a Taliban spokesman avoided questions on the relationship between the Afghan insurgents and Osama bin Laden. The spokesman said the Taliban closely monitored public opinion in western Europe and policy arguments in the US.

The Guardian

The problem of evil

The problem of evil

Published: Sunday | September 27, 2009

Ian Boyne

Approximately 75 million killed in the two world wars. Six million Jews slaughtered in Nazi Germany. One million brutally killed in Pol Pot’s Cambodia. multiple hundreds of thousands slain horrifically in the Rwanda Massacre. Where was the all-powerful, all-loving God in all of this?

Unknown to many, it is not the supposed scientific evidence against religion or the alleged overwhelming data supporting evolution which cause most atheists to reject God. It is the problem of evil. Or what is more properly called the evidential problem of evil; that is, the world is filled with evil, suffering and pain and a good and all-powerful God would certainly do something about it – if He really exists.

Exactly 30 years ago, philosopher William Rowe, one of the most brilliant atheists alive, published his seminal paper, “The Problem of Evil and Some Varieties of Atheism”. It was a tour de force in the field of philosophy of religion. Today it is not possible to have a serious academic discussion on the problem of evil without mentioning William Rowe. He posed some of the toughest questions to Christian philosophers, with which they are still grappling.

too much suffering

Rowe says there is not only the problem of evil and suffering, but the extent and magnitude of the evil which exists. It is way beyond what a good God would need to bring about some desired good such as courage, resilience faith character, etc. There is too much gratuitous suffering – utterly senseless, utterly meaningless suffering.

Rowe’s thesis in that 1979 paper was as follows: “An omnipotent, omniscient and wholly good being would prevent the occurrence of any intense suffering it could, unless it could not do so without thereby losing some greater good or permitting some evil equally bad or worse”. Rowe gives two classic cases which have been endlessly debated in the philosophical literature over the last 30 years. One is the hypothetical case of the fawn, Bambi, caught in a forest fire and dying an agonising death over several days.

The other case is the actual case of a five-year-old child, Sue, who was severely beaten, raped and strangled by her mother’s live-in boyfriend.

unfortunate animal

Some say Bambi’s case is particularly troubling to Christian theology. That poor unfortunate animal – which can feel pain – caught in a forest fire and roasting in bitter death – what was that for? Rowe brought that example to counter the usual Christian response to the problem of evil. That there is always some redeeming lesson, virtue and good, which comes from instances of suffering. But what about animal suffering? Rowe asks.

Does God not care about animals? Two other issues: Why make animals whose lives are dependent on killing other animals? Why build violence into nature? All that came because of the Fall, Christians retort. The very nature of animals was changed, the Christian shoots back. Indeed, Christians will go on to say that because of free will, innocent children like Sue are killed brutally. It is not God’s fault. It’s the fault of Adam and Eve who sinned. But the atheists have a serious question: Is it just to make people pay for the sins of others when they had nothing to do with their sinning? Is that fair? How is it fair to Sue to cause her to suffer gut-wrenchingly just to teach some lesson or to build character in others?

It is one thing for you to suffer horribly and as a result to come to a deeper dependence on God and to take away some crucial life lessons from that suffering. But for you to suffer miserably and pathetically for me to draw faith and courage, the atheists argue, is fundamentally unjust. There are many persons who suffer grievously and to no apparent benefit to them. Reacting to the adage that “whatever does not kill you make you stronger”, former fundamentalist-pastor-turned-atheist scholar Bart Ehrman says in his book, God’s problem: How the Bible fails to Answer out Most Important Question – Why we Suffer, “A lot of times what does not kill you completely incapacitates you, mars you for life, ruins your mental and physical well-being permanently.”

Should that be just seen as God’s version of collateral damage? There is so much everyday tragedy that tugs at our emotions. One pastor recently told me that 10 people, including one sister who had become a Christian that year, died in a crash while going to his ordination to the Christian ministry. Many groups of Christians have died going to conventions. Christians have been killed in churches and Christians are not exempt from everyday tragedy which afflicts ordinary sinners.

But when we hear that babies are burnt to a crisp in fires, of 80-year-old women raped, chopped up and killed, or of children being run over by massive tractors and people dying tragically on their wedding day, even many Christians experience doubt.

Centuries ago, the philosopher Epicurus posed a disturbing set of questions: “Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is impotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? When thence evil?” So philosophers say that if we look at the properties commonly ascribed to God in theistic philosophy, we find some contradictions. For if God is all-powerful, all-knowing and all-loving, then why have a world with so much evil or with any at all?

The classic response, of course, has been free will. God, by not making us robots and by giving humans free, will automatically and necessarily allows for evil. In other words, you could not have free will-freedom – without the possibility of evil. If I am genuinely free, it means I am free to kill, rape and torture.

blasphemous question

If God intervenes every time an evil person is going to carry out an evil action, then this would not be a free world. The atheistic philosophers have fired back with a a number of questions: First, is it not possible to have a world with freedom, but less evil than our world actually has? In other words, is this the best possible world that God has created? (The very question is blasphemous to non-intellectual Christians.) There could be free will and evil, but there is a lot of evil which is not necessary to fulfil any good and some which is gratuitous, atheists like William Rowe maintain.

Then also what about natural evil, evil that occurs not because some human was expressing his free will, but evil caused by earthquakes, tsunamis, floods and other natural events? Why couldn’t God prevent those without affecting the issue of free will?

The debate has been quite vigorous. Those who take the Bible literally about “the fool says in his heart there is no God”, and assumes that atheists are necessarily fools are simply not well read. Some atheists are, no doubt, fools in our modern sense, but not all. (Of course, when the Bible uses the word, “fool”, it means something much broader than being idiotic or lacking in intellectual competence. Proper interpretative tools and the Book of proverbs itself establish that.)

There is another important question: Is free will so important as to justify the enormity of suffering which has been inflected upon mankind? Another intellectually rigorous atheistic philosopher, Wes Morriston, has an incisive essay titled, ‘What is So Good about Moral Freedom?: God”s Essential Goodness and the Free Will Defense’, in the July 2000 issue of The Philosophical Quarterly.

A very good compendium of perspectives on this matter if evil is found in Daniel Howard-Synder’s book, The Evidential Arguments from Evil. So persistent is this problem of evil that it dominates the essay count in such philosophical journals as Religious Studies and The International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, two of the finest.

challenging responses

In this area of the problem of evil, the atheists have not been without serious challenge. Christian philosophers have produced some rather challenging responses. Among the most promising is what is known as sceptical theism pioneered by a first-rate Christian philosopher Stephen Wykstra. He and Christian philosophers like Peter Van Inwagen, Alvin Plantinga, William Alston and Eleanor Stump have produced some fascinating critiques of the atheists’ work on the problem of evil.

The sceptical theism hypothesis basically says this: Human beings are cognitively limited and cannot know all the possible reasons why God would permit evils. There are some evils which might seem unjustifiable and absolutely irredeemable from a finite mind’s point of view, but in light of our limitations, epistemic humility is advised. Some things are simply beyond our ken. Some excellent arguments have been put forward by these sceptical theists. (Wykstra has just published a lengthy paper pronouncing the requiem for Rowe’s 1979 paper.)

Another first-rate atheistic mind, Theodore Drange, In his book, Nonbelief and Evil: Two Arguments for the Non-existence of God, admits that the problem of evil apologetic against religion is not as airtight as some atheists think. This is a significant admission.

The debate rages on, as do evil and suffering.

The Jamaica Gleaner