Is America Leading A Return to The Cold War Days?

We are much beholden to Machiavelli and other writers of that class, who openly and unfeignedly declare or describe what men do, and not what they ought to do. For it is not possible to join the wisdom of the serpent with the innocence of the dove, except men be perfectly acquainted with the nature of evil itself; for without this, virtue is open and unfenced; nay, a virtuous and honest man can do no good upon those that are wicked, to correct and reclaim them, without first exploring all the depths and recesses of their malice.

- Francis Bacon

In a new Frontier Science, motion is being studied in space for the pure science but also by the Department of Defense for strategic defense and anti-missile defense. During the Cold War and under the guise of "national security," all manner of malice and deceit against unsuspecting and innocent citizens were introduced. The old adage "power corrupts and total power corrupts totally" would become internationally recognized.

In 2001, President Bush began making inroads for a new defense system. Fearful that an antimissile defense could embolden the United States to intervene in crises on China's doorstep, Beijing is focusing on low-cost ways to thwart the plan, including ways to attack the defense system itself, China's top arms control official said. Star Wars is again in our lives.

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FEBRUARY

5 - The economy began showing signs of recession as manufacturing and the producer price index reports show a slip in January.

6 - In a special election for Prime Minister in February 2001, Ariel Sharon defeated incumbent Ehud Barak to become the 11th person to hold that position. An early election announcement came as support for his Ehud Barak leadership eroded. Barak's campaign warned that the often-controversial hawk would drag Israel back into war.

Ehud Barak failed to deliver a long-promised agreement with the Palestinians and it was popularly held that Sharon was best equipped to deal with the security challenges posed by Palestine. The intifada, or uprising, began in October 2000 - fuelled by resentment at the failure of the peace process and the visit of Sharon to the Haram al-Sharif or Temple Mount before he became prime minister. The intifada became characterised by gun battles between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian militias and attacks on Jewish settlers. Some of these actions were carried out by forces close to Yasser Arafat.

9 - A U.S. Navy submarine collides with the Japanese fishing boat Ehime Maru, which is carrying high school students. Nine aboard the boat die.

11 - British yachtswoman Ellen MacArthur became the fastest woman to sail around the world in the grueling Vendee Globe race. Her achievement is widely acclaimed - as much for her endurance and determination as for the record.

She is the fastest woman to sail around the globe. She is the youngest ever finisher in the Vendee race. She is only the second person to sail round the world solo in less than 100 days. Ellen MacArthur Web site

12 - A Federal appeals court says Napster must prevent users from swapping copyrighted music without charge, effectively shutting down the company.

18 - Dubbed "The Intimidator" for his hard-driving, paint-swiping style, Dale Earnhardt knifed his black No. 3 car through two decades of stock-car racing until February 18, when he died in a crash at the Daytona 500. Many NASCAR fans loved him, some loved to hate him, but the North Carolina-bred, mustachioed "man in black" was mourned by millions as a symbol of the sport's blue-collar roots — and of its essentially dangerous nature.

FBI agent Robert Hanssen is arrested and accused of spying for Russia for more than 15 years.

19 - Foot-and-mouth disease hit the UK in February. Nearly four million animals were slaughtered in the ensuing months in an effort to contain the disease. The outbreak forced authorities to destroy tens of thousands of cows, sheep and pigs, and brought the meat industry to a standstill. The estimated cost to farmers, and to Britain's tourism industry, ran into the billions.

22 - Leaders of 34 American nations found themselves besieged by anti-globalization protestors at the Summit of the America's in Quebec City, Canada. The protests followed last year's riots in Seattle and set the stage for the violent showdown in Genoa in the summer, as demonstrators sought to challenge free trade and a global economic order they consider unjust. In two days of unrest, at least 34 police officers were injured, as were 57 demonstrators. There were at least 150 arrests.

Police used water cannon, tear gas and rubber bullets to force protesters back from barricades, periodically shifting their security lines to counter movements by protesters. Some demonstrators threw rocks and at least two Molotov cocktails.

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MARCH

5 - A Freshman at Santana High School near San Diego is arrested for firing on classmates, killing two and injuring 13.

Vice President Dick Cheney is hospitalized after feeling chest pains.

18 - Andy Williams, a 15-year-old gunman killed two classmates and wounded 13 others at Santana High School in Santee, California.

19 - California officials declared a power alert and order rolling blackouts. About two weeks later, Pacific Gas and Electric files for bankruptcy in an offshoot of the California energy crisis.

20 - Following an explosion, the world's biggest floating oil rig, owned by Brazil's Petrobras, sinks in the South Atlantic. Eleven people die and 316,000 gallons of diesel fuel pour into the ocean.

The U.S. Supreme Court rules hospitals cannot test pregnant women for drug use without their consent.

The United States orders 51 Russian diplomats to leave... identified as spies.

23 - The Mir space station, whose name means "peace" or "world in Russian, launched an era in extraterrestrial exploration in 1986 by becoming the first permanently inhabited spacecraft and by hosting scores of visiting astronauts from many countries. Its demise in March 2001 will not extinguish its example. More than 100 cosmonauts or astronauts from 12 different countries have visited Mir.

The station's useful life was over after lasting 15 years longer than anticipated. It was brought out from orbit and much of 25 tons of it burned up in entry to the atmosphere on March 23. The burning debris could be spotted over the Fiji Islands.

31 - Police arrest Slobodan Milosevic in advance of handing him over to the UN tribunal for a war crimes trial. Several hundred riot police lay siege to the house of Slobodan Milosevic for a second night as the former Yugoslav president continued to resist arrest. He was taken to Belgrade Central Prison in a convoy of government vehicles. The former president of Yugoslavia is eventually handed over to the tribunal on June 28.

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APRIL

1 - A U.S. Navy surveillance plane collides with a Chinese fighter over South China Sea and makes an emergency landing at a military airfield on China's Hainan island. The Chinese pilot dies in the collision. China's president demands a U.S. apology for the accident and 10 days later the communist country agrees to free the 24-member U.S. crew.

The downing of a U.S. spy plane on the Chinese island of Hainan brought U.S.-Chinese relations to their most dangerous precipice since the 1996 showdown in the Taiwan Strait. Careful diplomacy averted confrontation and saw the captive U.S. crew released, although the incident heightened tension and mutual suspicions, particularly over Taiwan. China eventually returned the aircraft — in pieces.

STAR WARS
President Bush champions an antimissile defense system, meant to intercept long-range missiles lobbed at US shores.

Opponents of a new missile defense plan argue that it is technologically unfeasible, astronomically expensive, and largely superfluous. The proposed missile shield strained relations with U.S. allies and former cold-war adversaries Russia and China, who feared that the system could spark a new arms race. Its implementation would require the U.S. to pull out of the 1972 Antiballistic Missile Treaty (which bans missile defense), the basis for the last three decades of nuclear stability. But Russian president Vladimir Putin eventually expressed willingness to modify the ABM treaty if it also led to reductions in the nuclear arsenals of both countries. Sino-American relations, already shaky, had deteriorated in April after a standoff over a downed U.S. spy plane in Chinese territory, as well as the sale of arms to Taiwan later that month. China thus greeted the proposed missile shield with unequivocal hostility.

7 - NASA launches the Mars Odyssey spacecraft.

9 - American Airlines' parent company acquires bankrupt Trans World Airlines, becoming America's No. 1 carrier.

11 - Several days after a black man is shot by a white police officer in Cincinnati, Mayor Charles Luken declares a state of emergency and imposes a curfew to halt riots.

23 - The wounded pilot of a missionary plane shot down by the Peruvian military, which thought it was a drug flight, described himself as shaken by the incident but grateful that he and two of his passengers survived.

30 - A Russian spacecraft carrying the first space tourist, American Dennis Tito, docks with the international space station.

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MAY

5 - People began gradually to miss Chandra Levy. She was last seen on April 30. Since then, there was first family, then DC area local attention and gradually an international attention focused on the nature of her relationship with Representative, Gary Condit, a 53-year-old married California Democrat.

On the 1st Levy's parents get an e-mail from her saying that she is looking into either flying home or taking a train to be back in time for her graduation from USC on the 11th.

May 1 through 5, her parents call to confirm her travel plans, and then when she doesn't respond, they call repeatedly to find out where she is.

On the 5th the Levys first contact the Washington, D.C., police. The next day they call back to report her missing. That evening, feeling the police were brushing them off, Susan Levy calls Condit at his Ceres home, reports the Washington Post, to request his help. During the conversation Mrs. Levy asks the congressman if he was having an affair with her daughter; he denies it.

Sometime during the month, the Levys obtain their daughter's cell phone records. According to Time magazine, they find 20 calls to one number. When Mrs. Levy calls the number, she discovers it's Condit's pager.

Learn more about Chandra from a Washington Post Audio with excerpts of an interview with Chandra Levy's aunt Linda Zamsky. Also see Condit below.

16 - Former FBI agent Robert Hanssen is indicted on charges of spying for Moscow.

24 - Vermont James Jeffords, 67, returned to his home state of Vermont to announce a change of his party affiliation from Republican to Independent — a major blow for the president, since the move stripped Republicans of control of the Senate and gave Democrats the narrowest of majorities (50-49-1).  Jeffords voted with 49 Democrats to force Republicans to slash the size of President Bush's 10-year tax cut request from $1.6 trillion to $1.35 trillion.

25 - Senator Jeffords' decision to switch from Republican to independent triggered changes in Senate power and organization. Senator Tom Daschle of South Dakota become majority leader, the role formerly held by Senator Trent Lott.

29 - Abroad, nearly three years ago, in August of 1998, 224 people were killed in twin bombings at US embassies in Tanzania and Kenya. Four men were convicted of plotting the international conspiracy behind the bombings. Khalfan Khamis Mohamed, Mohamed al-'Owhali,  Mohamed Sadeek Odeh, and Wadih el Hage have all been found guilty on all counts of charges that they participated in a conspiracy to bomb U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

The man everyone assumes was really behind them, Saudi millionaire Osama bin Laden, was nowhere to be found.

PBS: Terrorism experts discuss the murder and conspiracy convictions of the four men for the 1998 embassy bombings.

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JUNE

1 - Democrats prepare to control Senate with prescription drugs and patients' rights on the front burner.

A suicide bomber attacked a Tel Aviv nightclub, killing himself and 16 Israelis.

The king, queen and seven other members of Nepal's royal family were slain by a crown prince in a palace shooting.

7 - The top item on Bush's domestic agenda, a $1.6 trillion tax cut, was the subject of bitter partisan debate in Congress, with Democrats arguing that the bill heavily favored the rich and would squander the unprecedented budget surplus. The Senate eventually trimmed the tax cut to $1.35 trillion over 11 years, and Bush signed it into law on June 7.

11 - Timothy McVeigh is executed by lethal injection at the federal prison in Terre Haute, Ind., for the Oklahoma City bombing. He was the first federal prisoner executed in 38 years. In May, the execution was delayed when it was discovered that  the FBI had misplaced more than 3,000 pages of documents relating to the McVeigh case. While McVeigh's guilt was not in question, procedural mores were, and a seething Attorney General John Ashcroft postponed the execution, as defense attorneys fell onto the newly-released papers, searching without much hope for a shred of evidence to save their client.

15 - The Senate passes the first major overhaul of the nation's education policy in 35 years, linking federal funding to academic achievement (PBS: report).

20 - New York native Lori Berenson is convicted in Peru of collaborating with rebels and is sentenced to 20 years in prison.

20 - Andrea Yates is arrested in Houston after telling police she drowned her five children.

Police said Yates called them to her suburban Houston home on June 20, and then admitted killing Noah, 7, John, 5, Paul, 3, Luke, 2, and Mary, 6 months. The four youngest children were found in a bed, covered with a sheet; the oldest was found still in the bathtub.

Russell Yates, the children's father, said his wife had suffered postpartum depression and attempted suicide after their fourth child was born in 1999. She had recovered, he said, but birth of their fifth child and the death of her father triggered another episode. He says he will stand by his wife; that because she is suffering from depression she is not herself.

27 - Nearly 8,000 emigrants who paid criminal operators to smuggle them into the United States from Latin America or the Caribbean have been arrested over the past two weeks. Officials arrested 75 smugglers in what is termed the largest anti-alien smuggling operation ever conducted in the hemisphere. Seven US citizens were arrested for immigration law violations in Latin America. More than 5,000 of the arrests took place in Mexico in what the INS called Operation Crossroads International.

The perils faced by impoverished Mexicans trying to enter the United States illegally were highlighted by the death of 14 would-be immigrants in the Arizona desert. The 14, part of a group of 28 abandoned in the desert without food or water by smugglers, died of heat exhaustion and exposure. The incident amplified calls for immigration reform in the US.

The INS office in Mexico City, which oversaw the Latin American operation, said authorities are trying to make prospective emigrants aware of the risks they face from the moment they leave their homes until they get to the United States. The official said, "Five individuals were found in a trailer that was being transported from southern Mexico to the United States, and they were basically cooked alive by the heat inside the trailer," Acosta said. "In addition, we saw recent incidents of Haitians who drowned."

It costs border counties $108 million a year in law enforcement and medical expenses associated with illegal crossings, money most of these poor counties can't afford, to enforce immigration policies over which they have no control.

26 - The United Nations convened a special session of its General Assembly for the world's leaders to confront the global AIDS crisis. More people die from AIDS every day in sub-Saharan Africa than perished in the Sept. 11 attacks in the U.S. Leaders pledged money and research in response to pleas from U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan's call for a "war on AIDS."

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JULY

2 - Robert Tools receives the world's first self-contained artificial heart in Louisville, KY.  He died on November 30 from organ complications not related to his heart transplant.

18 - The United Nations Security Council has adopted its first-ever resolution on a health issue, asking countries to establish anti-AIDS strategies and to increase testing and education efforts among peacekeeping troops.

20 - Leaders of the world's top industrialised countries have pledged $1 billion for a global AIDS fund.

21 - World leaders were shocked at Genoa, the site of the Group of Eight summit following violent demonstrations during the day that left one man dead from gunfire and more than 100 other people wounded. Italian police sources identified the dead man as Carlo Giuliani, 23, a Genoa resident originally from Rome... to some, a martyr — in an anti-globalization movement.

As far as the more than 150,000 antiglobalists were concerned, the summit reeked of hypocrisy and alibi. At times, from 50,000 to 80,000 protesters were present. Demonstrators threw rocks and Molotov cocktails at police, set fires and pushed back barricades intended to keep them out.

While massive street protests against global capitalism have become a staple at economic meetings since demonstrators disrupted an international gathering of trade ministers in Seattle in 1999, the Genoa summit has produced the first death.

The movement that question the legitimacy of super-governments must find a better way of challenging them than through protests that leave a young man lying dead in the street.

The future of global summits has been called into question. The Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chrétien vowed that his country will host next year's G-8 meeting undeterred. It is unlikely to be held in Ottawa as planned, but rather in a remote area of the Canadian Rockies.

French President Jacques Chirac said the violence is evidence that leaders should listen more closely to the demonstrators' call for reduced globalization of trade. Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi called the incident an isolated one.

In advance of his trip to Europe to attend the G-8 summit, President Bush spoke at the World Bank about pushing economic growth around the world and focusing on the needs of the developing world. Bush, speaking at Brize Norton Air Base in England before leaving for Italy, said he intends to ensure the world's poor countries are not hurt by free trade rules during the three day conference. In a message to protesters, he said he rejects the "isolationism and protectionism" that many espouse.

"There are some who will try to disrupt meetings, claiming they represent the poor. To those folks I say ... instead of embracing policies that represent the poor, you embrace policies that lock poor people into poverty and that's unacceptable to United States," Bush said. "Trade has been the best avenue for economic growth for all countries."

The summit leaders have a problem. They cannot be seen to give way to violent protesters, but the more they are forced to retreat behind a fortress-like ring of steel with a massive police presence, the more they appear remote from their electorates and ordinary people and the easier it becomes to incite protest against them.

31 - Gary Condit dominated news stories in much of June and July. It seems impossible now, but for months the nation's biggest story was the one of California Congressional Representative Gary Condit and missing intern, Chandra Levy. Condit's conduct during the investigation was unhelpful at best and inhumane at worst, but the stonewalling worked.

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AUGUST

1 - Bill Clinton moved into his post-presidential offices in Manhattan's Harlem neighborhood in August, the man sometimes referred to as the "first black president" got a hero's welcome from his most faithful constituency.

3 - Pensacola, Florida Doctors said it may be more than a year before the full extent of recovery is known for an 8-year-old boy, Jesse Arbogast, who had an arm reattached after a shark attack on July 16.

"It may be a year to 18 months before the full potential of his reattached arm is known," according to the statement.

9 - President Bush approves federal funding only for existing lines of embryonic stem cells.

13 - Ford Motor Co. agrees to settle for $1 billion a lawsuit that alleges its cars and trucks stall because of defective ignition switches. Jacques Nasser is removed as CEO of Ford Motor Co. on October 30.

20 - Nikolay Soltys, a 27-year-old Ukrainian immigrant living in Sacramento, Calif., flees after killing his wife and five other relatives. He is captured 10 days later.

23 - A Frenchman using a motor-driven parachute is arrested after becoming snagged on the Statue of Liberty.

31 - Little League officials strip a Bronx team of its third-place trophy after determining that pitcher Danny Almonte is 14, not 12.

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