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Study: Lapses at ports could let WMD into U.S. And the winner is Frist, the home state favorite - McCain tests new road to GOP nomination
Analysis and Commentary

US Supreme Court: Justice and the Battle Line for Nomination
by Sharon J. Alfred

The re-election of George W. Bush as American president means that he will have the chance to appoint at least one new justice to the United States Supreme Court. Of the nine justices on the bench, nearly half of them are over 70 years of age. Currently the Supreme Court justices are: Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, John Paul Stevens, Anthony Kennedy, Sandra Day O’Connor, Antonin Scalia, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Clarence Thomas, Stephen Breyer, and David Souter. The U.S. Supreme Court represents the pinnacle of the judiciary branch of the American government. Many have observed that the Supreme Court already leans to the conservative side.

Though political categorization of a justice is by no means a “sure thing,” it is done to help prepare and aid court advocates and analysts. Those considered to be court conservatives are: Rehnquist, Scalia, and Thomas. Forming the moderate-to-liberal bloc are: Stevens, Ginsburg, Breyer, and Souter. And, O’Connor and Kennedy make up the moderate-conservative bloc. The justices that form the moderate-conservative bloc become increasingly important because often they have represented the swing votes that allowed the court to uphold or overrule a public policy.

See the March 2005 issue of Transatlantic Times for full story

The European Union: Where Does It Go From Here?
by Ian Cochran

It has long been thought by historians that economic ties between countries boosts trade, especially following times of stress, such as wars and recessions. So it was in 1951 that the European coal and steel industry formed a pact that was to eventually lead to the European Union, as we know it today. At that time, the World was still recovering from the ravages of the Second World War. At least half of Europe needed rebuilding, both structurally and economically. There seemed to be no better way than to form a trade alliance between the two core industries, which were desperately needed to rebuild Europe.

Europe has come a long way since then and is now the world’s second largest trading block following the North America Free Trade (NAFTA) zone. Coming up on the rails are the Asian countries, which have formed economic ties, in which today’s powerhouse, China, has expressed great interest.
See the March 2005 issue of Transatlantic Times for full story

Today's Russia: Return of the Kremlin?
By Christopher Walker

When world leaders gather in the spectacular Scottish countryside of Gleneagles next July for the annual summit of the Group of Eight industrial nations, the full extent to which Russian president Vladimir Putin has gone in turning back the clock in his huge and disparate country will have become clear. By the turn of the year there were already signs regarded as ominous by some foreign observers that he was striving to centralise all political power inside the Kremlin. This trend was accelerated on September 13, in the wake of the terrible Beslan school massacre, when he announced plans to abolish direct elections for governor in Russia’s 89 regions - between them covering a land mass of over 17m sq km - and replace them with direct presidential appointments.

The ostensible reason for the reforms, variously dubbed a “coup” and a “counter-revolution” by the media and the main political opposition, was to strengthen the government’s hand against terrorism. But there was little doubt that they were the product of extensive preparation by Kremlin specialists earlier than the beginning of the Beslan crisis on September 1. “That is why nobody should believe the Kremlin when it pretended that this was Russia’s response to global terrorism,” warned one former Soviet dissident, fifty-one year old Andrei Mironov.
See the March 2005 issue of Transatlantic Times for full story

North Korea and its Nuclear Weapons
By Ron Jones

In his Inaugural Address on January 20 President George W. Bush used an ominous phrase in emphasising the aims of the United States during the remainder of his presidency. He said it is: “The ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world.” Most listeners would see this as referring to Iran although no country was mentioned. In North Korea it was seen as: “A tacit reference to North Korea.” Furthermore, earlier in the same week Condoleezza Rice had called the North “An outpost of tyranny” thus echoing Bush.

North Korea was expecting threats from the US. It has seen such threats now for over fifty years, many made up in the minds of their leaders in their hate of the US. Their determination to defend themselves from both actual and invented threats is always based on the belief of a nuclear attack upon them.
See the March 2005 issue of Transatlantic Times for full story

NASCAR Popularity: Moving in the Fast Lane
By Len Blasso

It is the circumstances resulting from the birth and life of Ms. Williams and how they may have influenced the seeming contradictions in Thurmond's politics and philosophy that are the subject of this commentary. The late James Strom thurmond was born on December 5, 1902 in Edgefield, South Carolina, the son of John William and Eleanor Gertrude (Strom) Thurmond. Educated in the Edgefield County public school system, he graduated from Clemson College (now Clemson University) in 1923 with a degree in horticulture, and subsequently worked as a farmer, teacher, and athletic coach. He was admitted to the South Carolina Bar in 1930, and served as the Edgefield Town and county attorney from 1930-1938. He married his firest wife, Miss Jean Crouch, in 1947, but they had no children. Several years after the death of his first wife, he married Nancy Janice Moore (1946-), on December 22, 1968, and they had four children...
See the February 2005 issue of Transatlantic Times for full story

Is Islam Compatible with Western Ideas?
by Christopher Walker

Once a small European country noted mainly for tulips and cheese, Holland - with its population of 940,000 Muslims - has recently moved to the heart of the increasingly violent struggle between Islam and the West. The cause was the shocking murder of Theo van Gogh, an outspoken film director and descendant of the famous painter Vincent van Gogh, who was brutally shot and stabbed in a busy Amsterdam street in revenge for “Submission” - a powerful documentary film he made about the allegedly barbaric treatment meted out in the name of religion to millions of Muslim women. Among other images offensive to Islamic hardliners were those portraying naked Muslim women with Koranic verses written on their bare skin. At the age of 47, the portly Van Gogh was one of the country’s most provocative critics of Muslim fundamentalists, who relished describing them in public using an epithet referring to bestiality with a goat. His killing by a second generation Dutchman of Moroccan origin raised fundamental questions about how conservative Islam is going to fit into Europe as a whole, let alone one of its most tolerant liberal societies.
See the January 2005 issue of Transatlantic Times: American Edition for full story

Right Wing Extremism: A Fascist-Flavored America?
by Paul Dodds

Today when Americans visualize fascism, we easily recognize it as a darkly dressed thug in riding boots, scar faced and clearly wicked. As victors, we see fascism only through the eyes of its millions of victims. This perspective blinds us to the movement’s widespread appeal, and leaves us with a complete, if false, sense of certainty that the spirit that inspired fascism has been fully vanquished.

But what if we change our focus, just a bit, and go back before fascism became synonymous with evil? Look behind what we all know happened later, and sense the grander, gentler, kinder appearance of fascism. Try to sense why decent, mainstream people might have fallen for it.
See the January 2005 issue of Transatlantic Times for full story

The Middle East after Arafat
By Christopher Walker

Yasser Arafat surprised supporters and opponents alike by living as long as 75 years. Often likened to a cat with nine lives who survived more assassination attempts than the late King Hussein of Jordan, Arafat loved to boast that he was the only Arab leader to remain undefeated by the Israelis in battle and to have outlasted six US presidents.

But, as his mysterious death in a French military hospital finally showed, by repeatedly neglecting the importance of institution-building and stubbornly remaining, in both dress and mentality, a guerrilla leader rather than a statesman, he left no solid foundations on which the Palestinian people could easily build the independent state about which he dreamed so often and spoke so eloquently.

To those correspondents who, like me, reported on and met Arafat in situations as diverse as the Israeli-besieged ruins of Muslim West Beirut, the more opulent villas of Tunisia to where he was exiled in 1982 after Israel’s ill-fated invasion of Lebanon, and finally Gaza - where he returned in short-lived triumph - and the West Bank, he often appeared like a desert sheikh.
See the January 2005 issue of Transatlantic Times for full story

Great Lakes Water Diversion Thorny Issue
By Al Swanson (United Press International)

With Great Lakes water levels recovering, conservationists and environmentalists are concerned about how proposals to increase diversions and withdrawals might conflict with protecting the world’s largest resource of surface freshwater.

All eight states in the Great Lakes region, which also includes the Canadian provinces of Ontario and Quebec, have communities in need of additional water supplies for public use, business and future sub-divisions and golf courses -- and they all look to the lakes to solve their problems.

Touring the Great Lakes by boat it seems the water is infinite. It is not. The Great Lakes comprise 95 percent of the surface fresh water in the United States -- 20 percent of the world’s supply -- a non-renewable natural resource created by retreating glaciers requiring diligent management..
See the November 2004 issue of Transatlantic Times for full story

The AIDS Battlefield: Where Politics and Science Must Join Forces
By Louise Classon

When the first gathering of scientists aimed at sharing information on HIV was held in 1985, it was predominantly a meeting of researchers and scientists sharing data and techniques about drug research and development, and treatment protocols. The news coverage of the early conferences was important, but not that widespread.

News from the XV International AIDS Conference this year revolved mainly around politics. This is the first year in which a complete Leadership Programed complimented the Scientific and Community Programs. One aspect of the Leadership Program consisted of interactive sessions where leaders discussed difficult challenges in the global response to HIV/AIDS...
See the October 2004 issue of Transatlantic Times for full story
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