Blair blames crime on 'black culture'

Mystery solved. Black culture killed over 600,000 Iraqis.
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Blair blames spate of murders on black culture

· Political correctness not helping, says PM
· Community leaders react angrily to comments

Patrick Wintour and Vikram Dodd
Thursday April 12, 2007
The Guardian

Tony Blair yesterday claimed the spate of knife and gun murders in London was not being caused by poverty, but a distinctive black culture. His remarks angered community leaders, who accused him of ignorance and failing to provide support for black-led efforts to tackle the problem.

One accused him of misunderstanding the advice he had been given on the issue at a Downing Street summit.

Black community leaders reacted after Mr Blair said the recent violence should not be treated as part of a general crime wave, but as specific to black youth. He said people had to drop their political correctness and recognise that the violence would not be stopped "by pretending it is not young black kids doing it".

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It needed to be addressed by a tailored counter-attack in the same way as football hooliganism was reined in by producing measures aimed at the specific problem, rather than general lawlessness.

Mr Blair's remarks are at odds with those of the Home Office minister Lady Scotland, who told the home affairs select committee last month that the disproportionate number of black youths in the criminal justice system was a function of their disproportionate poverty, and not to do with a distinctive black culture.

Giving the Callaghan lecture in Cardiff, the prime minister admitted he had been "lurching into total frankness" in the final weeks of his premiership. He called on black people to lead the fight against knife crime. He said that "the black community - the vast majority of whom in these communities are decent, law abiding people horrified at what is happening - need to be mobilised in denunciation of this gang culture that is killing innocent young black kids".

Mr Blair said he had been moved to make his controversial remarks after speaking to a black pastor of a London church at a Downing Street knife crime summit, who said: "When are we going to start saying this is a problem amongst a section of the black community and not, for reasons of political correctness, pretend that this is nothing to do with it?" Mr Blair said there needed to be an "intense police focus" on the minority of young black Britons behind the gun and knife attacks. The laws on knife and gun gangs needed to be toughened and the ringleaders "taken out of circulation".

Last night, British African-Caribbean figures leading the fight against gang culture condemned Mr Blair's speech. The Rev Nims Obunge, chief executive of the Peace Alliance, one of the main organisations working against gang crime, denounced the prime minister.

Mr Obunge, who attended the Downing Street summit chaired by Mr Blair in February, said he had been cited by the prime minister: "He makes it look like I said it's the black community doing it. What I said is it's making the black community more vulnerable and they need more support and funding for the work they're doing. ... He has taken what I said out of context. We came for support and he has failed and has come back with more police powers to use against our black children."

Keith Jarrett, chair of the National Black Police Association, whose members work with vulnerable youngsters, said: "Social deprivation and delinquency go hand in hand and we need to tackle both. It is curious that the prime minister does not mention deprivation in his speech."

Lee Jasper, adviser on policing to London's mayor, said: "For years we have said this is an issue the black community has to deal with. The PM is spectacularly ill-informed if he thinks otherwise.

"Every home secretary from [David] Blunkett onwards has been pressed on tackling the growing phenomenon of gun and gang crime in deprived black communities, and government has failed to respond to what has been a clear demand for additional resources to tackle youth alienation and disaffection".

The Home Office has already announced it is looking at the possibility of banning membership of gangs, tougher enforcement of the supposed mandatory five-year sentences for possession of illegal firearms, and lowering the age from 21 to 18 for this mandatory sentence.

Answering questions later Mr Blair said: "Economic inequality is a factor and we should deal with that, but I don't think it's the thing that is producing the most violent expression of this social alienation.

"I think that is to do with the fact that particular youngsters are being brought up in a setting that has no rules, no discipline, no proper framework around them."

Some people working with children knew at the age of five whether they were going to be in "real trouble" later, he said.

Mr Blair is known to believe the tendency for many black boys to be raised in families without a father leads to a lack of appropriate role models.

He said: "We need to stop thinking of this as a society that has gone wrong - it has not - but of specific groups that for specific reasons have gone outside of the proper lines of respect and good conduct towards others and need by specific measures to be brought back into the fold."

The Commission for Racial Equality broadly backed Mr Blair, saying people "shouldn't be afraid to talk about this issue for fear of sounding prejudiced".

Mr Blair spoke out as a second teenager was due to appear in court charged with the murder of 14-year-old Paul Erhahon, stabbed to death in east London on Friday. He was the seventh Londoner under 16 to be murdered since the end of January, and his 15-year-old friend, who was also stabbed, remains in hospital.

Edwards: 'The Campaign Goes On

Edwards: 'The Campaign Goes On

Citizens Who Lack Papers Lose Medicaid

March 12, 2007

WASHINGTON, March 11 — A new federal rule intended to keep illegal immigrants from receiving Medicaid has instead shut out tens of thousands of United States citizens who have had difficulty complying with requirements to show birth certificates and other documents proving their citizenship, state officials say.

Florida, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, New Mexico, Ohio and Virginia have all reported declines in enrollment and traced them to the new federal requirement, which comes just as state officials around the country are striving to expand coverage through Medicaid and other means.

Under a 2006 federal law, the Deficit Reduction Act, most people who say they are United States citizens and want Medicaid must provide “satisfactory documentary evidence of citizenship,” which could include a passport or the combination of a birth certificate and a driver’s license.

Some state officials say the Bush administration went beyond the law in some ways, for example, by requiring people to submit original documents or copies certified by the issuing agency.

“The largest adverse effect of this policy has been on people who are American citizens,” said Kevin W. Concannon, director of the Department of Human Services in Iowa, where the number of Medicaid recipients dropped by 5,700 in the second half of 2006, to 92,880, after rising for five years. “We have not turned up many undocumented immigrants receiving Medicaid in Waterloo, Dubuque or anywhere else in Iowa,” Mr. Concannon said.

By ROBERT PEAR

--MORE--

US asks us to pick up litter while city is in ruins, says mayor of Baghdad

By Damien McElroy in Baghdad
Last Updated: 3:30am GMT 03/03/2007

Baghdad's mayor lashed out at the United States yesterday – for spending huge sums on projects to collect rubbish and plant trees while his devastated war-torn city struggles without electricity.

At a meeting in the city's Green Zone the mayor, Sabir al-Isawi, interrupted US officials in the middle of a presentation to key Iraqi officials, to say these schemes are "not what the people want".

He was echoing the feelings of many critics of America's priorities since Baghdad's infrastructure was all but destroyed since the US-led invasion in 2003.

advertisementOn average, residents get only two hours of electricity a day, and are bitterly angry that the world's most powerful nation has not delivered a single major power plant in four years of occupation.

And hours after yesterday's presentation a high-ranking US official admitted that, despite spending $22 billion on reconstruction across Iraq, the Americans didn't expect Baghdad to have a 24-hour electricity supply until 2013.

At the meeting, Mr al-Isawi said: "I'm sorry to say that there are more important projects that are required by the city. There are essential services required by each district in the city that could be met by building power plants and bridges."

He criticised the US-driven projects because they were "overlapping and so badly planned, that the workers hired are ineffective".

The American project is part of a wider scheme to provide employment for Baghdad youths who might otherwise fall into the grip of insurgent groups still bringing daily chaos and bloodshed to Iraq.

Troop commanders have identified scores of projects, including planting trees, refitting health clinics, rebuilding dilapidated schools, plus establishing a functioning water and sewage system in the capital.

Baghdad has dire problems with domestic waste. Each district of the city has a so-called "Trash Street" where the local residents dump their rubbish.

The mayor himself confirmed that he had ordered seven million refuse bags at a cost of £5 million.

At yesterday's meeting, the US officials welcomed the mayor's input. Brigadier General Vincent Brookes, the deputy commander of multinational forces in Baghdad, said the US would gradually cede control of the work to city officials.

Eric Olsen, a US envoy for Iraqi reconstruction, conceded that the mayor was reflecting a widespread frustration.

But he pleaded with the 12 Iraqi officials present to propose new public works that would meet local needs. "Within a couple of weeks, I hope that it will be Iraqis in here deciding on projects that make a difference to their own future."

Yet, hours after the meeting, Mr Olsen's boss, Joseph Saloom, made the shock admission that the city is not expected to have a proper electricity supply for another six years at least.

Behold, The Lost American

Who are the 13 percent of us who've never heard of global warming? And how can they be stopped?

By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist

Friday, February 23, 2007

Behold, this bizarre demographic. Behold this odd and simmering and rather shockingly large hunk of the American population because chances are very good that at least some of them live right next door to you and breathe the same air and steal your parking spaces and often don't shower for six days at a stretch.

And maybe, just maybe you should be painfully, dreadfully aware of them because they are -- in their quiet, seemingly innocuous way -- far more deadly than any gay evangelical preacher or meth-lab gang-bangers and far more frightening than chicken-flavored soap bubbles for dogs and far more disconcerting than Britney Spears' barren skull.

They are, in short, the deeply uninformed. The inexplicably ignorant. The wondrously numb, the disconnected, the way, way out of touch. And they are, apparently, legion.

Let me be clear. I am not speaking merely about the ideologically lopsided and the intellectually misshapen. I am not speaking of, say, those armies of happy blank-eyed red-state 'Merkins who only read NASCAR-themed Harlequin romance novels and only drink Hooters-branded energy drinks (real products, both) and who like to bury their gay sex fantasies under mountains of happy homophobic sing-along God-fearin' megachurch denial.

Nor am I speaking of your average Bush-lovin' bobbleheads who appear to get their worldly information by way of licking the stuff found on the bottom of the rocks in front of Fox News HQ and then tripping for three days while watching "The O'Reilly Factor" from the bathtub. Everyone knows about them. And no one really takes them seriously anymore.

No, I am speaking of a group far more mysterious and far more bewildering. And they number, in fact, in the tens of millions, or fully 13 percent of the American population, if this recent, 46-nation poll is to be believed. Here is one way you shall know them: They have never heard of global warming.

You read that right. According to this ACNielsen poll, there are, right now, upwards of 40 million bipedal adult Internet-using Americans living in this nation who have never, not even once, seen a program about the most dire issue facing the planet today. They have not read about it in a newspaper or seen photos in a magazine or heard about it via an award-winning documentary or seen monkey-like Republican presidents deny its existence and spit on science and mock the simply insurmountable pile of evidence in the name of oil profits and flagrant cronyism.

Who are these people, you ask? Are they, say, millions of forgotten, heavily medicated shut-ins across the land? Are they the disregarded elderly? People living in the backwoods of Louisiana or Appalachia and therefore we can't expect them to actually read or watch television or care much about the health of the planet (except, of course, to take part in a broad, 46-nation Internet survey) because they're simply too busy hunting squirrels and making fire and picking their teeth with dinosaur bones?

Or perhaps they are the very young and the desperately teenage, so packed to the skullcap with screaming hormones they can barely navigate the lousy American education system much less name the current president or flirt well on MySpace or understand how many tons of greenhouse gases are pumped into the sky to crank out one PlayStation 3. You think? Does this explain it?

Verily, it does not. Not by a long shot. Not when, for example, fully 95 percent of Latin America has heard of global warming, and 75 percent think it's a "very serious" issue. Not when the United States ranks dead last among all 46 nations in its concern for the issue of dire climate change.

No, there is something more sinister at play here. Something darker and just a little disquieting. Do you know what it is? I don't, either. Do you ask, as I do, How the hell can this be? What sort of people are these? How can this survey be accurate? How can anyone even moderately attuned to the culture not have heard of global warming, even once? Is it not part of the popular lexicon? Is it not being used to sell sexy white jeans, fer chrissakes? What, pray tell, gives?

Here is what we do know: The United States is, by far, the world's worst contributor to the root causes of global warming, and yet we are the least concerned about it. Read that again: Despite how the United States pumps more pollutants and greenhouse gases into the atmosphere than China or India or Russia, a scant 42 percent of us see the problem as "very serious." Even China and India, those irresponsible mega-polluters of the developing world we like to scoff at for their flagrant industrial waste, are far more concerned and more universally informed.

It's enough to make you look at George W. Bush and want to slap him across the face with the razor-sharp paw of a dead polar bear. It's enough to make your heart shudder as you wonder who the hell we are, really, as an ostensibly proud people, as a supposedly "unified" nation, a global leader, a role model to the planet. Is the great United States really just some sort of moral joke? Are we really leading the world in anything except warmongering and defense spending and sexual hysteria and cool iPod accessories?

Sure, the overall lack of concern is understandable. After all, the vicious GOP spin machine has been working like a rabid dog for the last six years to demonize science and mock environmentalists and sneer at the Kyoto protocol and force eminent scientists to bury their dire findings lest Dick Cheney visit them in the night with a box of rat poison and a shotgun sneer.

And then there's this: Only 13 percent of congressional Republicans see global warming as a human-caused issue, compared to 95 percent of Dems. That's right, despite the National Academy of Sciences, despite the AAAS and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, despite the U.N., despite every reputable (and often, very conservative) scientific body on the planet, half of our own Congress snickeringly denies humans have had anything to do with global warming. Ah, how proud they must be.

But while that level of willful, greedy ignorance is relatively easy to explain, this weird hunk of gaping blindness, this intellectual black hole, isn't quite so easy to figure out.

Except for this: Maybe it's the end result of the great, chronic dumbing down of the American mind. Possible?

Maybe our 13 percent blindness rate is simply the brutal upshot, the logical conclusion of all the endless stripping of school textbooks of fact and perspective, of the push for silly literalist Christian dogma at the expense of true awareness, of the systemic neoconservative drive to get Americans to stop asking questions and stop thinking for themselves and to hate and mistrust the media (except, of course, Fox News), and wouldn't you be better off just enjoying your Wal-Mart candy corn and your "Everybody Loves Raymond" DVDs and just turn off your brain because it's all just far too complicated and messy and suspicious anyway, so really, why care at all?

And oh, those dark storm clouds? Pay no attention to those. Those are just God's happy lint balls. Go back to sleep.

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Thoughts for the author? E-mail him.

Quote of the Day

"Rush Limbaugh is the foremost advocate for freedom and democracy in the world today," explained Levin. "Everyday he gives voice to the values of democratic governance, individual opportunity and the just, equal application of the rule of law -- and it is fitting that the Nobel Committee recognize the power of these ideals to build a truly peaceful world for future generations."

--Landmark Legal Foundation Nominates Rush Limbaugh for 2007 Nobel Peace Prize, 02-01-2007

New proposal: Ethnic cleansing-for-cash plan

New proposal: Transfer-for-cash plan

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Matthew Wagner, THE JERUSALEM POST

Jan. 21, 2007

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A new proposal designed to solve Israel's Arab demographic concerns suggests offering a million Palestinian residents of refugee camps in Judea and Samaria incentives totaling as much as $50 billion to convince them to leave the area.

Rabbi Shlomo Aviner, head of the Ateret Kohanim Yeshiva in Jerusalem, and MK Benny Elon (National Union-National Religious Party) have joined forces to promote the proposed program, which they said would be funded by the state. The two men, who are next door neighbors in Beit El, propose paying the refugee camp residents $50,000 to $100,000 each if they agree to emigrate.

"Those poor people have been suffering for six decades," said Elon. "I believe that if we give them the option of leaving they will grab it."

Elon said that he was astounded to discover that Palestinians who want to leave had difficulty getting to Ben-Gurion Airport, for security reasons.

Elon said many western countries, including Canada as well as some in South America, were open to immigrants, especially if they brought cash with them. He said he hoped to gain the cooperation of western countries for the program by emphasizing its humanitarian dimension.

Aviner, a respected halachic authority, has written an article advocating the transfer-for-payment idea, which appeared this weekend in Be'ahava U'Be'emuna, a pamphlet that is distributed in thousands of synagogues across the nation every Shabbat.

"Arabs are busy killing Jews or providing aid, cover and legitimacy to terrorists," Aviner said in a telephone interview.

"There is no end in sight. I do not want to keep killing them to protect myself. So the best solution is to encourage them to leave," he said. "As soon as the word gets around that Israel is paying compensation to anyone who leaves, it will have a snowball effect."

Aviner quoted the Koran as well as the Bible to demonstrate that the Land of Israel belongs to the Jewish people.

Arabs who agreed to stop all terrorism against Israel and to accept second class citizenship, without voting rights, would be allowed to stay, Aviner said.

MK Ibrahim Sarsour (United Arab List-Ta'al) called the proposal "satanic," "fascist," and "nearly Nazi."

"Palestine is an integral part of Waqf-administered sacred Islamic land," said Sarsour, who is also the head of the Islamic Movement in Israel. "It belongs to the Muslim people. Benny Elon and others like him will have to trample over our dead bodies to remove us from this place."

Sarsour said "Islam" was willing to normalize relations with a sovereign Israel within the Green Line. He said all Jews living in the West Bank or eastern Jerusalem must leave their homes or renounce Zionism and agree to second-class citizenship, without voting rights.

"But Elon is trying to push for the option of conflict and extinction of both peoples," he said.

Sarsour said "zealots" like Elon and Aviner had caused the destruction of the Second Temple, and that history could repeat itself.

"The weak do not stay weak forever, nor do the strong," Sarsour said.

Christmas trees returned to Sea-Tac Airport

Tuesday, December 12, 2006

By JOHN IWASAKI
P-I REPORTER

[Editor's Note: Port Commissioner John Creighton's name was misspelled in the original version of this article.]

The Christmas spirit has returned to Sea-Tac Airport.

The Port of Seattle, which had been battered internationally for removing 14 Christmas trees last week in response to a rabbi's threat of a federal lawsuit, began reinstalling the displays Monday night.

	It was all smiles and cheers as Christmas trees were rolled into the terminal after being taken down due to the threat of a lawsuit at Sea-Tac Airport on Monday.

The decision came shortly after Rabbi Elazar Bogomilsky told port officials that his organization would not file the suit to get an 8-foot menorah added to the public display, ending a flap that Port Commissioner Alec Fisken said made Seattle "an international joke."

Port Chairwoman Pat Davis expressed relief that the situation was resolved without Bogomilsky resorting to litigation.

"He pulled that stinger out, and it's wonderful," she said.

Davis said Bogomilsky never asked the port to remove the "holiday trees" -- the agency's staff does not refer to them as Christmas trees -- and expressed appreciation for the rabbi's willingness to work with the Port and other community and religious leaders to develop a plan for next year's holiday decorations at the airport.

Bogomilsky, director of Northwest Friends of Chabad-Lubavitch, a Hasidic Orthodox group, reiterated Monday that he never asked the airport to remove the Christmas trees and had no intention of offending anyone. In withdrawing the threat of litigation, he said, "the word 'lawsuit' is a tremendously bad word."

"I think the whole thing is ridiculous and really out of proportion," Bogomilsky said shortly before the port made its announcement to reinstall the trees. "People should turn to the Port of Seattle and say, 'Wait a minute, what are you doing? Return the trees and give people the spirit of the holiday back.' Right now, nobody's happy."

Bogomilsky's day started at 5 a.m. Monday and lasted until the evening, with requests for interviews from CNN, Bill O'Reilly and virtually every local news outlet and talk show host. He sometimes held two phones to his ears at the same time.

The flap reverberated on simmering Internet forums, where irate observers labeled Bogomilsky a "grinch" and called the Port Commission "spineless," among other colorful adjectives.

Davis said the firestorm produced a public outcry from people of all faiths for the port to reinstall the trees. Some groups also said that if the port accommodated the rabbi's request, they also would expect "special treatment."

"I didn't want to set a precedent, frankly, that when anyone makes a threat, we fold," Davis said.

Bogomilsky said he raised the threat of a suit to get a menorah added, but only after getting "stonewalled" by the agency for weeks after a port consultant, Mitchell Stein, made an initial verbal request in mid-or late October. Port spokeswoman Terri-Ann Betancourt said a formal request came in mid-November.

		Joshua Trujillo / P-I
	Employees applaud as Christmas trees are put back up at Sea-Tac on Monday.

But when Bogomilsky threatened to sue, the commission had only 18 hours to respond, Betancourt said, leading it to direct staff to remove the trees instead of simply adding a menorah as Bogomilsky had requested.

Fisken, who also is a strategic policy adviser for the city of Seattle, earlier Monday proposed a practical end to the brouhaha. His solution: "We ought to put up a tree, menorah and Kwanzaa display. That's what we've had in City Hall, and it doesn't cause a problem."

E-mail messages and other comments to the Port of Seattle were running 99 to 1 in opposition to the removal of the Christmas trees, Port Commissioner John Creighton said.

"As a public officials, we need to do the right thing, not the popular thing," he said. "In this case, I think the right thing is the popular thing."

The tree removal marked an unprecedented interruption to a longstanding holiday tradition at the airport. But the question of whether a menorah should be displayed publicly is hardly new to organizations of local Jews; neither is there agreement in the Jewish community over the practice.

Although some irate people criticized Jews in general for the actions of Bogomilsky, "most of the Jewish community does not really support the putting up of public menorahs," said Rabbi Anson Laytner, executive director of the greater Seattle chapter of the American Jewish Committee.

"It does raise, in spite of the Supreme Court ruling (allowing public displays of the Jewish candelabrum), significant church/ state issues in our minds," he said. "And in this case, it became a lightning rod for hostilities that otherwise would not be brought to the surface."

Several Jewish organizations said they had heard harsh reactions to Bogomilsky's requests, so much so that the Anti-Defamation League recommended that any concerned synagogues or groups hire extra security during Hanukkah events. The Jewish holiday starts at sundown Friday.

	adl
	Trees were put back up at Sea-Tac on Monday.

"The last thing we want is for the trees to taken down," said Robert Jacobs, director of the ADL's Pacific Northwest Region. "This is the time we should be celebrating that we're such a cosmopolitan community."

Bogomilsky said the response to his request has been staggering. "I've gotten thousands and thousands -- it's not an exaggeration -- of e-mails in the last 48 hours," he said. "Here and there, you get a lot of positive calls. Unfortunately, there's been a lot of negative responses -- 'the rabbi that ruined Christmas.' It's not our intention. It's not what our organization represents."

His branch of Judaism, Chabad-Lubavitch, has grown into a philosophy, movement and an organization since its inception about 250 years ago in Russia. The branch emphasizes "Jewish education, providing opportunities for Jewish people everywhere to celebrate the holidays, learning their heritage, reaching the unaffiliated and enriching the affiliated," said Rabbi Mordechai Farkash of Eastside Torah Center in Bellevue.

Chabad-Lubavitch is the Jewish group that has arranged for menorahs to be placed in public settings in at least 17 Western Washington sites, including Westlake Park, University Village, Seattle Center, Northgate Mall and seven places on the Eastside.

Decades ago, the local Jewish community held huge discussions on whether to support public menorahs, Laytner said, and most groups "agreed to disagree" with Chabad-Lubavitch. Laytner said most Jews see Christmas trees as a symbol of Christmas, but not explicitly religious.

A menorah, on the other hand, is associated with Hanukkah, the Jewish Festival of Lights, a holiday that commemorates the miraculous supply of oil that kept the menorah burning in the temple of Jerusalem after its recapture from Syrian rulers in about 165 B.C.

Farkash said that in nation where Christians are the majority, "the menorah symbolizes the freedom of religion," and the opportunity for Jews to "publicize the miracle."

By contrast, the port staff's reluctance to use the word "Christmas" left Davis nonplussed.

"I'm telling everyone 'Merry Christmas,'" she said, "but I guess I'm politically incorrect."

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P-I reporter John Iwasaki can be reached at 206-448-8096 or johniwasaki@seattlepi.com.

© 1998-2006 Seattle Post-Intelligencer

Peace sign: Apostles to no nukes

Interpretations of symbol vary; Pagosa Springs dispute not first

December 3, 2006

By Thomas Munro | Herald Staff Writer

The just-concluded battle over a peace-sign wreath hung south of Pagosa Springs was hardly the first attempt to ban the peace symbol.

It has been banned at schools in several states over the years, and the dress code of the city of Odessa, Texas, banned both the peace symbol and the Star of David as Satanic symbols.

All these incidents are reminders of the unsettling and sometimes uncontrollable power of symbols.

While the group responsible for the creation of the peace symbol offers a specific, historically documented description of its origin and intended meaning, there have been a number of other, likely unintended, interpretations.

The first version of the peace symbol was designed in 1958 by Gerald Holtom, a professional designer and artist, according to the Web site of the British Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. It was first used in the first major anti-nuclear march, which the campaign took from London to Aldermaston, England, in that year.

Holtom said the symbol incorporated the semaphore letters "N" and "D" to represent nuclear disarmament.

He also gave a more personal account of the meaning of the symbol in a letter to the editor of Peace News, reprinted on the British Campaign's Web site. "I was in despair. Deep despair," Holtom wrote. "I drew myself: the representative of an individual in despair, with hands palm outstretched outwards and downwards in the manner of Goya's peasant before the firing squad. I formalized the drawing into a line and put a circle round it."

While the design may or may not have been intended to contain Christian symbolism, the colors of the original buttons bearing the design at Aldermaston had a specifically Christian significance. Marchers were to wear black and white buttons on Good Friday and Saturday and switch to green and white on Easter Sunday.

But the very issues that led to the creation of the peace symbol doomed it to controversy. During the Cold War, as a symbol of the peace movement and the left, it was immediately defined by many as a symbol of communism. The geometrical similarity of the interior of the symbol to an upside-down cross was fodder for anti-communists who saw in the symbol a subliminal promotion of atheism. Others pointed out that a similar symbol appears on the tombstones of some Nazi bomber pilots.

One version of the anti-Christian interpretation begins with the alleged martyrdom of the apostle Peter, an early leader of the Catholic Church. According to traditions recorded in the apocryphal "Acts of Peter," the apostle was crucified upside-down at his own request during the reign of the Roman Emperor Nero.

According to the tradition, Peter wanted the unusual crucifixion because he felt himself unworthy to die in the same manner as Jesus. The upside-down cross therefore was occasionally venerated as a symbol of Peter's martyrdom over the succeeding centuries, although rarely with "broken arms."

Gerry O'Sullivan, then at the University of Pennsylvania, traced the re-interpretation of the upside-down cross in his 1991 essay, "The Satanism Scare." According to O'Sullivan, the 1960 book The Morning of the Magicians, a mystical, occult text considered to be the first New Age book, introduced the ideas that the upside-down cross is Satanic, and that it was used mockingly by both the Romans and the Nazis.

Some religious groups disagree with O'Sullivan, saying these ideas reflect actual historical practices. The ultra-conservative John Birch Society popularized the idea of the peace symbol as a "broken cross" - the same term often used to describe the swastika.

Guides for law enforcement and schools during the satanic ritual murder scare of the 1980s warned that the peace sign could be an indicator of Satanist activity. Self-proclaimed Satanists and pagans deny the use of the upside-down cross in their rituals.

Pagosa Springs homeowners Lisa Jensen and Bill Trimarco hung the peace wreath Nov. 19. The homeowners association demanded they take it down, saying it was offensive to families with soldiers in Iraq and that it was anti-Christian. When publicized, the incident drew nationwide reaction, along with near-unanimous criticism of the homeowners association.

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