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	Protecting Liberty by Russ Feingold & John Sununu Boston Globe USA   Novemeber, 2005   In July, something unusual occurred in Washington: The U.S. Senate cast a unanimous vote on a controversial issue. Every member of the Senate agreed to make meaningful changes to the Patriot Act as we re-authorized parts of it scheduled to expire at the end of the year. These revisions will ensure that our government can wage an effective fight against terrorists that respects our basic freedoms. But the battle for these reforms is not over. In the coming weeks, a House-Senate conference committee will meet to work out the differences between competing versions of the bill. Hard-won improvements to the Patriot Act could be in jeopardy.   We will make every effort - and, if we have to, use procedural options at our disposal - to oppose a final re-authorization bill that either strips out the meaningful changes made by the Senate bill or adds measures that ignore the public demands for more protection of our rights and freedoms. Our goal is not to derail re-authorization; it is to ensure that necessary changes to the Patriot Act are made as part of the re-authorization bill. We can - and should - provide law enforcement with the tools necessary to fight terrorism while protecting civil liberties at home.   The end-of-the-year deadline for re-authorization gives us a rare chance to fix parts of the Patriot Act - creating a check on searches for library, bookstore, and other sensitive records, putting new safeguards on secret "sneak and peek" searches of Americans" homes, and giving citizens real power to challenge secret court orders. These and other issues are at stake in the House-Senate conference committee"s deliberations.   If the Senate bill prevails in conference, Congress will finally catch up with an American public that has been questioning the Patriot Act for years - librarians who are standing up to a Justice Department that wants the power to dig into Americans" library records; town and city councils - even whole states - that have passed resolutions opposing parts of the Patriot Act; and business interests like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers, and the National Association of Realtors that support changes to the law.   The Senate bill would make changes to some of the most controversial provisions of the Patriot Act. The Senate bill would: Require the government to convince a judge that a person is connected to terrorism or espionage before secretly obtaining library, medical, and other sensitive business records about that person, and allow recipients of court orders for such records to challenge them in court.   Require the government in most circumstances to inform targets of "sneak and peek" searches within seven days instead of being able to delay that notification for an indefinite period as permitted by the Patriot Act, or for up to six months as permitted by the House bill.   Eliminate "John Doe roving wiretaps," the secret intelligence orders that can now be issued without identifying either the person or phone to be tapped.   Provide only a four-year extension for three of the most sensitive provisions of the Patriot Act.   The House bill fails to include these important measures, leaving too many of our freedoms at risk. While some improvements were incorporated in the House bill, it is still a far cry from what Congress owes the American people.   There is a strong sense among many Americans that in the Patriot Act the government overreached when it sought power that is a potential threat to law-abiding citizens. Congress should respond to these legitimate concerns by sending the unanimously adopted Senate version of the Patriot Act reauthorization bill to the president. We must reform the Patriot Act, not rubber-stamp the original law. With these reforms, we can fight terrorism without sacrificing our freedoms.   (Russ Feingold, a Democratic U.S. senator from Wisconsin and John Sununu, a Republican U.S. senator from New Hampshire, are original cosponsors of the legislation to modify the Patriot Act. This article first appeared in The Boston Globe.)
	The Dogs That Never Barked by Gareth Evans International Crisis Group Belgium   22 November 2005   As we mark the 10th anniversary of the Dayton accords that ended the war in Bosnia, it must seem to most Americans that the world hasn''t really learned much, then or since, about how to prevent and resolve deadly conflict. With every night''s evening news full of the grim daily death tolls in Iraq, riots in France, bombs in Jordan, ugly fighting still in Afghanistan and recurring nightmares in Africa, there doesn''t seem much room for optimism.   But there is. Contrary to what just about everybody instinctively believes, there has been a dramatic decrease in the number of conflicts, down 40% since the early 1990s. There were just 25 armed secessionist conflicts underway in 2004, the lowest number since 1976, according to the meticulously documented Human Security Report 2005, a new multi-government study (www.humansecurityreport.info).   The number of mass killings has fallen 80% since the late 1980s, according to the report. And around the world, there has been a spectacular increase in the number of civil conflicts resolved — as in Indonesia''s separatist Aceh province this year — not by force but by negotiation.   There are many reasons for these turnarounds. They include the end of the era of colonialism, the aftermath of which generated two-thirds or more of all wars from the 1950s to the 1980s. The end of the Cold War meant no more proxy wars fueled by Washington or Moscow, and it also hastened the demise of a number of authoritarian governments that each side had been propping up and that had generated significant internal resentment and resistance.   But the best explanation is the one that stares us in the face: the huge increase in international efforts to prevent, manage and resolve conflicts.   The best stories are the ones that do not reach the evening news: the dogs that never barked. Using the hard lessons learned from the disastrous days of the early 1990s in places such as Bosnia, Rwanda and Somalia, the international community is much better now than it ever used to be at preventing conflict.   Between 1990 and 2002, the number of U.N. diplomatic missions aimed at stopping wars before they started increased sixfold, according to the Human Security report. Although sometimes an imperfect tool, economic sanctions against abusive regimes around the world increased elevenfold between 1989 and 2003. Early and sensible action in places such as Burundi, Indonesia and Macedonia has kept most Americans blissfully unaware that these were countries that recently veered away from the large-scale violence that has plagued them in the past.   Liberia''s recent presidential election was a one-day news story about people peacefully voting after years of bloodshed. But only a successful peacekeeping mission made it so.   A catastrophic new civil war looked certain to erupt in Somalia this year, with a misguided decision by neighboring governments to intervene militarily in support of one side of an internal political dispute. But organizations such as mine rang the alarm bells and there was a flurry of diplomatic activity in Nairobi, Addis Ababa and New York. Wiser heads prevailed, no intervention occurred, no war broke out — and because "nothing happened," nobody noticed.   For every roadside bomb in Baghdad, international peacekeepers in places such as Bosnia, Kosovo, East Timor and Sierra Leone have quietly gone about their duties in work that seems now almost routine. Between 1998 and 2004, the number of U.N. peacekeeping operations more than doubled.   Regional organizations in Europe, the Americas and Africa have also become much more forceful in standing up and taking action against intolerable abuses against civilians, helping to limit conflicts before they spread out of control. Max van der Stoel, Europe''s former high commissioner on national minorities, deserves the Nobel Peace Prize for stopping as many as a dozen major ethnic and language-based conflicts from breaking out across Europe, from the Baltics to Romania.   One of the abiding lessons from the Balkans conflict was that the international community can be effective when it works together. Before the U.S. and Europe coordinated their approach in Bosnia, the situation was a bloody mess, the international response ineffectual and the world was looking at a failed, lawless state in the middle of Europe. When both sides of the Atlantic did pull together, things changed dramatically.   There has also been an emerging consensus on the international community''s responsibility to protect civilians at grave risk. This has helped bridge the gap between those who want to defend traditional principles of state sovereignty and those who assert an international right to intervene in humanitarian crises. We cannot yet be said to have reached, as an international community, anything like consensus as to how and when any intervention should be undertaken and under whose authority. And while the disagreement continues, people keep dying. But we are at least now on our way.   Much hard work remains to be done around the globe in places such as Iraq, Sudan and the Congo, but there is far more good news to celebrate than you probably have been led to believe. In an often uncertain world, the lives of millions of people are now vastly safer and more secure than they were even just a decade ago.   (Gareth Evans, is president and chief executive of the International Crisis Group. He was foreign minister of Australia from 1988 to 1996. This article appeared in the Los Angeles Times).
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