Huckabee Writing Book on His Presidential Bid

Thursday, April 24, 2008 11:30 AM

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. -- Two weeks after the next president is elected, Mike Huckabee will publish a book sharing details on his failed bid for the White House and offering his vision for remodeling the conservative movement.

Sentinel, a conservative imprint of Penguin Group (USA), said Wednesday it will publish the former Arkansas governor and one-time Republican presidential hopeful's next book, to be released Nov. 18.

The book, not yet titled, will offer an insider's view of Huckabee's campaign and also offer his vision for the future, publishers said Wednesday.

"There's going to be a lot of untold stories and untold anecdotes," said Will Weisser, Sentinel's associate publisher. "But the other part is the governor's vision for the future of American politics and society and what should we be working towards? How does the (Republican) party become more unified?"

Huckabee, who served as governor for 10 1/2 years, dropped out of the race for the Republican nomination last month after John McCain won enough delegates to clinch the party's nomination. Despite a financially strapped campaign, Huckabee won the leadoff caucuses in Iowa and seven other states.

The publishing company wouldn't say how much Huckabee will be paid.

Weisser acknowledged that they've agreed to the book at a time when Huckabee's political future is uncertain. The former governor recently formed a political action committee to raise money for McCain and other Republicans, and has also been mentioned as a potential running mate for the Arizona senator.

"We kind of had to think about that because obviously it's possible he could be the running mate," Weisser said. "It could certainly be hard to do a traditional book promotion if he's the vice president-elect. But some people here have pointed out that that's a nice problem to have."

In 2006, shortly before leaving office due to term limits and announcing his presidential bid, Huckabee published "From Hope to Higher Ground," which offered a preview of his policy proposals on areas ranging from taxes to education.

Huckabee, who lost more than 100 pounds after being diagnosed with diabetes, also published a book offering his tips on weight loss and healthy living called "Quit Digging Your Grave With a Knife and Fork."

Sarah Huckabee, the former governor's daughter and executive director of his PAC, said her father was on the road and not immediately available for comment. She said her father was still writing the book.

Sentinel, which was founded in 2003, is also publishing former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's memoir to be released in 2010.

From Publishers Weekly
Environmental Defense Fund president Krupp and journalist Horn proffer a business-centric prescription for alleviating climate change, coupling the market force of capitalism with technological innovation and entrepreneurial inventiveness. The authors argue in favor of strict federal carbon caps, which would induce innovators to explore new ways to control carbon dioxide emissions. The book notes the global and historical successes of cap and trade mechanisms, such as the Clean Air Act of 1990. Designed specifically to control sulfur dioxide (which causes acid rain), the Clean Air Act cut emissions 30% more than the law required by providing coal plant operators with a financial incentive to modernize. New technologies that would benefit from such a logical, elegant, market-based approach include one as basic as an Arizona natural gas power plant that vents its smokestack waste into a vast greenhouse, where it nourishes algae used for manufacturing biodiesel, and one as a radical as harnessing the kinetic energy of molecules as a power source. This optimistic book brims with similar ideas, balancing jargon-heavy science with engaging profiles of individuals who are blending business and science in an attempt to save the planet. (Mar.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Product Description
How to harness the great forces of capitalism to save the world from catastrophe.

The forecasts are grim and time is running out, but that's not the end of the story. In this book, Fred Krupp, longtime president of Environmental Defense Fund, brings a stirring and hopeful call to arms: We can solve global warming. And in doing so we will build the new industries, jobs, and fortunes of the twenty-first century.

In these pages the reader will encounter the bold innovators and investors who are reinventing energy and the ways we use it. Among them: a frontier impresario who keeps his ice hotel frozen all summer long with the energy of hot springs; a utility engineer who feeds smokestack gases from coal-fired plants to voracious algae, then turns them into fuel; and a tribe of Native Americans, for two thousand years fishermen in the roughest Pacific waters, who are now harvesting the fierce power of the waves themselves.

These entrepreneurs are poised to remake the world's biggest business and save the planet—if America's political leaders give them a fair chance to compete.

See all Editorial Reviews
Product Details
Hardcover: 256 pages
Publisher: W. W. Norton (March 12, 2008)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0393066908
ISBN-13: 978-0393066906
Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.4 x 1.2 inches
Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)

Inquiry and Analysis Series - No. 375
July 19, 2007 No. 375

The Upcoming Elections in Turkey (2): The AKP's Political Power Base
By: R. Krespin..
Introduction

Turkey has a large network of Islamist sects, orders, associations, and sheikhs that has a strong impact on politics. In the 1980s, the network's sect sheikhs and religious community leaders directed their followers to vote for the political party of their choice - which traditionally meant center-right parties. However, since that time, the situation has changed, and leaders and followers of religious sects have become active participants in Turkey's political life. Turkish politics today cannot be understood without considering the political role of these religious forces.

Politicians, Islamist Sects, Orders, and Associations In Support of the AKP

In a recent five-part series titled "Sects, Religious Communities, and the July 22 [Elections]" in the secular, mainstream Turkish daily Milliyet, journalist Omer Erbil listed some of the Islamist sects and associations that are playing a role in the upcoming elections. Following are the main points of this review. [1]

1. The Fethullah Gulen community: This is the largest and strongest Islamist community in Turkey, as well as the most prominent representative of the Nur ("Light") movement of Said-i Nursi. [2] It is led by Fethullah Gulen, or, as he is referred to by his community, Fethullah Gulen Hocaefendi, and according to media assessments, about 30 of the AKP candidates who have a good chance of being elected are Fethullah Gulen followers (Fethullahcilar).

2. The Nakshibendi sect: A large Islamist order, which began in the 14th century in Turkistan, Central Asia, and spread to Anatolia and the Balkans, gaining much power in the 19th century. The Halidiye branch lives today in the influential Iskenderpasa, Ismailaga, Erenkoy, and Kashgari communities. Many political figures in Turkey either come from or are influenced by the Nakshibendi tradition. Among these are Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Parliamentary Speaker Bulent Arinc, Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul, and Minister Mehmet Ali Sahin. Iskenderpasa Nakshibendi sect leader Mehmed Zahit Kotku is known to have trained former prime minister and president Turgut Ozal, former Islamist prime minister Necmettin Erbakan, and his successor, Islamist Felicity Party (SP) leader Recai Kutan.

The Iskenderpasa sect, which is currently led by Sheikh Nurettin Cosan, openly supported the AKP during the 2002 elections. Sheikh Cosan also issued an order to AKP MPs to vote "no" in the March 1, 2003 parliamentary vote on allowing the U.S. military passage through Turkish soil to open a northern front in the war in Iraq, and it is known that some 100 AKP MPs obeyed the order.

Erbakan's Islamist Milli Gorus movement, and its offspring, the AKP, have very close ties with the Nakshibendi Islamist sect. It is believed that about 80 of the sect's faithful were among the founders of the AKP.

3. The Kadiri: One of the oldest Islamist sects, and also part of the Nur movement. The larger branch, Yeni Asyacilar ("Neo-Asians") - which also owns the Islamist Turkish daily Yeni Asya, will, as always, vote for the center-right DP party. However, the Ankara-based Kuscuoglu branch will vote for the AKP.

A sub-division of the Kadiri includes followers of Sheikh Haydar Bas, who is also the chairman of the small Independent Turkish Party (BTP). Sheikh Bas preaches on his own Islamist Mesaj TV channel.

4. Suleymanists (Suleymancilar ): Followers of the late Suleyman Tunahan, a preacher in two important Istanbul mosques, who expanded his community through his then-illegal Koran-study courses. The Suleymanists are now divided under the leadership of two brothers, both Suleyman's grandsons: Ahmet Arif Denizolgun, a former minister from the Homeland Party (ANAP) government, who is currently running in the Democrat Party (DP) list; and Mehmet Beyazit Denizolgun, who is a founder and MP of the AKP and is now running again as an AKP candidate.

5. The Menzil sect: An Adiyaman-based Nakshibendi sub-sect. First led by Muhammed Rasid Erol, the sect emerged in the village of Menzil, and is now found in almost every Turkish city, and is known to be strong in Ankara and Istanbul. The current leader, Feyzettin Erol, took over from his father after the latter's death. The organization now has close ties with the AKP. According to the media, Health Minister Recep Akdag is affiliated with the Menzil sect, and he has staffed his ministry with members of this sect. An AKP MP from Adiyaman, Husrev Kutlu, is also known to be close to the Menzil sect, and has drawn complaints from the Turkish military for his hostile remarks against Mustafa Kemal Ataturk and the military. Kutlu is again running as an AKP candidate.

The Fethullah Gulen: Powerful Islamist Network with International Reach; Fethullah: From Islamist Anti-Soviet Activity to Residence and Activity in U.S.

The Fethullah movement is regarded as the most powerful and influential Islamist organization in Turkey, and has international outreach. Regarded as a semi-state within a state, this community has established hundreds of schools, in Turkey and in over 100 countries on five continents.

Fethullah Gulen heads this vast organization, holding absolute authority, although the organization operates seemingly as independent cells. It is based on a hierarchy of activists on different levels - municipalities, business, families, and individuals. Another group of activists, the abi, or "elder brothers," deals with recruitment, mostly from among poor youth, by providing them with housing and education in the isikevi, or "houses of light." There, the youths receive intensive Islamist training in line with the teachings of Said-i Nursi and the Nur movement.

Education, and professional and vocational training are important components of the Fethullah movement, and its main recruiting efforts are directed at youths in eighth through twelfth grades. Followers mentor young people in the isikevi, educate them in the Fethullah schools, and prepare them for future careers in legal, political, and educational professions, in order to create the future Islamist Turkish state. Fethullah schools abroad are geared towards educating a foreign leadership that will be sympathetic to an Islamist Turkey.

While young people provide the manpower for growth, followers with small businesses provide the finances, donating generously to Fethullah projects. No public accounts of the community's finances are made available, and most of their resources are not disclosed to the public. Fethullah members occupy positions in all Turkish state institutions, political parties, organizations, universities, and even sports clubs, and are also present in the security forces (except for the upper echelons of the military) and police.

Fethullah Gulen Indicted, Escapes To U.S.

In 1999, footage was aired on Turkish television of sermons delivered by Fethullah Gulen to a crowd of followers, in which he revealed his aspirations for an Islamist Turkey ruled by shari'a as well as the methods that should be used to attain that goal. In the sermons, he said:

"You must move in the arteries of the system, without anyone noticing your existence, until you reach all the power centers… until the conditions are ripe, they [the followers] must continue like this. If they do something prematurely, the world will crush our heads, and Muslims will suffer everywhere, like in the tragedies in Algeria, like in 1982 [in] Syria… like in the yearly disasters and tragedies in Egypt. The time is not yet right. You must wait for the time when you are complete, and conditions are ripe, until we can shoulder the entire world and carry it… You must wait until such time as you have gotten all the state power, until you have brought to your side all the power of the constitutional institutions in Turkey… Until that time, any step taken would be too early - like breaking an egg without waiting the full 40 days for it to hatch. It would be like killing the chick inside. The work to be done is [in] confronting the world. Now, I have expressed my feelings and thoughts to you all - in confidence… trusting your loyalty and sensitivity to secrecy. I know that when you leave here - [just] as you discard your empty juice boxes, you must discard the thoughts and feelings expressed here."

The sermon continues: "When everything was closed and all doors were locked, our houses of isik [light] assumed a mission greater than that of older times. In the past, some of the duties of these houses were carried out by madrassas, some by schools, some by tekkes [Islamist lodges]… These homes had to be schools, had to be madrassas, [had to be] tekkes all at the same time. The permission did not come from the state, or the state's laws, or the people who govern us. The permission was given by Allah… who wanted His name learned and talked about, studied, and discussed in those houses, as it used to be in the mosques." [3]

In another sermon, he said: "Now it is a painful spring that we live in. A nation is being born again. A nation of millions [is] being born - one that will live for long centuries, Allah willing… It is being born with its own culture, its own civilization. If giving birth to one person is so painful, the birth of millions cannot be pain-free. Naturally we will suffer pain. It won't be easy for a nation that has accepted atheism, has accepted materialism, a nation accustomed to running away from itself, to come back riding on its horse. It will not be easy, but it is worth all our suffering and the sacrifices." [4]

In yet another sermon, he said, "The philosophy of our service is that we open a house somewhere and, with the patience of a spider, we lay our web, to wait for people to get caught in the web; and we teach those who do. We don't lay the web to eat or consume them, but to show them the way to their resurrection, to blow life into their dead bodies and souls, to give them a life." [5]

By the time this was aired, Gulen had already left the country for the U.S., supposedly for health reasons. A year later, in 2000, he was indicted in absentia for attempting to change Turkey's system of government and for "forming an illegal organization with the purpose of establishing an Islamist state." It was from there that he built his international Islamist community. [6]

At a 2003 judicial hearing, it was decided to postpone Gulen's trial, subject to reprocessing if he was indicted again for a similar crime in the next five years. In May 2006, the AKP government modified the criminal code regarding acts of terror, and Gulen was acquitted. [7]

Financial, Cultural, and Media Institutions Affiliated with Fethullah

Fethullah Gulen is thought to be one of the richest Turks in the world. He lives on a large estate in Pennsylvania, and it is from there that he runs his million-member community. The prevailing perception in political circles in Turkey is that Fethullah Gulen is the power behind many Islamist politicians, especially in the AKP.

The following are some of the establishments in Turkey owned by or affiliated with the Fethullah community. The list is from the indictment of Fethullah Gulen. [8]

Zaman daily newspaper

Samanyolu TV

CHA - Cihan News Agency

Sizinti magazine

Aksiyon magazine

Business Life Cooperation Association (ISHAD)

Asia Finance (which became AsiaBank)

Isik ("Light") Insurance

Samanyolu Publishers

Feza Journalism

Cag Education Foundation

Fatih Education Foundation

Ufuk Education

Firat Education Center

Istanbul FEM Study centers

Akyazili Middle and Higher Education Foundation

Turkish Teachers Foundation (TOV)

Turkish Journalists and Writers Foundation

Maltepe Private Study Centers

Fatih University
*R. Krespin is the director of MEMRI's Turkish Media Project.
[1] Milliyet (Turkey), July 10-14, 2007.

[2] Sheikh Said-i Kurdi, later called Said-i Nursi (1878-1960), was the founder of the Islamist Nur ("Light") movement. During WWI, he fought with the Ottomans against the Russians. After Turkey's war of independence, he demanded, in an address to the new parliament, that the new republic be based on Islamic principles. He turned against Mustafa Kemal Ataturk and his reforms, and against the new modern, secular, Western republic. During Sheikh Said's Islamist revolt against the republic, he was arrested and then released. He died in Sanliurfa in March 1960, and his body was later moved to an unknown location in Isparta.

[3] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNi3Z3qZ7Z4&mode=related&search.

[4] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4tbnGnzdmgU&mode=related&search.

[5] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4tbnGnzdmgU&mode=related&search.

[6] According to Turkish analysts, during the Cold War, the U.S. benefited from the Islamist activity of Fethullah Gulen's organization against the U.S.S.R. among the Crimean Muslims as well as among Muslims in adjacent regions of the U.S.S.R. Therefore, after the fall of the U.S.S.R., and following pressure from the Turkish authorities, who wanted to act against him, the U.S. enabled Fethullah Gulen to escape from Turkey to the U.S. prior to his trial, and also enabled him to develop his Islamist community from his estate in Pennsylvania. Fethullah Gulen himself also worked to moderate his extremist Islamist image, advocating for inter-religious dialogue and holding various meetings with Pope John Paul II, Turkey's Chief Rabbi, and the Armenian Patriarch. Some anti-Islamist circles in Turkey believe that Fethullah Gulen helped Recep Tayyip Erdogan obtain invitations to the White House, despite his Islamist background as a student of Erbakan and even though he was not yet a head of state or even an MP.

[7] According to an investigative series by columnist Hikmet Cetinkaya in Cumhuriyet (June 22-July 4, 1999), in the 1970s, Fethullah Gulen was convicted for his Islamist activities in Turkey. During this decade, he organized and ran secret summer camps in the mountains of western Turkey where children as young as elementary school age were taught Islam, and taught to hate nonbelievers and to become jihad fighters. These camps were guarded by armed "brothers." Some were run in cooperation with the Suleymancilar sect.

[8] The list is available upon request from MEMRI.

“Hundreds of millions of people have moved from poverty into the global economy over the past decade in Asia. They’re eating twice a day, instead of once, and propelling rapid urbanization. Their demand for food staples and once unthinkable luxuries like meat is pushing up prices.

At the same time, the rising price of commodities over the past year has largely tracked the declining parity of the beleaguered dollar. Rice prices have shot up in dollar terms, far less against the euro. Countries like China are offloading depreciating dollar reserves to hoard stores of value like commodities.

Food price increases are also tied to oil being nearly $120 a barrel. Fossil fuels are an important input in everything from fertilizer to diesel for tractors.”

April 24, 2008
OP-ED COLUMNIST
Bring on the Right Biofuels

By ROGER COHEN
Fads come fast and furious in our viral age, and the reactions to them can be equally ferocious. That’s what we’re seeing right now with biofuels, which everyone loved until everyone decided they were the worst thing since the Black Death.

Where fuel distilled from plant matter was once hailed as an answer to everything from global warming to the geo-strategic power shift favoring repressive one-pipeline oil states, its now a “scam” and “part of the problem,” according to Time magazine. Ethanol has turned awful.

The supposed crimes of biofuels are manifold. They’re behind soaring global commodity prices, the destruction of the Amazon rain forest, increased rather than diminished greenhouse gases, food riots in Haiti, Indonesian deforestation and, no doubt, your mother-in-law’s toothache.

Most of this, to borrow a farm image, is hogwash and bilge.

I’ll grant that the fashion for biofuels led to excess, and that some farm-to-fuel-plant conversion, particularly in subsidized U.S. and European markets, makes no economic or environmental sense. But biofuels remain very much part of the solution. It just depends which biofuels.

Before I get to that, some myths need dispelling. If Asian rice prices are soaring, along with the global prices of wheat and maize, it’s not principally because John Doe in Iowa or Jean Dupont in Picardy has decided to turn yummy corn and beet into un-yummy ethanol feedstock.

Much larger trends are at work. They dwarf the still tiny biofuel industry (roughly a $40 billion annual business, or the equivalent of Exxon Mobil’s $40.6 billion profits in 2007). I refer to the rise of more than one-third of humanity in China and India, the disintegrating dollar and soaring oil prices.

Hundreds of millions of people have moved from poverty into the global economy over the past decade in Asia. They’re eating twice a day, instead of once, and propelling rapid urbanization. Their demand for food staples and once unthinkable luxuries like meat is pushing up prices.

At the same time, the rising price of commodities over the past year has largely tracked the declining parity of the beleaguered dollar. Rice prices have shot up in dollar terms, far less against the euro. Countries like China are offloading depreciating dollar reserves to hoard stores of value like commodities.

Food price increases are also tied to oil being nearly $120 a barrel. Fossil fuels are an important input in everything from fertilizer to diesel for tractors.

Another myth that needs nuking is that the Amazon rain forest is being destroyed to make way for Brazilian sugar-cane ethanol. Almost all viable cane-growing areas lie hundreds of miles from the rain forest. Brazil has enough savannah to multiply its 3.5 million hectares of cane-for-ethanol production by ten without going near the Amazon ecosystem.

Brazilian rain forest is burning, as it long has, for a complex mix of economic reasons. Brazil’s successful ethanol industry — 80 percent of new cars run on ethanol or gasoline and all gasoline comprises 25 percent biofuel — is not one of them.

The danger in all this anti-biofuel hysteria is that we’ll throw out the baby with the bath water.

Those hundreds of millions of Chinese and Indians now eating more will be driving cars within the next quarter-century. What that will do to oil prices is anybody’s guess, but what’s clear is that ethanol presents the only technically and economically viable alternative for large-scale substitution of petroleum fuels for transport in the next 15 to 20 years. It’s not a panacea, but it’s a necessary bridge to the next technological breakthrough.

The question is: which ethanol?

Right now, the biofuel market is being grossly distorted by subsidies and trade barriers in the United States and the European Union. These make it rewarding to produce ethanol from corn or grains that are far less productive than sugarcane ethanol, divert land from food production (unlike sugarcane), and have dubious environmental credentials.

What sense does it make to have a surplus of environmentally friendly Brazilian sugar-based ethanol with a yield eight times higher than U.S. corn ethanol and zero impact on food prices being kept from an American market by a tariff of 54 cents on a gallon while Iowan corn ethanol gets a subsidy?

“It would make a lot more sense to drop the tariff, drop the subsidy, and allow Brazilian ethanol into the United States,” said Philippe Reichstul, the chief executive of a biofuel company in São Paulo. “Pressure on U.S. land will be slashed.”

The United States and Europe should maintain their biofuel targets. Pressure to scrap a European plan for renewable fuels to supply a tenth of all vehicle fuel by 2020 must be resisted while rethinking the policies that favor the wrong biofuels.

The real scam lies in developed world protectionism and skewed subsidies, not the biofuel idea.

Blog: www.iht.com/passages

Study says near extinction threatened people

Apr 24 06:15 PM US/Eastern
By RANDOLPH E. SCHMID
AP Science Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) - Human beings may have had a brush with extinction 70,000 years ago, an extensive genetic study suggests. The human population at that time was reduced to small isolated groups in Africa, apparently because of drought, according to an analysis released Thursday.
The report notes that a separate study by researchers at Stanford University estimated the number of early humans may have shrunk as low as 2,000 before numbers began to expand again in the early Stone Age.

"This study illustrates the extraordinary power of genetics to reveal insights into some of the key events in our species' history," Spencer Wells, National Geographic Society explorer in residence, said in a statement. "Tiny bands of early humans, forced apart by harsh environmental conditions, coming back from the brink to reunite and populate the world. Truly an epic drama, written in our DNA."

Wells is director of the Genographic Project, launched in 2005 to study anthropology using genetics. The report was published in the American Journal of Human Genetics.

Previous studies using mitochondrial DNA—which is passed down through mothers—have traced modern humans to a single "mitochondrial Eve," who lived in Africa about 200,000 years ago.

The migrations of humans out of Africa to populate the rest of the world appear to have begun about 60,000 years ago, but little has been known about humans between Eve and that dispersal.

The new study looks at the mitochondrial DNA of the Khoi and San people in South Africa which appear to have diverged from other people between 90,000 and 150,000 years ago.

The researchers led by Doron Behar of Rambam Medical Center in Haifa, Israel and Saharon Rosset of IBM T.J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, N.Y., and Tel Aviv University concluded that humans separated into small populations prior to the Stone Age, when they came back together and began to increase in numbers and spread to other areas.

Eastern Africa experienced a series of severe droughts between 135,000 and 90,000 years ago and the researchers said this climatological shift may have contributed to the population changes, dividing into small, isolated groups which developed independently.

Paleontologist Meave Leakey, a Genographic adviser, commented: "Who would have thought that as recently as 70,000 years ago, extremes of climate had reduced our population to such small numbers that we were on the very edge of extinction."

Today more than 6.6 billion people inhabit the globe, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

The research was funded by the National Geographic Society, IBM, the Waitt Family Foundation, the Seaver Family Foundation, Family Tree DNA and Arizona Research Labs.

___

On the Net:

The Genographic Project: http://www.nationalgeographic.com/genographic