Supreme Sacrifice
Dying for the Rights Bush and Ashcroft are Intent on
Dismantling
By
ELAINE CASSEL
Counterpunch
Memorial Day is the day we
set aside to honor those who have made the ultimate sacrifice for
the freedoms of life that the Bush Administration is taking away.
In that respect, this Memorial Day is most poignant. Can it be that
those hundreds of thousands of sacrifices have now been in vain?
because one Administration, drunk on power and ruling by fear, will
dismantle the Constitution to promote the interests of wealth and
privilege? Never have I thought more about the significance of
Memorial Day than on this day. Spending so much time reading and
writing about the loss of freedom put this day in a new
perspective.
Sad
as I was upon waking this morning, I even more so as I read about
yet another young man (African American, of course) about to be put
to death by the machinery of my state, Virginia. Then it came to
me. Why not add a new category of people to honor on Memorial
Day--all people that our local, state, and federal governments have
killed? They, too, make the ultimate sacrifice in the name of
"freedom." Law enforcement and justice systems tell us that by
killing the innocent and the guilty they are making our communities
safer. They are saving us from fear and ridding the state of
undesirables (as Bush says he is doing in the war on civil
liberties).
At
the top of the roll call of honored dead would be the two innocent,
hard-working, law-abiding citizens who died at the hands of New
York City police officers (NYPD) last week. One, an immigrant from
Africa whose specialty was restoring African art, was killed in a
ambush when NYPD were looking for people who are pirating CDs (ask
yourself why, even if he were doing that, it would merit a
shooting). Then there was the woman whose apartment was stormed by
SWAT team members looking for criminal activity. Wrong place, wrong
person. She died of a heart attack in the melee...
Britain told
to choose between US and Europe
The former French president Valéry Giscard d’Estaing
raised the temperature in the debate over the new EU constitution
yesterday by declaring Britain had to choose between a future with
Europe or its special relationship with the United States.
In a series of controversial statements, Mr d’Estaing, who
is chairing the convention drawing up the blueprint for an enlarged
EU, insisted there were two prerequisites for the constitution: a
common foreign policy and a stable presidency.
His remarks provided further ammunition to those calling for a
referendum on the issue, fearing that the proposals put forward by
the convention will mean Britain losing a swathe of sovereign
powers as it becomes subsumed into a United States of Europe.
..."The idea of offending or destroying Britain is nonsense," he
told Breakfast with Frost. "I did set out at the beginning of the
convention that I would not ignore at all the British point of view
- even the British sensitivity."
And he promised that the post-enlargement Europe would be
"stronger, better organised", and one in which the powers of the
Commission, the heads of states and national parliaments were
clearly defined.
"We need democratic legitimacy and the democratic legitimacy is
enshrined in our national parliaments," he said. "I am in favour of
the very clear definition of the whole of the European institutions
on one side and national institutions on the other side."
Mr d’Estaing said Britain’s problems with Europe
stemmed from its long-standing ambivalence towards Brussels.
"Britain never considered Europe as a full option. It wanted to
be in Europe and to have all the options ... the special
relationship with the US. I would say if you want as a wish to be a
leading country in Europe … I think you should make up your
mind in the next ten years," he said.
Comment: Perhaps "Britain" sees
that in the near future there is going to be a confrontation
between Europe and the US and it is as yet undecided who the winner
will be, and as such which side to take.
Sharon defends
support for peace plan
Associated Press
18:40 Monday 26th May 2003
Ariel Sharon has defended
his backing for the road map peace plan, telling MPs that
continuing to rule Palestinians is "bad for us and them."The plan
envisages a Palestinian state by 2005, and the Israeli Prime
Minister told angry members of his Likud Party: "This (rule) cannot
continue endlessly."
His
Cabinet voted 12-7 to conditionally approve the US-backed road map
to Mideast peace, with four abstentions.Defending his support for
the plan, Mr Sharon was heckled by Likud MPs who reminded him of
his prior opposition to concessions.He said: "To keep 3.5 million
people under occupation is bad for us and them. I want to say
clearly that I have come to the conclusion that we have to reach a
(peace) agreement." [...]
Comment: Oh dear,
what has he got up his sleeve? Perhaps he knows that a majority of
Israelis have no plans to give anything up to enable a peaceful
settlement . . .
Israeli settlers
vow: 'We will never leave'
By
Eric Silver in Jerusalem
The Independent
27 May
2003
Leaders of the 226,000
Jewish settlers of the West Bank and Gaza Strip vowed yesterday to
thwart evacuation of their homes, which would end their dream of a
biblical state from the Jordan to the sea.
For
Elyakim Haetzni, a vitriolic pioneer settler in Hebron, Sunday's
Israeli cabinet vote in favour of the road-map for peace in the
Middle East was an act of "national treason".Asked about an opinion
poll that showed 56 per cent of Israelis supported the road-map, he
said Jews had willingly boarded the trains taking them to the gas
chambers. Jews, he added, had brought holocausts on themselves
throughout their history.
The
road-map provides for evacuation of the occupied territories and
creation of a Palestinian state by the end of 2005. The first phase
calls for a freeze on the growth of official settlements and the
complete evacuation of settler outposts set up since 2001.Mr
Haetzni stopped short of branding Ariel Sharon a
traitor.
Placards have already
surfaced doing just that. "Sharon is the greatest builder that we
ever had, and the greatest destroyer. Today he is in a destructive
phase," he said.Yesterday the settlers threatened to "return to the
streets," as they had done after Yitzhak Rabin's Labour government
signed the 1993 Oslo accords."
This
decision is even worse than Oslo," Pinchas Wallerstein, a former
chairman of the settlers' council, said. "It is the first time an
Israeli government has recognised another state west of the Jordan.
We'll make every effort to change it." [...]
US clout
brings Mideast turning point
The
Israeli Cabinet voted 12-to-7 to approve an international plan that
would lead to a Palestinian state.
By
Nicole Gaouette
The Christian Science Monitor
JERUSALEM – Israel's
qualified acceptance of a US-backed plan to establish a Palestinian
state offers the most significant boost to peace prospects in 32
months of conflict.Despite cynicism on both sides and Israeli
attempts to add conditions, the road map could be a turning
point.
It
faces challenges that will probably take more time to overcome than
its ambitious three-year schedule allows. While the conflict's
seemingly intractable nature has deflated other peace attempts, the
plan has in its favor a US leader with unprecedented power in the
region, influence that could help it succeed."We're at a point when
the US has unusual clout in the Middle East in general and in
Israel in particular," says Yossi Alpher, former director of the
Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies in Tel Aviv. "Now, for the
first time in two years of this administration, we have a president
who seems ready to commit his energies and prestige to stabilize
the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
That
is a major event."The 12-to-7 cabinet vote approving the road map
is being described as historic, as it is the first time an Israeli
government has officially accepted that Palestinians should have a
state. It is all the more significant for being passed by the
right-wing government of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who
acknowledged, after the vote Sunday, that "this was not a happy
decision." [...]
Sharon has often boasted
that ties between two countries have never been closer. They have
also never been more necessary. Without the US, Israel - with its
rightwing government and aggressive re-occupation of the
Palestinian territories - would be deeply isolated internationally.
Now, building on the developing momentum, Mr. Bush wants to host a
summit that would bring Israelis and Palestinians together with
Jordan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia in the next few weeks.
[...]
Israelis Shoot at Diplomatic Cars in Gaza
-Sources
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israeli troops shot at a convoy of diplomatic
vehicles at a military roadblock in the Gaza Strip on Monday, twice
hitting the windshield of one of the cars but causing no injuries,
diplomatic sources said. [...]
US soldiers
die in Iraq attacks
BBC
Tuesday, 27 May,
2003, 01:11 GMT
Attacks on US forces in
Iraq have left two soldiers dead and several injured, in the latest
in a series of incidents against US troops in the
country.
In
the first attack, the US military said that gunmen fired assault
rifles, machine-guns and rocket-propelled grenades at a convoy of
the 3rd Armoured Cavalry Regiment convoy near the town of Haditha,
about 180 kilometres (110 miles) north-west of the capital,
Baghdad, killing one soldier and injuring another.Only hours later
a landmine killed another soldier and injured three more on a US
military vehicle on the outskirts of Baghdad.
US
Central Command said in a statement the vehicle ran over what
appeared to have been a landmine or an unexploded shell, and said
the blast appeared to be a result of "hostile action".A US military
position in a town north of Baghdad was also hit in a grenade
attack.No-one was reported hurt, although US soldiers shot dead a
woman reportedly hiding grenades who was walking towards them,
Reuters quoted a US military statement as saying.And in town of
Baiji, near Tikrit, the ancestral home of Saddam Hussein, a
rocket-propelled grenade was fired at soldiers from the 101st
Airborne Division, but the device failed to explode and no injuries
were reported.[...]
However the top civilian
administrator, American L Paul Bremer, said the administration was
doing what it could to improve conditions for Iraqis in
Baghdad...
Comment: Sure they
are. Why, just the other day, they got the
US TV
station in Iraq up and running. Now the Iraqi people can
sit down together in their living rooms and experience the joys of
American brainwashing - just after they find their stolen TV, build
a generator to provide electricity for the TV, find some food and
clean water so that they can stay alive long enough to watch the
TV, fight off some more thieves and vandals and rapists, patch up
those gaping holes in their house that were caused by errant
American "smart" bombs, and fish through the rubble of their
childrens' bedrooms in an effort to find their missing
limbs.
US sends in extra
troops to quell unrest
By
Andrew Buncombe in Washington
The Independent
27 May 2003
A
further 20,000 US troops are to be deployed in Iraq amid growing
concerns that there are insufficient forces to bring law and order
to the country after the American-led invasion.
Over
the next few weeks, troops from the 1st Armoured Division will
start to arrive, bringing the total number of US forces to about
163,000. Whether forces from other countries will be deployed is
unclear, though there are certainly no plans to add more American
troops to the so-called stabilisation force.
General Peter Pace, deputy
chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee: "The number is being increased as we speak by
about 18,000 with the arrival of the 1st Armoured
Division."
News
of the deployment was given amid increasing concern that there were
not enough soldiers within Iraq, which has been rife with looting
since Saddam Hussein's regime was ousted six weeks
ago...
Saddam's killing fields give up their gruesome
secrets
Families' search for their
loved ones ends in a gym filled with bodies from mass graves. Ed
Vulliamy reports
The
Observer
The
silence and afternoon heat in the school gymnasium at Musayyib is
broken by a sudden wail of grief beyond consolation. Nuria Jasen
Shana has found her son at last.
The
quiet had been that of death: the gym is filled with some 200
reassembled and partly clothed skeletons, wrapped in white cloth
sheeting, from what was yesterday emerging as potentially one of
the biggest and most gruesome mass grave sites of victims
slaughtered by the regime of Saddam Hussein. [...]
All
these victims were massacred following the Shia uprising against
Saddam on the slipstream of the 1991 Gulf war, an intifada that was
urged but unaided by then President George Bush Senior. The
rebellion was left to its fate: a punitive onslaught by Saddam's
Republican Guard.[...]
U.S. Intel on Iraq
Overstated - Australian Analyst
CANBERRA (Reuters) - The
Australian government ignored warnings from its own intelligence
officials that Washington had overstated the threat posed by Iraq's
arsenal, a former senior Australian intelligence analyst said on
Tuesday.
Andrew Wilkie, who resigned
in March from the Office of National Assessments (ONA) over
Australia's likely involvement in an Iraq war, said Australia's
intelligence community long doubted U.S. claims about Iraq's
weapons of mass destruction.
"The
U.S. information was faulty because there was a lot of political
pressure to come up with a smoking gun," Wilkie told Reuters in a
telephone interview. "I think the U.S. agencies were also
misinformed by disinformation that people in Iraq were wanting to
pass to the U.S. to encourage the U.S. to intervene."
Wilkie echoed concerns
raised by U.S. Democrats that U.S. intelligence had exaggerated
Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction program and links with
Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network.
Almost a month since
President Bush declared victory after a three-week campaign, the
chemical, biological and possibly nuclear weapons used to justify
the invasion of Iraq have yet to be found...
Unfulfilled
Promises Leave Iraqis Bewildered
By
Anthony Shadid
Washington Post Foreign Service
BAGHDAD, May 26 -- Sitting
in a battered Toyota Corona, Fadhil Murah wiped his sweaty forehead
with a soiled red rag. Behind him snaked a line of cars a half-mile
up Jadriya Bridge, waiting to fill up with gas. Ahead of him was
another hour he would spend waiting his turn. On a day of withering
heat, his words punctuated by a cacophony of car horns, he spoke
glumly of his life and his city.
He
had closed his construction supply store, wary of thieves. He had
sold everything in his house -- from his bed to the refrigerator --
to support his wife and four children. He has little hope of
returning soon to his former job at the Ministry of Transportation
and Communications, part of a government that exists in name only.
For food, he relies on the $5 or so he makes a day tooling
Baghdad's streets as a gypsy cab driver.
"Ala
al-balata," he said, Egyptian slang that means on the floor tiles,
as broke as you can be."America could solve all the problems, serve
all the people in days. It knows what the country needs. It doesn't
need the opposition parties from abroad. It needs comfort," he
said, his blue shirt soaked with sweat. "They came and said, 'I'll
give you freedom and democracy.' So what? People should have food
first, then democracy.
"From the gas lines that
frustrate Murah, to frequent power outages that leave many
residents with only a few hours a day of electricity, from a
chilling crime wave to newly opened stores bursting with expensive
appliances, Baghdad is a city of great expectations and even
greater disappointments. The seeming invincibility of the U.S.
conquest has magnified the failures of the weeks that followed the
war.People are confused that U.S. military forces, assumed to be
all-powerful, have delivered little. They are unsettled by the
lawlessness that has encouraged religious forces to step into the
breach and vigilantes to dole out their own brand of justice. They
are bitter at the promises -- yet unfulfilled -- of a better life
that would follow the war. To many of its residents, Baghdad is a
capital both liberated and occupied, but most of all just
bewildered.[...]
Despite the palatable
relief at the ouster of president Saddam Hussein and the end of his
three decades of repressive rule, it is often heard in Baghdad
today that the country needs a strong leader, that it can be
governed only by a strong hand. Mixed in with those words is a
belief, almost universal, that a country as powerful as the United
States could almost certainly rebuild Iraq. Baghdad's residents
often expressed awe at the force of the invasion. Now they are just
as often baffled by its aftermath."It would take the Americans five
minutes to provide gas, to provide electricity, to provide
security," Karima said."Not five minutes," her 13-year-old daughter
Amal interrupted, "just one minute."[...]
To
combat the lawlessness in Baghdad, the clergy have asserted their
authority, effectively running what has now been renamed Sadr City,
after a prominent ayatollah assassinated in 1999 with his two sons.
As the postwar chaos set in, men affiliated with the mosques began
directing traffic, distributing flour seized from government
warehouses and providing stipends to the neediest. In Sadr City,
they have provided the little security there is for hospitals,
schools, shops and homes.
More
recently, in a city that was once defiantly secular, they have
begun enforcing a moral code.
"The
enemy has tried to introduce corrupt, foreign thoughts," Abadi, a
diminutive cleric with a wispy brown beard, told his followers. He
listed them: pornography, Western books and films, cosmetics,
compact discs and even foreign words."This is not good," he said,
his voice carried by booming speakers."These are not our customs
and traditions."
He
ordered followers to form vigilante committees, tasked with
enforcing morality on streets where the only other authority was an
occasional detachment of Humvees on patrol. Liquor stores, he
noted, were warned to stop selling alcohol, even to non-Muslims.
"We will not warn them again," he said. Muslim women, Abadi
instructed, should immediately begin wearing the veil.
"It
is time for Islam to emerge and spread its wings," he
said.[...]
Murah, waiting in line for
gas in his Toyota Corona, worries what's in store for the
Americans."Believe me, if the Americans provide the Iraqis with
what they need, the Iraqis will cooperate 100 percent. The people
are in need," he said. "If the Americans do nothing, people will
start killing them.
"Murah, 40, gave the
Americans two months, maybe less, to make things better. His list
ran long: more security, jobs, better salaries, food rations and a
government that demonstrates "strength and softness" -- the former
for the looters, the latter for the people.
Democracy
can be hard to export
Eric
Black
Star Tribune
May 27, 2003
If
you're skeptical that the United States can turn Iraq into a
democracy, President Bush suggests you consider the U.S. track
record. "There was a time when many said that the cultures of Japan
and Germany were incapable of sustaining democratic values," Bush
said, but the United States turned those totalitarian aggressors
into durable democracies, and it will prove the doubters wrong
again in Iraq.
But
other less-discussed precedents lead some critics to the opposite
conclusion. In at least four countries the United States engineered
or backed the overthrow of elected leaders and their replacement by
dictators. "The historical record, perhaps with the exception of
Japan and Germany, doesn't give one much confidence in the
sincerity of the U.S. commitment when it says it is going to bring
democracy, especially in the Third World," said political scientist
Ido Oren of Florida University, author of the 2002 book "Our
Enemies and US."
Oren
predicts that the United States will devise a system for Iraq that
permits some kind of elections but will be rigged to produce a
pro-U.S. government. [...]
The
critics argue that the overriding motive for U.S. interventions
abroad has been implanting or maintaining governments friendly to
U.S. economic and geostrategic interests, whether they were
democracies, dictatorships or monarchies.
The
cases where the United States overthrew democracies look even worse
in the aftermaths, the critics say. These are the cases they
cite:
• In 1953, the CIA
helped overthrow Muhammad Mussadegh, the elected prime minister of
Iran; he was replaced by the Shah.
• In 1954, the CIA
organized the ouster of Guatemalan President Jacobo Arbenz Guzman,
and his replacement by a military dictator.
• In 1960 the CIA
helped undermine Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba, the only
legitimately elected leader in Congolese history. He was killed the
following year. The corrupt and brutal dictatorship of Mobutu Sese
Seko dominated Congo (which he renamed Zaire) for
decades.
• In 1973, the CIA
conspired against Chilean President Salvador Allende, who committed
suicide after being overthrown by Gen. Augusto Pinochet. The coups
overthrew leftist but non-communist governments that represented a
threat to U.S. economic interests, the critics say.
For
example, Mussadegh had just nationalized Iran's oil. Arbenz had
pushed through a law allowing the Guatemalan government to buy and
redistribute land from major landowners -- such as U.S.-based
United Fruit Co. -- whether or not the landowners wanted to sell.
In all four cases, the dictatorships received years of U.S.
military or economic aid.
These cases are not
exceptions, the critics argue. The United States befriended
dictatorships on every continent before, during and after the Cold
War. Even in Iraq itself, Saddam Hussein received U.S. aid during
the 1980s.Saudi Arabia, a theocratic
feudal monarchy with no pretense to democracy, has been a U.S. ally
continuously since 1945.
Furthermore, the list of
cases other than Germany and Japan in which a U.S. occupation led
to the creation of a new democracy is short, the critics say. A
recent study of 16 U.S. military "nation-building" operations in
the 20th century concluded that only four of the nations U.S.
troops occupied -- Japan, Germany, Panama and Grenada -- were
functioning democracies 10 years after the occupation. But in every
case, the United States left behind a pro-U.S.
government.
Minxin Pei of the Carnegie
Endowment for International Peace, author of the study, said
presidents use democracy to justify interventions "because the
American people have this Wilsonian idealism" that makes them
reluctant to support military missions unless they have a high
moral purpose. But in most cases involving U.S. intervention,
democratization was subordinated to a more self-serving goal such
as securing U.S. control of a strategic location or resource, Pei
said. That pattern makes him skeptical of the depth of the Bush
administration's commitment to democracy in Iraq, he
said...
When Trained
Killers Come Home: Why Bush Isn't Bringing the Majority of Our
Troops Home
By
SAM HAMOD
Counterpunch
Yes,
it's true, some of the naval force and some pilots have returned
home to America and a few of the wounded. But have you noticed, the
bulk of our marines and soldiers have not returned from Iraq or
Afghanistan.
It
may be that America has trained a new group of killers that it is
afraid to bring home for fear of the havoc they might raise on
American soil. Of course, as of today, it is apparent that Bush
wants to attack Iran, and having the troops nearby would make that
easier; but, aside from that possibility, which I will cover in
another article, there are other more important reasons the troops
aren't being brought home.
The
first has to do with what happened after some of our troops
returned from Afghanistan to Fort Bragg--the killing of several
wives of the troops, and the beatings of several others when the
men came home. There is a fear of a repeat of this scenario. Up to
this point, the government isn't sure it has solved the
problem.
As a
friend of mine, Dr. Simon Lesser, a retired Psychiatrist, told me,
and I paraphrase, it appears to him that our men are being taught
to be killers more than disciplined soldiers and that killer
instinct has been so ingrained in our men that they can't turn it
off once they've begun killing in combat. This was reinforced
recently by Mr. Ambrose Lane, a commentator on WPFW-FM of Pacifica
Radio in Washington, DC when he spoke of a soldier who told him
that he and his buddies didn't belong in police work in Afghanistan
or Iraq because they "were taught to kill, not to handle peace
missions."
Another reason has to do
with the brutality that some of our men are dishing out to the
Afghans and the Iraqis, soldiers and civilians. Just last week we
read of four Afghan soldiers being killed by an American compound
just because they were getting their weapons out to go on patrol.
We have heard in San Diego, from Afghans who hear the news in Dari,
by short wave radio, of constant killings by American troops of
people they "suspect" of being the enemy--at times they may be the
enemy, but often they are men loyal to President Karzai who are
armed, or men who do not immediately obey an order to stop or lay
down their weapons--who are then shot. The problem was that the men
did not speak English and the American troops did not speak Peshtu
or Dari!
The
brutality of our troops in Iraq is now infamous--the making Iraqis
run naked, the beating of civilians (documented by independent
reporters and Al Jazeera) and the killing of people who do not
respond immediately to English orders to "stop" or "lay down your
arms"; once again, it may be a language barrier or it may be a new
policy of brutality our men are using.
In
all these cases, and in the case of Private Jessica Lynch, none of
these soldiers returning are allowed to talk with the media. After
Senator Byrd returned from having talked with Ms. Lynch, he seemed
even more firm in his resolve to condemn the attack in Iraq and
condemned Bush even further. I'm sure, from what I heard in
scuttlebutt on the hill that he may have heard the truth from Ms.
Lynch, not the dispelled myths that the Bush team keeps trying to
spin out for the public about her "heroic" fight and her "valiant"
rescue! [...]
US seizes
2nd truck of suspected gold bars in Iraq
26
May 2003 16:14:37 GMT
By Daren Butler
KIRKUK, Iraq, May 26
(Reuters) - U.S. troops seized a truck laden with suspected gold
bars worth up to $100 million at a checkpoint in northern Iraq, the
second such find in four days, they said on Monday. Major Kevin
Petit said soldiers found 999 bars under a tarpaulin in an old
Mercedes on Sunday during a search near the oil city of Kirkuk and
questioned the truck's three occupants. The driver had said he had
been paid $300 to carry what he said were copper bars from Baghdad
to north Iraq. "These are not minted bars. The gold was melted down
quickly," Petit said as he clambered on the truck to show the
impure and roughly moulded 10 kg (20 lb) bars at Kirkuk
airbase...
US plans death camp
THE US has floated plans to turn Guantanamo Bay into a death camp,
with its own death row and execution chamber.
Prisoners would be tried,
convicted and executed without leaving its boundaries, without a
jury and without right of appeal, The Mail on Sunday newspaper
reported yesterday.
The
plans were revealed by Major-General Geoffrey Miller, who is in
charge of 680 suspects from 43 countries, including two
Australians.
The
suspects have been held at Camp Delta on Cuba without charge for 18
months.General Miller said building a death row was one plan.
Another was to have a permanent jail, with possibly an execution
chamber.
The Survivor Sister Dianna Ortiz's Torturers Almost Took Her Life,
and Her Faith
By
Teresa Wiltz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, May 26, 2003
The
eyes, they change. They change after horrible things have been done
to you and you have been made to do horrible things. The eyes
retreat behind a glassy facade, ever fearful, ever wary. Ever
watchful. Sometimes what they see is not what is before them, but
something else.
This
is, survivors say, exactly the point of torture. You'll never see
things quite the same again. Of this you can be sure. It is, Sister
Dianna Ortiz will tell you, about the only thing of which you can
be sure. If you're lucky enough -- or unlucky enough -- to
survive.
Right now, as Ortiz marches
through the streets of Washington, heading toward the White House,
her eyes are etched with worry. The mood is festive; Ortiz is
anything but. Others are dancing, drumming, carrying signs that
shout, "Somewhere in Texas, a Village Is Missing Its Idiot." Ortiz
walks quietly behind a banner that reads, "The Torture Abolition
and Survivors Support Coalition (TASSC): Zero Tolerance for
Torture." The letters are drawn in the shape of human
bones.
"Look," Ortiz says,
pointing to a row of D.C.'s finest, "there are people in uniform
now." She walks some more. "Over there, on the roof.
Snipers."
"This reminds me of being
incarcerated," she says. "The smell of smoke here. The dogs. I see
a person in uniform and it's too much. I'm looking around now, and
asking myself, 'How many cameras are here?' "Perhaps she's being
paranoid?"I'd say it's paranoia. And reality."I know what my
country is capable of."
Ortiz wasn't always like
this; experience killed her naivete.There are those who remember
her story: As a young Ursuline nun, she says, she was snatched from
a religious retreat in Antigua, Guatemala, and kidnapped by
Guatemalan security forces in 1989. It was a time of war, a civil
war that would last more than 30 years, a time when boys became
soldiers, anyone could be "disappeared," and entire villages were
gunned down.
Life
in Guatemala was bloody. Very bloody.Ortiz says she was taken to a
place in Guatemala City called the Politecnica, where, for 24
hours, she was tortured, burned more than 100 times with a
cigarette, gang-raped, dangled over a pit of rotting corpses, and
forced to kill another woman. The rape resulted in a pregnancy that
she later terminated.
This
is what she will speak of.
There are other things that
she will not....
Comment: This is a
2-parter, excerpt above is from first link. Part 2 is
here. It is a long and very chilling read...
Aftershocks Rattle NE Japan After Quake Injures
100
Mon
May 26, 2003 10:16 PM ET
By Elaine Lies
SENDAI, Japan (Reuters) -
Aftershocks rattled northeastern Japan on Tuesday, a day after a
powerful earthquake, but officials said it was not the huge quake
which experts say is due to hit the region within a few
years.
The
government said 104 people were injured but no deaths resulted from
the earthquake, which struck early Monday evening and measured 7.0
on the Richter scale, rocking buildings as far away as Tokyo about
280 miles to the south.
"This was an extremely
large-scale earthquake, but for its scale, the damage and injuries
were quite small. That's something to be thankful for," said Shiro
Asano, governor of Miyagi Prefecture, close to the center of the
tremor.
Damage was limited and
there was no tsunami, or giant wave, because the quake's focus, 12
miles off the east coast, was deep at 44 miles below the
surface.[...]
But
the governor told officials to remain vigilant, pointing out that a
tremor similar to the one on Monday served as a precursor to the
big 1978 earthquake."Four months before the 1978 quake there was a
fairly large quake, so we should take this one as a possible
lesson. The Miyagi quake will definitely come some day," he
added...
Quakes shake N.
California; no casualties reported
Toronto
Star
May. 26, 2003. 09:44 PM
SAN
JOSE, Calif. (AP) — Three minor earthquakes hit Northern
California today, including one centred just west of the Golden
Gate Bridge.
The
San Francisco quake had a preliminary 3.4 magnitude, while tremors
in San Jose and 10 kilometres outside Madera in the San Joaquin
Valley had magnitudes of 3.8 and 3.7, respectively.None of the
quakes caused any damage or injuries.
Quake
jolts island, kills one
May
27, 2003
ONE
person was killed and 48 houses were damaged when a strong
earthquake measuring 6.4 on the Richter scale hit an eastern
Indonesian island early today, the meteorology office
said.
It
said 20 of the homes were severely damaged when the quake struck
the northern part of Morotai island, which is the northernmost
island in the Maluku chain.
The
quake was centred under the seabed 366 kilometres east of the port
of Bitung in Northern Sulawesi.It struck at 4:23am (0523 AEST).An
earthquake measuring 6.0 on the Richter scale can cause severe
damage in populated areas.
If You're Reading
This, The World Didn't End Last Thursday
Next
time someone suggests that the world will end due to a planetary
alignment, point out the simple fact that Jupiter exerts less
gravitational influence over a human body than does a newspaper
held at arms length.
Space Daily
by Timothy Quinn
New York - May 26, 2003
There will be no refunds on
disposable toilet bags or emergency dental kits, so if you
purchased these or other "family preparedness" supplies from The
Survival Center, in the expectation that a mysterious planet or
rogue sister star of our own Sun would wipe out 90% of the Earth's
population this month, you'll have to simply chalk it up to a
moment's paranoia: the sun is shining, the planet is blissfully
unmolested and Britney Spears has no plans for repopulating a
post-apocalyptic Earth with you anytime soon.Planet X, or Nibiru as
it's exotically known to believers in a cult of ancient Sumerian
astrophysicists, remains a persistent myth based on an innocuous
observational error now nearly a quarter-millennium old.
[...]
Although this would seem an
appropriate occasion to turn the page and move onto any number of
as yet unresolved issues in planetary astronomy, it turns out
there's something strangely appealing about anticlimactic mysteries
such as these to a small but persistent reactionary fringe of
armchair cosmologists, conspiracy theorists and doomsday
profiteers.
Unmoved by equally dire (if
slightly more plausible) threats of nuclear escalation,
antibiotic-resistant bacteria, near-Earth asteroids or neighborhood
supernovae, the doomsday fringe prefer stories of a more baroque
touch: alien invasions, planetary alignments, super-storms,
apocalyptic computer viruses, Nazi flying saucers and secret CIA
mind control experiments.
Undeterred by the
embarrassing survival of the human race following the publication
of such blanching paperbacks as Richard W. Noone's "5/5/2000 Ice:
The Ultimate Disaster" and David S. Montaigne's "Nostradamus World
War III 2002," doomsday prophets like Mark Hazelwood ("Blindsided:
Planet X Passes in 2003") and Nancy Lieder (founder of the ZetaTalk
cult) have breathed new life into the mysterious perturbations of
Uranus' orbit as a smoking gun for Planet X, the furtive tenth
planet or sister sun which was destined to have re-entered our
solar system this month with satisfyingly cataclysmic results. The
evidence for a distant rogue planet, according to writer and fringe
researcher Zecharia Sitchin ("The Twelfth Planet"), can be found in
ancient Sumerian tablets which seem to depict eleven planets
circling a sun.To make prophecy match modern interpretation, of
course, revisionists like Sitchin have had to quietly count the
Earth's moon as a "planet" and then, just for good measure, gone
ahead and counted the sun as a planet too. [...]
The
longevity of doomsday cults like ZetaTalk is, if nothing else, a
strong indication that one of our fundamental assumptions about
alternative science is wrong: as much as we might wish to believe
that ignorance remains the firmament of exploitation, the
twenty-first century's intellectual plague is a wealth of knowledge
untempered by clear refutation.The hoaxed moon landing movement is
a particularly interesting example of the sort of pseudoscientific
fearmongering that should've gone out of vogue with forensic
phrenology. [...]
It's
a testament to how pervasive the Apollo hoax theory has become in
recent years that the Fox network aired a mortifying 1991
pseudodocumentary called "Conspiracy Theory: Did We Land on the
Moon?" (not dissimilar to their previous efforts at provocative
science, "Alien Autopsy: Fact or Fiction?" and "UFO's, The Best
Evidence Ever Caught on Tape," both of which were revisited in
dubiously self-serving fashion in "World's Greatest Hoaxes: Secrets
Finally Revealed"); equally telling is the fact that a current
Google search for "Apollo landings" is likely to result in at least
one hoax-related website within the first cluster of ten results.
[...]
So
why doesn't NASA simply set the record straight? After all, to
paraphrase a cliché, if we can put a man on the moon can't we
clearly explain how we got him there - and why a foley artist
behind a blue-screen is a pretty unlikely explanation for perceived
anomalies in the mission record? Concerned astronomers like Phil
Plait have already attempted as much, yet NASA has chosen to take
the high road, aborting an attempt to produce a book on
spaceflight-related hoaxes by historian Jim Oberg when the media
caught the scent of a potential cockfight. [...]
As
strategies go, the high road wasn't particularly effective with
Roswell and doesn't seem to be working with Area 51 either. The Fox
network's alien autopsy fiasco is a good indication that many
people still think an alien spacecraft landed outside Roswell, New
Mexico, in July 1947 - rather than what was later identified as a
military weather balloon, a mix-up which seems to have originated
when William Brazel, the rancher who discovered the wreckage on his
property, reported to the local sheriff that he had stumbled across
what appeared to be "one of them flying saucers."Likewise, Area 51
- a top-secret Air Force proving ground for experimental aircraft
in the Great Basin Desert of Nevada - has acquired a persistent
following of UFOlogists who believe this remote site to be the
flashpoint for a pending alien invasion of the
heartland.[...]
The
intelligence community is at least partially to blame for this kind
of literalist paranoia: reluctant denials and blacked-out memoranda
are obviously a poor substitute for clear and open refutation.
[...]
Whether confronting
doomsday prophesy or alternative science, the popular media
generally contribute to hysterical misperception by attempting to
negotiate an inherent conflict of interest between responsible
journalism and salacious hard copy."The Day the World Shuts Down"
was Newsweek's 1998 attempt to objectively analyze the new
millennium's Y2K crisis. A year later, CNN was "Bracing for
Guerrilla Warfare in Cyberspace." Time Magazine lunged at us from
another direction with its 2001 cover story "Summer of the Shark,"
drifting back into deeper waters with a 2002 cover story on "The
Bible and the Apocalypse."
Blaming the media, however,
is perhaps a little like blaming one's reflection for being
overweight: we're all responsible for the information we choose to
consume and the degree of personal gullibility we're inclined to
tolerate.
For
the conspiratorial fringe, 9/11 was a goldmine of conflicting data,
irretrievable evidence and easily exploited paranoia. Even after
Islamic militants had been publicly identified on the flight
rosters of hijacked planes, rumors abounded that it was the work of
Zionists trying to polarize debate in the Israel-Palestine
conflict, or wait, maybe the United States military did it to
distract the American public from a struggling presidency.For its
part, the Bush administration showed little hesitancy in exploiting
public opinion to mobilize American forces against Iraq, calmly
marginalizing as naïve any arguments that an Iraqi / bin Laden
connection were tenuous at best with the same smug unflappability
favored by Roswell believers confronting a skeptical scientific
community. [...]
To
date, the bulk of the scientific community has washed its hands of
cult science, sufficing to roll back on its heels with an
exasperated cry of, "Where does it end?" Surely there has to be a
point past which it's simply not worth the effort of discrediting
spurious claims or providing the deliberately uninformed and
embarrassingly delusional with - in the words of one frustrated
writer to Natural History magazine - "exactly what they desired:
publicity in a mainstream scientific forum. These advocates should
be ostracized by the scientific community, just as we would
ostracize someone who claims to be researching the natural behavior
of wood nymphs and faeries.
"As
comfortable as most people may be drawing that line, it's clear
that primetime network alien autopsies - or Time/CNN polls
revealing that 65% of Americans believe clandestine alien contact
was made in the forties - ought to suggest that the scientific
community's boundaries of responsibility need to redrawn for the
information age.
Comment: Arm Chair
debunking... not even a good example of it, sadly. Read Laura's
article
Will
the World End on Thursday? for another perspective and
check out the
Cosmic COINTELPRO
Timeline
Neo-Nazi
youths murdered boy, 17, for looking like a
Jew
By
Tony Paterson in Berlin
27 May 2003
Three young neo-Nazis went
on trial in east Germany yesterday charged with the "bestial
murder" of a schoolboy. The teenager was tortured and killed after
his attackers decided that his baggy trousers and dyed blond hair
made him "look like a Jew".
The
men aged 17, 18 and 24 faced charges on separate counts of causing
grievous bodily harm, coercion, attempted murder, and murder by a
court in the town of Neuruppin. They are accused of killing Marinus
Schoeberl, 17, a white German, whose mutilated body was discovered
in a farm silage pit near the isolated village of Potzlow, north of
Berlin, last November, four and a half months after his death.
[...]
Asylum
protester sews up eyes
BBC
Monday, 26 May, 2003, 23:39 GMT
An
Iranian Kurdish man living in Nottingham has sewn up his eyes, ears
and mouth in protest at his treatment by the Home
Office.
He
was granted asylum two months ago but his protest was triggered by
a Home Office decision this week to appeal.If he is sent back to
Iran, he says he will be executed for his political
past.
Tania Branigan, a
journalist who has been following his case, says his claims of
being tortured in Iran are genuine."He's actually a fairly
well-known political poet."
He's
also been a Communist guerrilla for many years, since his early
teens in fact, and has been in and out of prison for much of his
life, has been tortured repeatedly."
And
in fact his claims of torture were backed up by the Medical
Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture." [...]
Senior girls suspended,
could get expelled
BY
JANET RAUSA FULLER Staff Reporter
Citing the "devastating"
impact of last week's violent hazing episode on the school and its
students, Glenbrook North High School announced Monday the
suspensions--and possible expulsions--of students who took part in
an incident that has thrust the well-heeled north suburban school
into the international spotlight.
Principal Mike Riggle said
the students, all seniors, have been suspended for 10 days--the
maximum allowed by state law--for breaking school conduct rules and
public laws against hazing and assault and battery.The school will
recommend to the Northfield Township District 225 Board that the
students be expelled, Riggle said. He refused to say how many
students have been suspended. Junior girls hurt in the hazing could
face similar punishment, Riggle said. [...]
The
May 4 hazing at Chipilly Woods in Northbrook--which some students
videotaped and photographed--was an annual initiation of junior
girls at the hands of senior girls, who beat them and covered them
with paint, mud, excrement and other substances. Five girls wound
up in the hospital with injuries.
One
student defended his sister who was suspended. "They didn't do
anything wrong . . . [the junior girls] signed up for this," he
said.
Nasa
deal closes the door on Columbia inquiry
JACQUI GODDARD IN MIAMI
Scotland Sunday
CIVILIAN members of the
expert group investigating the Columbia space shuttle disaster have
been put on the Nasa payroll to ensure much of the inquiry will be
carried out in secret. The highly controversial move - which has
prompted angry accusations that the inquiry can no longer be
considered impartial - will see the five civilian representatives
on the Columbia Accident Investigation Board (CAIB) each receive
executive-level salaries of up to $134,000 (£82,000) a
year.
If
the civilians - who were supposedly recruited to ensure the
investigation was independent from Nasa - had not been hired by the
agency, the board would have had to meet publicly, justify any
closed-door sessions and keep transcripts and minutes that would
ultimately become public records. [...]
Man jailed for
being Arab
Lawyer says No charges
filed against alleged Al Jihad member after 32 months
CANADIAN PRESS
A
man being held in a Toronto jail who has not been charged with or
convicted of any offence is there solely because he is an Arab
Muslim, the lawyer for alleged security threat Mahmoud Jaballah
said today. Jaballah, 40, has been held in solitary confinement for
27 months without being charged and without the right to apply for
bail.
The
message to Arabs living in Canada is clear, Jaballah's lawyer said
at a news conference Monday. "You don't have any constitutional
rights," Rocco Galati said. "Just like the Japanese Canadians and
the Italo-Canadians didn't have any constitutional rights during
the Second World War."
A
federal court judge said in a written decision last week that
Jaballah's prolonged detention constituted an abuse of power on the
part of Immigration Minister Denis Coderre. The decision also
concluded that Jaballah can't be returned to his native Egypt
because he faces torture and possibly death. However, Jaballah
can't apply for bail in Canada because he was arrested on a
national security certificate because of information provided by
the country's spy agency, the Canadian Security Intelligence
Service. In such a case, bail is unavailable until after a ruling
is made that the certificate is reasonable. That ruling in
Jaballah's case has been bogged down in procedure.
Jaballah was first arrested
on a security certificate in 1999 but a judge quashed it and set
him free. The second security certificate was issued in August 2001
on similar grounds to the first. CSIS alleged he was a member of Al
Jihad, an Egyptian extremist group. Galati urged the immigration
minister to bring charges against his client, so that he could
fight them. "Mr. Jaballah and his family call on the minister to
either charge Mr. Jaballah in a real court of law in front of a
real judge and jury under Bill C36 or release him to his family or
find him a safe third country alternative," Galati
said...
'Signs' of alien arrival? Or just buffalo on
range?
Monday, May 26, 2003
By PETER HALL
The Express-Times
L.
MT. BETHEL TWP. -- When Lisa and Pete Andrews noticed odd patches
of tall grass knocked down in a field next to their house, the
first culprits that came to mind were little green men.
Although the Andrewses
don't seriously believe their North Delaware Drive neighborhood was
visited by creatures from another world, the damage has the couple,
their neighbors and a National Weather Service meteorologist
stumped.
"A
herd of buffalo?" said weather service meteorologist Art Kraus when
asked what could have caused the patterns. The field is owned by a
township farmer and planted with tall grass. It adjoins the
Andrews' property. Lisa Andrews said she and her husband were
preparing to plant some apple and cherry saplings Sunday afternoon
along their driveway when they noticed the 2-foot-tall grass lying
flat in irregularly shaped patches throughout the field.
The
stalks of grass were lying in the same north-to-south direction
with stems bent close to the ground and matted together. About two
dozen patches ranging in size from that of beach towel to about 100
feet across dotted the field. There was no apparent pattern to the
patches and no clue as to what had caused it. No tire tracks or
footprints could be seen leading into the field. [...]
Meteorologist Kraus said
wind-driven rain, intense wind or a downdraft from a thunderstorm
could cause crops or tall grass to be knocked flat, but there
wasn't any weather like that overnight Saturday and Sunday. The
highest wind recorded overnight at Lehigh Valley International
Airport was 5 mph, Kraus said. And only light rain fell overnight,
according to weather service records. "It doesn't sound like it was
really atmospheric or weather-caused," he said. "Sounds like it was
more likely caused by people or animals."
Or
maybe it really was little green men.
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