by Inger Sethov

OSLO - At least 16 Nobel Peace Prize laureates called for disarmament and non-violent pursuit of peace in the 21st century in a joint appeal on Monday marking the 100th anniversary of the first Nobel award.

The declaration, agreed in Oslo at the biggest gathering of Nobel Peace Prize winners in history, also called for the establishment of an international criminal court.

``We offer support for the unrelenting, patient and non-violent pursuit of peace wherever conflicts may rage today or tomorrow, such as the Middle East, Colombia or the Great lakes of Africa,'' the statement said.

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by Richard Rapaport

TWO DAYS after the September 11 cataclysm, the Rev. Jerry Falwell laid down his own prophetic interpretation of the attacks, revealing more than he might have liked about his low view of the state of American life.

Appearing on Pat Robertson's "700 Club" television show, Falwell blamed the excesses of American liberalism as exemplified by the ACLU, NOW, and pro-choice, feminist and gay groups in general, for the growing distance between God and America. Falwell argued that humanists working to "secularize America" had provoked a disenchanted deity into retracting some sort of heavenly anti-terrorist shield, thus enabling "the enemies of America to give us probably what we deserved."

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by Robyn Blumner

The headline in the St. Petersburg Times declaring "Key to Victory? Clean hands" was attached to a story on how good hygiene by U.S. Marines in Afghanistan is pivotal to preventing the spread of disease in the ranks. But the sentiment could be a metaphor for the way we prosecute this war against terrorism.

The key to victory not just against Osama bin Laden but in every corner of the (educated) Muslim world lies in maintaining our moral authority, in upholding the principles of blind and equal justice that have made our nation a triumph of the rule of law. Strip away those values, as the Bush administration is doing with its unilateral imposition of secret military tribunals for non-citizens suspected of terrorist ties, and the United States becomes just another double-speak nation where the rules of justice are manipulated to obtain a particular result. And our fight against terrorism changes from a virtuous battle of individual liberty versus religious totalitarianism to one of technology-enhanced brute strength versus martyrdom.

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by Robert Kuttner

I RECENTLY participated in a debate at the Harvard Medical School on the ethics of stem cell cloning. A co-panelist was Dr. Michael West, a Massachusetts biotech executive. His announcement a week earlier of a supposed breakthrough in human cloning nearly stampeded the Senate into banning cloning even for therapeutic purposes.

There are indeed many ethical issues here, but the religious right has so thoroughly hijacked the conversation that the knotty scientific and ethical questions get sidetracked. On the issue of stem cell research, the gap between the scientific and religious cultures has never been wider.

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