|
P
I C T U R E O F T H E D
A Y
US President George
Bush is pressuring Congress to renew the Patriot Act
by highlighting the actions of Ohio police who helped
catch a man accused of plotting attacks on the Brooklyn
Bridge in New York and a Midwest shopping centre.
Portions
of the Patriot Act – signed into law six weeks
after the September 11, 2001 attacks to catch other
terrorists – are set to expire at the end of the
year. The law bolstered FBI surveillance and law-enforcement
powers in terror cases, increased use of material witness
warrants to hold suspects incommunicado for months and
allowed secret proceedings in immigration cases.
Civil liberties groups and privacy advocates say the
law undermines freedom. But Bush, who wants to make
the law permanent, has said the act was vital to tracking
terrorists and disrupting their plans.
Bush was citing the example of the Lyman Faris case
during a visit today to the Ohio Patrol Training Academy
in Columbus. Faris, a truck driver from Columbus, acknowledged
in court documents that he had met Osama bin Laden in
2000 at an al-Qaida training camp in Afghanistan and
provided operatives there with sleeping bags, cell phones
and other assistance.
Later, Faris received attack instructions from top
terror leader Khalid Shaikh Mohammed,
authorities said, for what they suggested might have
been a second wave planned for New York and Washington
after the attacks of September 11, 2001.
Authorities said he investigated the possibility of
using a gas cutter to burn through the Brooklyn Bridge's
suspension cables and plotted with a Somali immigrant
to blow up a central Ohio shopping centre.
White House spokesman Scott McClellan said the academy
Bush was visiting was a part of the joint terrorism
task force that investigated the case. Faris pleaded
guilty to charges of aiding and abetting terrorism and
conspiracy in 2003 and is serving a 20-year prison sentence.
McClellan said investigators relied on powers in the
Patriot Act to follow Faris after his travels to Afghanistan.
"Once he was confronted with the evidence against
him, he co-operated and provided valuable information
to law enforcement authorities," McClellan said.
Bush said yesterday that the Patriot Act gave authorities
the tools they needed to fight terror and communicate
with those who collect intelligence.
"We've got to do everything we can to protect
the homeland," Bush told the Associated Builders
and Contractors at their conference in Washington. "And
we are. We're doing a better job of collecting
and analysing intelligence and sharing intelligence."
Some critics of the Patriot Act have called for tempering
its provisions that let police conduct secret searches
of people's homes or businesses. Defenders of
the law say no abuses have been documented, so it should
be renewed intact.
The Bush administration wants Congress to make permanent
all 15 provisions of the law that would otherwise expire
at the end of the year, despite civil liberties concerns
raised by conservatives as well as liberals.
|
Some really scary things are happening
around here these days.
Congress has become a place of great incivility and
rancor, which threaten to undermine any hope of legislative
remedy to a myriad of problems, from Social Security
to soaring health-care costs to immigration to a steadily
crumbling manufacturing base once the envy of the world.
But perhaps the most frightening prospect for Americans
is an unfettered national police force with the sole
discretion to determine who can be investigated as a
potential terrorist. That's the impact of little-known
proposals to greatly expand the powers of the FBI, permitting
its agents to seize business records without a warrant
and to track the mail of those in terrorist inquiries
without regard to Postal Service concerns.
Because the government can label almost any group
or individual a terrorist threat, the potential for
abuse by not having to show probable cause is enormous,
prompting civil libertarians to correctly speculate
about who will guard against the guardians. Up until
now the answer was the Constitution as interpreted by
the judiciary. But it is clear that sidestepping any
such restriction is the real and present danger of the
post-9-11 era.
A wise man, the late Sen. John Williams of Delaware,
once counseled that any proposed legislation should
be regarded in the light of its worst potential consequence,
particularly when it came to laws that enhance the investigative
and prosecutorial powers of the government at the expense
of civil rights. This is most likely to occur in times
of national stress, when the Constitution is always
vulnerable to assault _ i.e., the internment of Japanese-Americans
during World War II. The scenario Williams warned about
runs something like this.
You are innocently standing on a street corner waiting
to cross when you are approached by a complete stranger
who politely, but in a low voice, asks directions to
a certain address or area. You, of course, are utterly
unaware that the person is under surveillance in a terrorist
investigation. You respond in a friendly manner. And
although the exchange takes only a few seconds, it is
enough to make those following the suspect curious about
you. You are identified and a background check reveals
that you or your spouse has a relative of Middle Eastern
extraction or that you recently traveled to a Middle
Eastern country or that you contributed to a charity
bazaar sponsored by a church or group under suspicion
of passing money through to a terrorist cause.
Suddenly, you are caught in a major inquiry, your
personal business records are seized and your mail is
tracked. It doesn't take long for your friends and neighbors
to learn that you are being investigated, and the result
of that is predictable. You and your family are shunned.
Your business begins to dwindle and before the nightmare
has ended, which can take months, your life is in shambles.
The truth never catches up with the fiction and the
bureau, which has difficulty in saying the word "sorry,"
leaves you high and dry, twisting slowly in the wind.
Think it can't happen that way? Well, it does all
the time. Ask the lawyer in Oregon whom the FBI misidentified
as having taken part in the terrorist bombing of the
Spanish railway. Ask any number of persons since Sept.
11, 2001, arrested and detained for months without charges
or counsel before they were released.
If that isn't enough to satisfy you about the inadvisability
of these proposals, think back to the Cold War days
when the most casual acquaintance with a group or person
on J. Edgar Hoover's anti-communist watch list could
land one in water hot enough to make life miserable
for a long time _ maybe even put him or her on one of
the infamous blacklists.
If you weren't around in those times, read about them.
One thing you will learn quickly is that the sole determination
of who or what had communist inclinations belonged to
the FBI. Even then, however, Congress was smart enough
not to rescind the checks and balances that protect
our civil liberties. Federal law-enforcement officers
outside the FBI have complained of late about the bureau's
penchant for seizing jurisdiction over almost any crime
by relating it to terrorism.
Both of these over-reactive proposals are as fearsome
as the threat of another al Qaeda attack, for they accomplish
the same thing: the intrusion on and disruption of the
rights of Americans. Like portions of the Patriot Act,
which are rightly being challenged by conservatives
as well as liberals, they are medicine worse than the
cancer. |
For the life of me I can't imagine
why the media in the U.S. is so immobilized by the Bush
administration. Are they all so much afraid that they
might get the same fate that Dan Rather got? Talk about
hypocrisy! There was so much to-do about impeaching
President Clinton over a personal problem, while letting
President Bush order our young people to their deaths
for made-up reasons and costing billions of taxpayers
dollars.
The top secret British government memo that was leaked
to the London Times proves beyond all doubt that Bush
invaded Iraq for none of the changing reasons that he
has given a too-trusting public. Bush did not invade
Iraq because of weapons of mass destruction or because
he wanted to bring democracy to Iraq. For a complete
copy take a look at my blog at: http://moreyet.homestead.
comSG.HTML.
Why did Bush invade Iraq? No one, least of all the
Bush administration, has come up with a believable reason.
Yet, there is no shortage of patriotic Republicans who
sincerely believe that Bush has made America safer by
turning the Muslim world against us and stirring up
a hornet's nest of terrorists united by their hatred
of America.
Newsweek's retraction of its story that U.S. soldiers
flushed a Koran down a toilet proves to Republicans
that the only problem is an anti-American liberal media.
The fact that Newsweek was absolutely correct in reporting
desecration of the Koran by U.S. troops -- and only
got wrong the particular way in which the holy book
was desecrated -- has been totally ignored by Republicans.
Republicans believe everything Bush says. When he
tells them he needs a police state to save them from
terrorists, they believe him.
Who will save us from Bush's police state?
|
The Aug. 6, 2004 incident began
as a normal traffic stop but took an ominous turn when
the driver refused to get out of her SUV. It ended with
a Boynton Beach Police officer hitting the 22-year-old
woman twice with his Taser during her arrest. [...]
According to [Boynton Beach Police Department training
officer Sgt. Sedrick] Aiken, McNevin correctly used
the stun gun to subdue the driver instead of:
- Using his baton
- Physically forcing driver out of SUV
- Using pepper spray
- Getting in SUV to handcuff driver
|
SACRAMENTO, Calif. - Federal authorities
aren't saying much about their terrorism investigation
in nearby Lodi but are making two things crystal clear:
Their work in the farming town has been going on for
years - and it's not over yet.
They denied the implication by some members of Lodi's
large Pakistani community that the probe was triggered
by a rift between fundamentalist and mainstream factions.
Each side accused the other of contacting
the FBI, which is in charge of the investigation. The
dispute has led to a leadership struggle at the Lodi
Muslim Mosque and a legal fight with a budding Islamic
learning center.
"This specific investigation has been going on
for several years," FBI spokesman John Cauthen
said Thursday.
The FBI alleges several people committed to al-Qaida
have been operating in and around the tranquil wine-growing
region just south of Sacramento.
Investigators say Hamid Hayat, 22, trained with al-Qaida
in Pakistan and planned to attack hospitals and supermarkets
in the United States. He is scheduled to appear in federal
court Friday for a bail hearing.
Umer Hayat, 47, said his son was drawn to jihadist
training camps in his early teenage years while attending
a madrassah, or religious school, in Rawalpindi, Pakistan,
that was operated by Umer Hayat's father-in-law, according
to an FBI affidavit.
Hayat allegedly paid for his son to attend the terrorist
camp in 2003 and 2004. The affidavit says it was run
by a friend of his father-in-law's.
The Hayats are charged only with lying
to federal investigators.
Two Islamic religious leaders, or imams, and one leader's
son also have been detained on immigration violations.
Neither Cauthen nor a spokeswoman for U.S. Immigration
and Customs Enforcement would reveal specifics of the
alleged visa violations.
Saad Ahmad, an attorney for the three men, did not
immediately return a telephone call Thursday seeking
comment.
The sequence that led to the arrests and detentions
began May 29, when Hamid Hayat was trying to return
to the U.S. but was identified in mid-flight as being
on the federal "no-fly" list. His plane was
diverted to Japan, where Hayat was interviewed by the
FBI and denied any connection to terrorism.
He was allowed to fly to California, but was interviewed
again last weekend. He and his father were charged after
he flunked a lie detector test and then admitted attending
the training camp, the affidavit said.
The Hayats and the imams are on opposite sides of a
struggle between Pakistani factions in and around Lodi:
The Hayats are aligned with a
faction supporting more traditional Islamic values;
the imams with another group seeking greater cooperation
and understanding from the larger community.
Adil Khan was trying to start an Islamic center but
has been sued by the Lodi Muslim Mosque, which claims
he improperly transferred mosque property.
"It may well be that some of this is gamesmanship,"
said attorney Gary Nelson, who represents Khan in the
civil lawsuit. "But we are
talking about the FBI and INS, and they don't do this
lightly. At least I hope they don't."
Lawyers for the Hayats are questioning why the FBI
changed the affidavit. They maintain that copies released
in Washington and Sacramento are significantly different.
The Washington version, released first,
said Hamid Hayat chose to carry out his "jihadi
mission" in the United States and potential targets
included "hospitals and large food stores."
The reference to the targets was dropped in a later
version filed in federal court in Sacramento.
Hamid Hayat's attorney, Wazhma Mojaddidi, said that
revision "strikes us as an odd turnabout."
Umer Hayat's attorney, Johnny Griffin III, said he
was irritated that the government made public the references
to hospitals and supermarkets, and then filed something
different with the court.
Cauthen described the changes as routine revisions.
Authorities said they had no indication of specific
plans or timetables for an attack.
"There is no specific information about hospitals
and food stores," he said. "They didn't stand
out above other sectors of the infrastructure." |
WASHINGTON - President Bush is
touring the nation's new counterterrorism center where
employees charged with pooling and analyzing information
about terrorist threats are still waiting for the president
to name the person he wants to lead them.
Vice Adm. John Scott Redd, who was executive director
of the Silberman-Robb presidential commission on intelligence,
has been mentioned as a likely candidate to direct the
National Counterterrorism Center. John O. Brennan, the
center's interim chief, said last month that he would
step down after a replacement was announced. Bush's
nominee must be confirmed by the Senate.
The center, which Bush was scheduled
to visit Friday, was created as part of the wide-ranging
overhaul of the nation's spy community, spurred by what
critics called the government's failure to collect,
understand and share critical information before the
Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.
Besides naming a new director for the center, Bush
also was being asked to clear up a possible kink in
the chain of command. The director of the center reports
to the president on non-intelligence joint counterterrorism
operations. But the center director is under National
Intelligence Director John Negroponte on the spy community
flow chart.
The president also is said to be close
to naming members of an oversight board that is being
created to make sure that the government's efforts to
fight terror do not trample privacy and civil rights.
Congress created the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight
Board in December. |
WASHINGTON - President Bush on
Thursday nominated CIA and FBI veteran Henry Crumpton
as the State Department's coordinator for counterterrorism
policy.
Crumpton, if confirmed by the Senate, will replace
Cofer Black, who quit the job last year after an uproar
over a botched report that had been used to argue that
Bush was winning the war on terrorism.
The administration was forced to revise the report,
which underestimated the number of people who had died
from international terrorism.
Crumpton currently serves as head of the CIA's national
resources division. Before that, he ran the CIA's counterterrorism
center and was deputy chief of the FBI's international
terrorism operations section. |
WASHINGTON - As the war in Iraq
drags on, President Bush's job approval and the public's
confidence in the direction he's taking the nation are
at their lowest levels since The Associated Press-Ipsos
poll began in December 2003.
About one-third of adults, 35 percent, said they think
the country is headed in the right direction, while
43 percent said they approve of the job being done by
Bush. Just 41 percent say they support his handling
of the war, also a low-water mark.
"There's a bad mood in the country, people are
out of sorts," said presidential scholar and senior
fellow at the Brookings Institution Charles Jones, who
lives near Charlottesville, Va. "Iraq news is daily
bad news. The election in Iraq helped some, and the
formation of the government helped some, but dead bodies
trump the more positive news."
California retiree Carol Harvie was quick to mention
Iraq when asked about how Bush was doing his job.
"I don't think he's read his history enough about
different countries and foreign affairs," said
Harvie, a political independent who lives near San Diego,
a region with several military bases. "Anything
they try to do in Iraq has spelled trouble. I think
he bit off more than he can chew."
Car bombings and attacks by insurgents killed 80 U.S.
troops and more than 700 Iraqis last month and Pentagon
officials acknowledge the level of violence is about
the same as a year ago, when they were forced to scrap
a plan to substantially reduce the U.S. troop presence
in Iraq.
Bush administration officials say the key to getting
U.S. forces out of Iraq is training Iraqis to provide
their own security.
While Bush has gotten generally
low scores for his handling of domestic issues for many
months, most Americans have been supportive of his foreign
policy. Not any more.
The poll conducted for AP by Ipsos found 45 percent
support Bush's foreign policy, down from 52 percent
in March.
Bush's popularity reached its zenith shortly after
the terror attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, when various polls
found nearly 90 percent approved of the job he was doing.
It was close to 80 percent when Ipsos started tracking
attitudes about Bush at the start of 2002, and was just
over 50 percent when the AP-Ipsos poll was started in
December 2003.
But since winning re-election last November, Bush has
seen his poll numbers sag.
Bush, who faces no more elections, has responded to
past dips in the polls by saying, "You can find
them going up and you can find them going down."
David Fultz, a Republican from Venice, Fla., is among
those who are sticking with the president.
"In terms of where we're going in the future,
President Bush is laying out a plan," said Fultz,
an assistant principal at a middle school. "When
it's all said and done, we'll be where we want to be.
We need to help establish democracy in the Middle East."
Support for Bush's handling of domestic
issues remained in the high 30s and low 40s in the latest
AP-Ipsos poll.
Thirty-seven percent support Bush's handling of Social
Security, while 59 percent disapprove. Those numbers
haven't budged after more than four months of the president
traveling the country to sell his plan to create private
accounts in Social Security.
Support for his handling of the economy was at 43 percent.
Congress gets even lower grades than Bush, a potentially
troubling development for those seeking re-election
next year.
Only about three in 10 polled said
they approve of the job being done by Congress, while
64 percent disapprove.
"Presidents who are low in the polls have a hard
time getting Congress to go along with them," said
Charles Franklin, a political scientist at the University
of Wisconsin-Madison. "He has to persuade the people
in Congress to follow his legislative agenda and they're
all worried about 2006."
The AP-Ipsos poll of 1,001 adults was taken June 6-8
and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus
3 percentage points. |
We have been reading a lot lately
about the desecration of a Quran at Guantanamo prison
camp in Cuba. The U.S. administration feigns shock at
such an incident and says it will never happen again.
Then, it says it never happened. A hot debate is raging
about the incident.
How blind can people be? This debate is nothing more
than a smokescreen to divert attention from the thousands
of Iraqi and Afghan prisoners who are being tortured
daily. And, the thousands of Iraqi civilians whose houses
are being ransacked by both U.S. and Iraqi forces.
When the Abu Ghraib torture became public, many people
were aghast. But, that subject quickly left the headlines
of U.S. newspapers.
Let me refresh your memory of torture at Abu Ghraib;
torture that is so despicable that it sounds incredulous
to even those who are warmongers. The following are
transcripts of Iraqi prisoners who were released by
the U.S. Keep in mind that the majority were innocent
civilians who were dragged from their homes by U.S.
troops. This atrocity is ongoing, yet it is silent in
the halls of the U.S. Congress and the White House.
They are quite lengthy, but if you read only a few,
you will get the gist.
IRAQIS INCARCERATED AT ABU GHRAIB PRISON
"I always knew the Americans would bring electricity
back to Baghdad.
I just never thought they'd be shooting it up my
ass."
—Young Iraqi translator, Baghdad, November
2003
The following are statements from only a small number
of Iraqi prisoners who were mistreated by U.S. forces
at Abu Ghraib Prison. Once the totality of the torture
became known, it became evident that incidents such
as those below were widespread and common.
IRAQI PRISONER OF WAR TRANSCRIPTS
The following were taken at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq
by prisoner interview/interrogation teams from the 10th
Military Police Batallion, 3rd Military Police Unit.
The translators, assigned to the team, were Mr. Johnson
ISHO and Abdelilah Alazadi of the Titan Corporation,
a civilian contractor.
TRANSLATION OF STATEMENT PROVIDED BY Abdou Hussain
Saad FLAEH, Detainee # 18470, 1610/16 JAN 04:
"On the third day after five o'clock,
Mr. Grainer came and took me to Room #37, which is
the shower room, and he started punishing me. The
he brought a box of food and he made me stand on it
with no clothing, except a blanket. Then a tall black
soldier came and put electrical wires on my fingers
and toes and on my penis, and I had a bag over my
head. Then he was saying, 'which switch is on
for electricity?' And he came with a loudspeaker
and he was shouting near my ear and then he brought
the camera and he took some pictures of me, which
I knew because of the flash of the camera. And he
took the hood off and he was describing some poses
he wanted me to do, and that I was tired and I fell
down. And then Mr. Grainer came and made me stand
up on the stairs and made me carry a box of food.
I was so tired and I dropped it. He started screaming
at me in English. He made me lift a white chair high
in the air. Then the chair came down and then Mr.
Joyner took the hood off my head and took me to my
room. And I slept after that for about an hour and
then I woke up at the headcount time. I couldn't
go to sleep after that because I was very scared."
TRANSLATION OF VERBAL STATEMENT PROVIDED BY Asad Hamza
HOANFOSH, Detainee # 152529, 1605/17 JAN 04:
"On the date of November 5, 2003, when the
U.S. forces transferred to Isolation, when they took
me out of the car, an American soldier hit me with
his hand on my face. And then they stripped me naked
and they took me under the water and then he made
me crawl the hallway until I was bleeding from my
chest to my knees and my hands. And after that he
put me back into the cell and an hour later he took
me out from the cellthe second time to the shower
room under cold water and then he made me get up on
a box, naked, and he hit me on my manhood. I don't
know with what, then I fell down on the ground. He
made me crawl on the ground. And then he tied my hands
in my cell naked until morning time until Joyner showed
up and released my hands and took me back to my room
and gave me my clothes back. About two days later
my interrogation came up, when it was done a white
soldier wearing glasses picked me from the room I
was in. He grabbed my head and hit it against the
wall and then tied my hand to the bed until noon the
next day and then two days later the same soldier
and he took all my clothes and my mattress and he
didn't give me anything so I can sleep on except
my jump suit for 3 days. Then Joyner came and gave
me a blanket and my clothes for a second time."
TRANSLATION OF STATEMENT PROVIDED BY Mohamed JUMA,
Detainee # 152307, 1200/18 JAN 04:
"I am going to start from the first day I went
into A1. They stripped me from my clothes and all
the stuff that they gave me and I spent 6 days in
that situation. And then they gave me a blanket only.
3 days after that, they gave me a mattress, and after
a short period of time, approximately at 2 at night,
the door opened and Grainer was there. He cuffed my
hands behind my back and he cuffed my feet and he
took me to the shower room. When they finished interrogating
me, the female interrogator left. And then Grainer
and another man, who looked like Grainer but doesn't
have glasses, and has a thin moustache, and he was
young and tall, came into the room. They threw pepper
on my face and the beating started. This went on for
a half hour. And then he started beating me with the
chair until the chair was broken. After that they
started choking me. At that time I thought I was going
to die, but it's a miracle I lived. And then
they started beating me again. They concentrated on
beating me in my heart until they got tired from beating
me. They took a little break and then they started
kicking me very hard with their feet until I passed
out.
"In the second scene at the night shift, I
saw a new guard that wears glasses and has a red face.
He charged his pistol and pointed it at a lot of the
prisoners to threaten them with it. I saw things no
one would see, they were amazing. They come in the
morning shift with two prisoners and they were father
and son. They were both naked. They put them in front
of each other and they counted 1, 2, 3, and then removed
the bags from their heads.
When the son saw his father naked he was crying.
He was crying because of seeing his father. And then
at night, Grainer used to throw the food into the
toilet an said, 'go take it and eat it.'
And I saw also in Room #5 they brought the dogs. Grainer
brought the dogs and they bit him in the right and
left leg. He was from Iran and they started beating
him up in the main hallway in the prison."
TRANSLATION OF SWORN STATEMENT PROVIDED BY ----------,
Detainee # ------, 1430/21 JAN 04:
"I am the person named above. I entered Abu
Gharib prison on 10 Jul 2003, that was after they
brought me from Baghdad area. They put me in the tent
area and then they brought me to Hard Site. The first
day they put me in a dark room and started hitting
me in the head and stomach and legs.
"They made me raise my hands and sit on my
knees. I was like that for four hours. Then the Interrogator
came and he was looking at me while they were beating
me. Then I stayed in the room for 5 days, naked with
no clothes. They then took me to another cell on the
upper floor. On 15 Oct 2003 they replaced the Army
with the Iraqi Police and after that time they started
punishing me in all sorts of ways. And the first punishment
was bringing me to Room #1, and they put handcuffs
on my hand and they cuffed me high for 7 or 8 hours.
And that caused a rupture to my right hand and I had
a cut that was bleeding and had pus coming from it.
They kept me this way on 24, 25 and 26 October. And
in the following days, they also put a bag over my
head, and of course, this whole time I was without
clothes and without anything to sleep on. And one
day in November, they started different type of punishment,
where an American Police came in my room and put the
bag over my head and cuffed my hands and he took me
out of the room into the hallway. He started beating
me, him, and 5 other American Police. I could see
their feet only, from under the bag. A couple of those
police they were female because I heard their voices
and I saw two of the police that were hitting me before
they put the bag over my head. One of them was wearing
glasses. I couldn't read his name because he
put tape over his name. Some of the things they did
was make me sit down like a dog, and they would hold
the string from the bag and they made me bark like
a dog and they were laughing at me. And that policeman
was a tan color, because he hit my head to the wall.
When he did that, the bag came off my head and one
of the police was telling me to crawl in Arabic, so
I crawled on my stomach and the police were spitting
on me when I was crawling and hitting me on my back,
my head and my feet. It kept going on until their
shift ended at 4 o'clock in the morning. The
same thing would happen in the following days.
"And I remember also one of the police hit
me on my ear, before the usual beating, cuffing, bagging,
dog position and crawling until 6 people gathered.
And one of them was an Iraqi translator named Shaheen,
he is a tan color, he has a moustache. Then the police
started beating me on my kidneys and then they hit
me on my right ear and it started bleeding and I lost
consciousness. Then the Iraqi translator picked me
up and told me, 'You are going to sleep.'
Then when I went into the room, I woke up again. I
was unconscious for about two minutes. The policeman
dragged me into the room where he washed my ear and
called the doctor. The Iraqi doctor came and told
me he couldn't take me to the clinic, so he
fixed me in the hallway. When I woke up, I saw 6 of
the American police.
"A few days before they hit me on my ear, the
American police, the guy who wears glasses, he put
red woman's underwear over my head. And then
he tied me to the window that is in the cell with
my hands behind my back until I lost consciousness.
And also when I was in Room #1 they told me to lay
down on my stomach and they were jumping from the
bed onto my back and my legs. And the other two were
spitting on me and calling me names, and they held
my hands and legs. After the guy with the glasses
go tired, two of the American soldiers brought me
to the ground and tied my hands to the door while
laying down on my stomach. One of the police was pissing
on me and laughing on me. He then released my hands
and I went and washed, and then the solider came back
into the room, and the soldier and his friend told
me in a loud voice to lie down, so I did that. And
then the policeman was opening my legs, with a bag
over my head, and he sat down between my legs on his
knees and I was looking at him from under the bag
and they wanted to do me because I saw him and he
was opening his pants, so I started screaming loudly
and the other police started hitting me with his feet
on my neck and he put his feet on my head so I couldn't
scream. Then they left and the guy with the glasses
comes back with another person and he took me out
of the room and they put me inside the dark room again
and they started beating me with the broom that was
there. And then they put the loudspeaker inside the
room and they closed the door and he was yelling in
the microphone. Then they broke the glowing finger
and spread it on me until I was glowing and they were
laughing. They took me to the room and they signaled
me to get on the floor. And one of the police he put
a part of his stick that he always carries inside
my ass and I felt it going inside me about 2 centimeters,
approximately. And I started screaming, and he pulled
it out and he washed it with water inside the room.
And the two American girls that were there when they
were beating me, they were hitting me with a ball
made of sponge on my dick. And when I was tied up
in my room, one of the girls, with blonde hair, she
is white, she was playing with my dick. I saw inside
this facility a lot of punishment just like what they
did to me and more. And they were taking pictures
of me during all these instances."
TRANSLATION OF SWORN STATEMENT PROVIDED BY Ameen Sa'eed
AL-SHEIKH, Detainee # 151362, 1722/16 JAN 04:
"I am Ameen Sa'eed AL-SHEIKH. I was arrested
on the 7 Oct 2003. They brought me over to Abu Ghraib
Prison, the put me in a tent for one night. During
this night the guards every one or two hours and threaten
me with torture and punishment. The second day they
transferred me to the hard site. Before I got in,
a soldier put a sand bag over my head. I didn't
see anything after that. They took me inside the building
and started to scream at me. They stripped me naked,
they asked me, 'Do you pray to Allah?'
I said, 'Yes.' They said, 'Fuck
you' and 'Fuck him.' One of them
said, 'You are not getting out of here health,
you are getting out of here handicap.' And he
said to me, 'Are you married?' I said,
'Yes.' They said, 'If your wife
saw you like this, she will be disappointed.'
One of them said, 'But if I saw her now, she
would not be disappointed now because I would rape
her.' Then one of them took me to the showers,
removed the sand bag, and I saw him, a black man,
he told me to take a shower and he said he would come
inside and rape me and I was very scared. Then they
put the sand bag over my head and took me to cell
#5. And for the next five days I didn't sleep
because they use to come to my cell, asking me to
stand up for hours and hours. And they slammed the
outer door, which made a loud scary noise inside the
cell. And this black soldier took me once more to
the showers, stood there staring at my body. And he
threaten he was going to rape me again. After that,
they started to interrogate me. I lied to them so
they threaten me with hard punishment. Then other
interrogators came over and told me, 'If you
tell the truth, we will let you go as soon as possible
before Ramadan,' so I confessed and said the
truth. Four days after that, they took me to the camp
and I didn't see those interrogators any more.
New interrogators came and re-interrogated me. After
I told them the truth they accused me of being lying
to them. After 18 days in the camp, they sent me to
the hard site. I asked the interrogators why? They
said they did not know. Two days before Ied (end of
Ramadan), an interrogator came to me with a woman
and an interpreter. He said I'm one step away
from being in prison forever. He started the interrogation
with this statement and ended it with this statement.
The first day of Ied, the incident of 'Firing'
happened. I got shot with several bullets in my body
and got transferred to the hospital. And there the
interrogator 'Steve' came to me and threaten
me with the hardest torture when I go back to the
prison. I said to him, 'I'm sorry about
what happened.' He said to me, 'Don't
be sorry now, because you will be sorry later.'
After several days, he came back and said to me, 'If
I put you under torture, do you think this would be
fair?' I said to him, 'Why?' He
said he needed more information from me. I told him,
'I already told you everything I know.'
He said, 'We'll see when you get back
to the prison.' After 17 or 18 days, I was released
from the hospital, went back to Abu Ghraib, he took
me somewhere and the guard put a pistol to my head.
He said, 'I wish I can kill you right now.'
I spend the night at this place and next morning they
took me to the hard site. They received me there with
screaming, shoving, pushing and pulling. They forced
me to walk from the main gate to my cell. Otherwise
they would beat my broken leg. I was in a very bad
shape. When I went to the cell, they took my crutches
and I didn't see it since. Inside the cell,
they asked me to strip naked; they didn't give
me blanket or clothes or anything. Every hour or two,
soldiers came, threatening me they were going to kill
me and torture me and I'm going to be in prison
forever and they might transfer me to Guantanamo Bay.
One of them came and told me that he failed to shoot
me the first time, but he will make sure he will succeed
next time. And he said to me they were going to throw
a pistol or a knife in my cell, then shoot me. Sometime
they said, 'We'll make you wish to die
and it will not happen.' The night guard came
over, his name is GRANER, open the cell door, came
in with a number of soldiers. They forced me to eat
pork and they put liquor in my mouth. They put this
substance on my nose and forehead and it was very
hot. The guards started to hit me on my broken leg
several times with a solid plastic stick. He told
me he got shot in his leg and he showed me the scar
and he would retaliate from me for this. They stripped
me naked. One of them told me he would rape me. He
drew a picture of a woman on my back and makes me
stand in shameful position holding my buttocks. Someone
else asked me, 'Do you believe in anything?'
I said to him, 'I believe in Allah.' So
he said, 'But I believe in torture and I will
torture you. When I go home to my country, I will
ask whoever comes after me to torture you.'
Then they handcuffed me and hung me to the bed. They
ordered me to curse Islam because they started to
hit my broken leg, I cursed my religion. They ordered
me to thank Jesus that I'm alive. And I did
what they ordered me. This is against my belief. They
left me hang from the bed and after a little while
I lost consciousness. When I woke up, I found myself
still hang between the bed and the floor. Until now,
I lost feeling in three fingers in my right hand.
I sat on the bed, one of the stood by the door and
pee'd on me. And he said, 'GRANER, your
prisoner pee'd on himself.' And then GRANER
came and laughed. After several hours, GRANER came
and uncuffed me, then I slept. In the morning until
now, people I don't know come over and humiliate
me and threaten that they will torture me. The second
night, GRANER came and hung me to the cell door. I
told him, 'I have a broken shoulder and I am
afraid it will break again cause the doctor told me,
"don't put your arms behind your back."
He said, 'I don't care.' Then he
hung me to the door for more than eight hours. I was
screaming from pain the whole night. GRANER and others
used to come and ask me, 'Does it hurt?'
I said, 'Yes.' They said, 'Good.'
And they smack me on the back of the head. After that,
a soldier came and uncuffed me. My right shoulder
and my wrist was in bad shape and great pain. (When
I was hung to the door, I lost consciousness several
times.) Then I slept. In the morning I told the doctor
that I think my shoulder is broken because I can't
move my hand. I feel severe pain. He checked my shoulder
and told me, 'I will bring another doctor to
see you tomorrow.' The next day, the other doctor
checked my shoulder and said to me he's taking
me to the hospital the next day for X-rays. And the
next day he took me to the hospital and X-rayed my
shoulder and the doctor told me, 'Your shoulder
is not broke, but your shoulder is badly hurt.'
Then they took me back to the hard site. Every time
I leave and come back. I have to crawl back to my
cell because I can't walk. The next day, other
soldiers came at night and took photos of me while
I'm naked. They humiliated me and threaten me.
After the interrogators came over and identify the
person who gave me the pistols between some pictures.
And this guy wasn't in the pictures. When I
told them that, they said they will torture me and
they will come every single night to ask me the same
question accompanied with soldiers having weapons
and they point a weapon to my head and threaten that
they will kill me; sometimes with dogs and they hang
me to the door allowing the dogs to bite me. This
happened for a full week or more."
TRANSLATION OF STATEMENT PROVIDED BY Kasim Mehaddi
HILAS, Detainee # 151108, 1300/18 JAN 04:
"In the name of God, I swear to God that everything
I witnessed everything I am talking about. I am not
saying this to gain any material thing, and I was
not pressured to do this by any forces. First, I am
going to talk about what happened to me in Abu Ghraib
Jail. I will not talk about what happened when I was
in jail before, because they did not ask me about
that, but it was very bad.
"They stripped me of all my clothes, even my
underwear. They gave me woman's underwear, that
was rose color with flowers in it and they put a bag
over my face. One of them whispered in my ear, 'Today
I am going to fuck you,' and he said this in
Arabic. Whoever was with me experienced the same thing.
That's what the American soldiers did, and they
had a translator with them, named Abu Hamid and a
female soldier, who's skin was olive colored
and this was on October 3 or 4, 2003 around 3 or 4
in the afternoon. When they took me to the cell, the
translator Abu Hamid came with an American soldier
and his rank was sergeant (I believe). And he called
me 'faggot' because I was wearing the
woman's underwear, and my answer was 'no.'
Then he told me 'Why are you wearing this underwear?'
Then I told them 'because you make me wear it.'
The transfer from Camp B to the Isolation was full
of beatings, but the bags were over our heads so we
couldn't see their faces. And they forced me
to wear this underwear all the time, for 51 days.
And most of the days I was wearing nothing else.
"I faced more harsh punishment from Grainer.
He cuffed my hands with irons behind my back to the
metal of the window, to the point my feet were off
the ground and I was hanging there for about 5 hours
just because I asked about the time, because I wanted
to pray. And then they took all my clothes and he
took the female underwear and he put it over my head.
After he released me from the window, he tied me to
my bed until before dawn. He took me to the shower
room. After he took me to the shower room, he brought
me to my room again. He prohibited me from eating
food that night even though I was fasting that day.
Grainer and the other two soldiers were taking pictures
of every thing they did to me. I don't know
if they took a picture of me because they beat me
so bad I lost consciousness after an hour or so.
"They didn't give us food for a whole
day and a night, while we were fasting for Ramadan.
And the food was only one package of emergency food.
"Now I am talking about what I saw.
"They brought three prisoners completely naked
and they tied them together with cuffs and they stuck
one to another. I saw the American soldiers hitting
them with a football and they were taking pictures.
I saw Grainer punching one of the prisoners right
in his face vary hard when he refused to take off
his underwear and I heard them begging for help. And
also the American soldiers told to do like homosexuals
(fucking). And there was one of the American soldiers
they called Sergeant (black skin) three was 7 to 8
soldiers there also. Also female soldiers were taking
pictures and that was in the first day of Ramadan.
And they repeated the same thing the second day of
Ramadan. And they were ordering them to crawl while
they were cuffed together naked.
"I saw (name blocked out) fucking a kid, his
age would be about 15-18 years. The kid was hurting
very bad and they covered all the doors with sheets.
Then when I heard the screaming I climbed the door
because on top it wasn't covered and I saw (name
blocked out), who was wearing the military uniform
putting his dick in the little kid's ass. I
couldn't see the face of the kid because his
face wasn't in front of the door. And the female
soldier was taking pictures. (Name blocked out), I
think he is (blocked out) because of his accent, and
he was not skinny or short, and he acted like a homosexual.
And that was in cell #23 as best as I remember.
"In the cell that is almost under it, on the
North side, and I was right across from it on the
other side. They put the sheets together again on
the doors. Grainer and his helper they cuffed one
prisoner in Room #1, named (name blocked out), he
was Iraqi citizen. They tied him to the bed and they
were inserted the phosphoric light in his ass and
he was yelling for God's help. (Name blocked
out) used to get hit and punished a lot because I
heard him screaming and they prohibited us from standing
near the door when they do that. That was Ramadan,
around 12 midnight approximately when I saw them putting
the stick in his ass. The female was taking pictures.
"I saw more than once men standing on a water
bucket that was upside down and they were totally
naked. And carrying their chairs over their heads
standing under the fan of the hallway behind the wooden
partition and also in the shower.
"Not one night for all the time I was there
passed without me seeing, hearing or feeling what
was happening to me.
"And I am repeating the oath / I swear on Allah
almighty on the truth of what I said. Allah is my
witness."
TRANSLATION OF STATEMENT PROVIDED BY Mustafa Jassim
MUSTAFA, Detainee # 150542, 1140/18 JAN 04:
"Before Ramadan, Grainer started covering all
the rooms with bed sheets. Then I heard screams coming
from Room #1, at that time I was in Room #50 and it's
right below me so I looked into the room. I saw (name
blocked) in Room #1, who was naked and Grainer was
putting the phosphoric light up his ass. (Name blocked)
was screaming for help. There was another tall white
man who was with Grainer, he was helping him. There
was also a white female soldier, short, she was taking
pictures of (name blocked). (Name blocked) is now
in cell #50."
TRANSLATION OF STATEMENT PROVIDED BY Thaar Salman
DAWOD, Detainee # 150427, 1440/17 JAN 04:
"I went to the Solitary Confinement on the
Sep/10/2003. I was there for 67 days of suffering
and little to eat and the torture I saw myself. When
I asked the guard Joyner about the time and he cuffed
my hand to the door and then when his duty ended the
second guard came, his name is Grainer, he released
my hand from the door and he cuffed my hand in the
back. Then I told him I did not do anything to get
punished this way so when I said that he hit me hard
on my chest and he cuffed me to the window of the
room about 5 hours and did not give me any food that
day and I stayed without food for 24 hours. I saw
lots of people getting naked for a few days getting
punished in the first days of Ramadan. They came with
two boys naked and they were cuffed together face
to face and Grainer was beating them and a group of
guards were watching and taking pictures from top
and bottom and there was three female soldiers laughing
at the prisoners. The prisoners, two of them, were
young. I don't know their names."
TRANSLATION OF STATEMENT PROVIDED BY Abd Alwhab YOUSS,
Detainee # 150425, 1445/17 JAN 04:
"One day while in the prison the guard came
and found a broken toothbrush, and teyh said that
I was going to attack the American Police; I said
that the toothbrush wasn't mine. They said we
are taking away your clothes and mattress for 6 days
and we are not going to beat you. But the next day
the guard came and cuffed me to the cell door for
2 hours, after that they took me to a closed room
and more than give guards poured cold water on me,
and forced me to put my head in someone's urine
that was already in that room. After that they beat
me with a broom and stepped on my head with their
feet while it was still in the urine. They pressed
my ass with a broom and spit on it. Also a female
soldier, whom I don't know the name was standing
on my legs. They used a loudspeaker to shout at me
for 3 hours, it was cold. But to tell the truth in
daytime Joiner gave me my clothes and at night Grainer
took them away. The truth is they gave me my clothes
after 3 days, they didn't finish the 6 days
and thank you."
TRANSLATION OF STATEMENT PROVIDED BY Shalan Said ALSHARONI,
Detainee # 150422, 1630/17 JAN 04:
"One of those days the guards tortured the
prisoners. Those guards are Grainer, David and another
man. First they tortured the man whose name is Amjid
Iraqi. They stripped him of his clothes and beat him
until he passed out and they cursed him and when they
took off of his head I saw blood running from his
head. They took him to solitary confinement and they
were beating him every night.
"The evening shift was sad for the prisoners.
They brought three prisoners handcuffed to each other
and they pushed the first one on top of the others
to look like they are gay and when they refused, Grainer
beat them up until they put them on top of each other
and they took pictures of them. And after that they
beat up an Iraqi whose name is Asaad whom they ordered
to stand on a food carton and they were pouring water
on him and it was the coldest of times. When they
torture him they took gloves and they beat his dick
and testicles with the gloves and they handcuffed
him to the cell door for half a day without food or
water. After that they brought young Iraqi prisoners
and Grainer tortured them by pouring water on them
from the second floor until one of them started crying
and screaming and started saying 'my heart.'
They brought the doctors to treat him and they thought
he was going to die. After they brought six people
and they beat them up until they dropped on the floor
and one of them his nose was cut and the blood was
running from his nose and he was screaming but no
one was responding and all this beating from Grainer
and Davis and another man, whom I don't know
the name. The doctor came to stitch the nose and the
Grainer asked the doctor to learn how to stitch and
it's true, the guard learned how to stitch.
He took the string and the needle and he sat down
to finish the stitching until the operation succeeded.
And then the other man came to take pictures of the
injured person who was laying on the ground. Every
time one of them fell on the ground, they drag them
up to stand on his feet. Grainer beat up a man whose
name is Ali the Syrian and he was beating him until
he gotten almost crazy. And he was telling him go
up to the second floor as he was naked. And they opened
the prisoners cells to see him running naked. And
after they put him in his cell for four days they
were pouring water on him and he couldn't sleep.
Before that he was in cell number 4. They hanged him
and he was screaming but no one helped him.
"There was a translator named Abu Adell the
Egyptian. He was helping Grainer and Davis and others
whom I don't know, like they were watching a
live movie of three young guys being put up by Abu
Adell on top of each other. And everyone was taking
pictures of this whole thing with cameras. This is
what I saw and what I remember to be true."
|
Before America went to war with
Afghanistan, another war was underway -- against its
own people: the war to deceive America into attacking
Iraq. This is no longer a theory or conjecture; it is
a documented fact.
Those in the Mainstream Media, including the New York
Times and Washington Post, who choose to ignore this
reality, or couch it in qualifying terms (such as "unproven
assertions") are no longer trying to debunk a conspiracy,
because the deliberate deception that forced America
into war with Iraq is not a conspiracy theory.
In fact, the evidence is so abundant and damning,
it is those who deny the reality that the Bush Administration
intentionally deceived America into a ruinous war based
on calculated lies who are part of an untenable conspiracy
theory. Yes, the Mainstream Media is right up there
with the Raelists (if you recall them, they were a cult
the media covered for days because the press believed
their unfounded claims that they had cloned a human)
when it comes to believability. Their job appears to
be to create a conspiracy of credibility around Bush
going to war, where none can exist to a person of common
sense or integrity.
Consider just some of the following established facts
regarding the Bush administration's orchestrated propaganda
campaign to deceive America into War:
1) A 2002 (Downing Street) memo is released in Britain
in May of 2005 that documents that Blair thought that
he had no choice but to go to war because the Bush administration
said that it was "going to fix" intelligence
to start one.
2) In early June of 2005, a British paper reveals
that the U.S. and U.K. flew sorties over Iraq in 2002
to provoke Saddam Hussein and destroy his anti-aircraft
infrastructure in preparation for the war. Congressman
John Conyers calls this the smoking bullet in the smoking
gun.
3) All the Bushevik warnings of WMDs are proven false
-- all of them. Not a single WMD was found.
4) Dick Cheney lurked around the CIA prior to the
Iraq War putting pressure on analysts to "fix"
the data.
5) The analysts who came up with the false allegations
that "aluminum tubes" were being used for
nuclear enrichment story were promoted by the Bush Administration
and given bonuses.
6) Richard Clarke says that Bush personally took him
aside and told him to make the facts work for a war
with Iraq.
7) Former Secretary of the Treasury O'Neill wrote
in his memoirs that Bush was out to get Iraq from the
moment he was sworn in.
8) The PNAC (Project for the New American Century)
plea to invade Iraq was written in the late 90s, primarily
by Bush Neo-cons who guided us into the war.
9) The Bush Administration outed Valerie Plame as
a CIA operative specializing in -- ironically and tragically
-- tracking the illicit sale and movement of Weapons
of Mass Destruction because her courageous husband,
Joe Wilson, exposed the Niger documents as a fraud.
Thus, the Bush Administration put the national security
at risk regarding WMDs to seek vengeance on someone
for exposing their phony war based on a lie about WMDs.
10) This past weekend, it was revealed that John Bolton
had a U.N. official fired for trying to seek a peaceful
way out of the Iraq War, in regards to Iraq's compliance
with chemical weapons accords.
11) After 9/11, Rumsfeld is quoted as saying that
the U.S. would take Saddam and all of "them"
out.
12) Advanced forces were sent into Iraq before the
war had even started.
13) Rumsfeld set up a Pentagon psy-ops operation to
create PR for going to war with Iraq. (He claimed to
have closed it down, but he never did.)
14) The Chalabi-Judith Miller-Cheney axis of information
was used to claim that created "factoids"
were truths, when they were just propaganda. (The New
York Times "apologized" for this, but made
no changes in its coverage, including keeping Miller
on and standing up for her, even though she published
lies from a proxy Bush Administration anonymous source.)
15) The Bush Administration, according to various
polls, conducted a successful misinformation campaign
to make Americans believe that Saddam Hussein was partly
responsible for 9/11 and that the hijackers were Iraqi.
We could go on and on, but it gets tiring after awhile.
It's like recalling how many times a lover has betrayed
you. What's the point? You've proved your case; the
rest is just a masochistic exercise of listing. (And
we're sure that some wingers will write to us saying
we didn't get one or other of the points EXACTLY correct,
as if it mattered whether the bullet that killed someone
hit their right or left heart ventricle in order to
prove who the murderer is.)
The odds that the Bush Administration didn't lie to
the American people for more than a year about the coming
war with Iraq are between 0 and -25, but the MSM [mainstream
media] technicality of the past two weeks has been caught
up on covering the fine distinction between flushing
vs. urinating on the Koran.
The purpose of the MSM, including the NYT and Washington
Post, is to portray Bush in a way so as not to offend
the White House. The truth doesn't factor into it, unless
it accidentally is consistent with a Bushevik position.
(Stories about Bushevik bad behavior are either buried
in the papers or forgotten the next day, for the most
part.)
There will be no process to bring this mendacious,
fanatical administration to justice. The facts are there,
but there is no way to impeach and convict the felons
responsible. As the defenders of Nixon showed us this
past week, felonies are okay for Republicans to commit.
The people who expose the crimes are the traitors to
these twisted GOP zealots.
And if the Busheviks were impeached and convicted
(which won't happen because of a one-party Pinochet
style of government), Bush's back up team on the federal
bench would intervene and throw out the convictions
or rule the impeachment process unConstitutional.
That's what happens when a creeping dictatorship comes
to power -- and the Mainstream Media supports the liars
because the liars give them tax breaks for their multi-billion
dollar media and entertainment empires and allow them
to expand their holdings. Not to mention the coup de
grace of scaring off any journalist with integrity by
staging intimidating stunts like "Rathergate"
and "Koran Flushgate."
Truth is the first casualty of corporate media consolidation
in alliance with an arrogant administration that has
betrayed the nation. They are the conspiracy theorists
who come up with fabulist explanations for avoiding
the truth.
One doesn't have to even connect the dots. They have
been connected for us. They even glow in the dark.
The Bush Administration lied America into war -- and
the press of America not only won't acknowledge it,
it still acts as if they can trust the White House.
So, America is betrayed twice: by the chronically
lying Bush Administration and by the Mainstream Media
and the right wing radio echo chamber for the GOP propaganda
message points of the day.
An honest journalist writing the truth about the Bush
Administration's betrayal of America knows this: they
will only have a target painted on their backs for their
efforts.
On the other hand, sing the propaganda of the Bushevik
Brown Shirts and your career will not only be safe;
it will probably flourish. |
SACRAMENTO--Pushing the limits
of rhetorical credulity has proved one of the Bush Administration's
most effective tactics. At a time when leftist postmodernists
argue against objective truth and rightist anti-intellectuals
promote proven lies as absolute truths, reality has
become marginalized by legitimized frauds.
In this twisted post-objective world, White House
spinners see every screw-up as a golden opportunity.
Not only did he not lose the election, Bush and his
media organs drone on, he won a mandate! If WMDs weren't
found in Iraq, it just proves that they were moved to
Syria--not that the war was based on lies. The former
detainees who claim they were tortured at Gitmo? They
"hate America," says Bush. Besides, they had
been "trained in some instances to disassemble
[sic]--that means not tell the truth." Why did
the military release anti-American terrorists? They
don't have an answer to that. Ye.
Purveyors of propaganda, like pushers of narcotics,
seal their doom when they start partaking of their own
product. The first signs that the Bushies were breaking
this cardinal rule appeared earlier this year after
demonstrations led Syria to withdraw troops from Lebanon.
Kindly ignore the bombs blowing up scores of Iraqis
and American occupation troops, the neoconmen demanded,
even arguing that coverage of the carnage plays into
the hands of the Iraqis--er, terrorists. Events in Lebanon,
Georgia and Kyrgyzstan, they declared, vindicated Bush,
preemptive attacks, the war on terrorism--everything.
"Well, who's the simpleton now?" crowed conservative
columnist Max Boot in the Los Angeles Times as if war
were a game. Which it is when you wage it for fun, safely
ensconced behind a computer keyboard thousands of miles
away from the front lines.
In college I had a pothead pal who liked to score
in spectacularly dangerous neighborhoods. "They
won't mug me," he'd say, "because they know
I'm cool." His rationale mutated after he got beaten
and robbed: "They're done with me now; next time
they'll go after someone else." He thus talked
himself into going back, and got mugged again.
Propaganda, like any other drug, dulls the mind and
destroys common sense.
Politicians live or die on their sense of what the
average voter cares about and suss out their take on
any given issue. Republican leaders put a thumb right
on the national pulse after 9/11: Americans were willing
to do just about anything in the name of fighting terrorism,
including going to war against two countries that had
little to nothing to do with the attacks. Working up
the gay-bashing anti-abortion bigots proved equally
potent in 2004. But victory wasn't the blank check for
which they'd hoped. They lost touch. They believed their
own hype. They overreached.
People don't want Social Security to be privatized.
Nor will they accept, despite Rumsfeld's oughta-be-classic
channeling of Rudyard Kipling "it's dangerous to
civilize nations," an endless occupation of Iraq.
Failing an increasingly elusive military victory against
the Iraqi resistance, the American public is looking
for any excuse to cut and run. Revelations of systemic
torture of innocent civilian detainees by American troops
at Guantánamo, Abu Ghraib and Bagram provide
a perfect reason for immediate withdrawal. There are
neither WMDs to find nor hearts and minds to win, so
why the hell are we there?
It's American common sense at its finest, but Bush
is too self-benumbed to see it.
The Pentagon released a report finding that, despite
"a consistent, documented policy of respectful
handling of the Koran dating back almost two and a half
years," military investigators had confirmed five
cases of desecration of Islam's holy text by American
soldiers. But when Bush and his dogs took to the airwaves
to bark "Only five! Only five!," even owners
of multiple patriotic car magnets shrugged. An Amnesty
International report that called Gitmo the "gulag
of our time" and declared the United States the
world's most influential torture state stuck. Even Fox
News asked whether the GOP would suffer in the 2006
midterm elections as a result.
Standard Bush tactics of blaming the murder and torture
of Muslim prisoners on "a few bad apples"
like Lynndie England are falling flat. Even people who
voted for Bush and supported his wars are changing their
minds about torture. What's going wrong?
Where there's smoke there's fire, and most Americans
know that if the Pentagon confirms five cases of trashing
the Koran there are probably hundreds, possibly thousands
more cases, unconfirmed by official channels but no
less true. Ditto for the torture allegations. How often
have you driven faster than the speed limit? What percent
of the time did you receive a ticket? How many times
have you fudged your taxes? Ever been audited? Now consider
this: How often would you get caught if you had the
federal government to cover up for you?
Americans know that torture is the norm and that Bush
approves of it. The more they focus on what that says
about America, and thus about them, the more their revulsion
will grow. It will take more than the usual pooh-pooh
propaganda to distract them from their growing disgust. |
Sixteen private American security
guards are under investigation for shooting at US marines
and Iraqi civilians during a three-hour period west
of Baghdad.
The US Marine Corps said in a statement on Thursday
that 16 Americans and three Iraqi contractors were held
for three days late last month after they fired on Iraqis
and marines from their cars in Falluja.
No charges have yet been laid in the 28 May shootings.
There were no casualties and the circumstances surrounding
the shootings remain unclear.
Many Iraqis resent high-profile security details,
who speed along Iraqi highways in four-wheel drive vehicles
bristling with automatic weapons.
But senior government officials, who are prime targets
of fighters wreaking havoc across Iraq, use private
security firms for their own protection. |
WASHINGTON (CP) - The
CIA dismissed renewed claims Thursday by a U.S. politician
that an Iranian exile provided credible information
about a terrorist plot to hijack a Canadian airliner
and fly it into a nuclear reactor near Boston.
Republican Congressman Curt Weldon, who first went
public with the hijacking scheme in December 2004, repeats
the assertion in a new book, Countdown to Terror, which
accuses the CIA and others of ignoring information passed
to him from a man he code-names Ali.
U.S. intelligence agents have identified
the man as a close associate of another Iranian, Manucher
Ghorbanifar, branded as a fabricator by the CIA in the
1980s.
The CIA said Thursday that Ali's information has already
been thoroughly assessed.
"We looked into his information, more than once,"
said agency spokeswoman Anya Guilsher.
Weldon's book reproduces faxes he's received since
2003 from the informant and calls for a "mass purge
of the intelligence community."
Last December, Weldon said a source with high-level
Iranian government contacts told him there was a plot
in 2003 to fly a hijacked Canadian airliner into the
Seabrook nuclear power plant near Boston.
At the time, U.S. nuclear regulatory officials said
there was no credible threat against a specific power
plant.
Weldon credited his source with disrupting the attack
and pointed to the August 2003 arrest in Toronto of
19 men, most Pakistani, on suspicions of terrorism.
However, all security-related charges
were dropped and the case was quickly downgraded to
routine immigration fraud. |
When the Pentagon releases its
May recruiting figures Friday, the numbers are expected
to show a continuing decline in those signing up for
the Army and Marine Corps.
If that downward trend continues,
the specter of a military draft to fill the ranks with
able bodies is likely to loom large in Washington once
again.
But William Chatfield, the new head of the nation's
Selective Service System, said he did not anticipate
that happening any time soon.
"Congress, not the president, would have to approve
it and I have seen nothing to indicate there is any
support for it there," Chatfield said Wednesday
during a visit to Atlanta.
The Army and the Marines, which are carrying the brunt
of the fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan and suffering
the bulk of the casualties, have been struggling in
recent months to meet recruiting goals.
A congressional resolution introduced last fall by
Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.), a Korean War veteran,
called for the draft — which was abolished in
1973 — to be reinstituted.
While that resolution was largely seen as a ploy to
embarrass President Bush in an election year, Chatfield
believes the 402-2 vote against it reflects the true
congressional opposition to the issue.
Military officials also oppose a draft, saying the
all-volunteer force is easier to train and maintain
than a force of reluctant draftees.
Chatfield, a Marine Corps Reserve
chief warrant officer, said it was nevertheless incumbent
on the Selective Service to be prepared in the event
Congress changes its mind.
"I like being ready to go, although not necessarily
needing to use it," he said of the system.
Chatfield said modern technology would
enable the Selective Service to conduct specialized
drafts in the event that people with specific skills
such as linguists, medical personnel or computer experts
were in critical demand by the military.
But any future draft will be significantly different
from the Vietnam-era draft, he said.
Among the new Selective Service guidelines if a draft
is implemented:
• Few student deferments or exemptions would
be allowed.
• Conscientious objector exemptions would be
based on moral, ethical or religious beliefs, not solely
on religious beliefs.
• Men would be most draft eligible in the year
they turn 20, with 21- to 25-year-olds less likely to
be called. In the previous draft, local boards often
first drafted the oldest men who had not yet turned
26.
• Local draft and appeal boards would better
reflect the racial, ethnic and cultural makeup of the
communities in which they are based.
"One of our missions is to make sure that any
future draft is fair and equitable," said Keith
Scragg, a retired Air Force colonel who is director
of the Selective Service's Southeast region.
Federal law requires all young men
to register with the Selective Service within 30 days
of turning 18. Failure to do so is a felony and those
who do not register can be denied student and other
federal loans.
Scragg said the national average for registration
is 76 percent for 18-year-olds and 90 percent for those
19 to 25.
In Georgia, 95 percent of 18-year-olds register while
99.9 percent of those 18 to 25 register. One reason
for the higher registration in Georgia, Scragg said,
is the fact that Selective Service registration is linked
to application for a driver's license or identification
card.
By federal law, women are still not required to register. |
For mom Marcia Cobb and her teenage
son Axel, the white letters USMC on their caller ID
soon spelled, "Don't answer the phone!"
Marine recruiters began a relentless
barrage of calls to Axel as soon as the mellow,
compliant Sedro-Woolley High School grad had cut his
17th birthday cake. And soon it was nearly impossible
to get the seekers of a few good men off the line.
With early and late calls ringing in their ears,
Marcia tried using call blocking. And that's when she
learned her first hard lesson. You can't block calls
from the government, her server said. So, after
pleas to "Please stop calling" went unanswered,
the family's "do not answer" order ensued.
But warnings and liquid crystal lettering can fade.
So, two weeks ago when Marcia was cooking dinner Axel
goofed and answered the call. And, faster than you can
say "semper fi," an odyssey kicked into action
that illustrates just how desperate some of the recruiters
we've read about really are to fill severely sagging
quotas.
Let what we learned serve as a warning to other moms,
dads and teens, the Cobbs now say. Even if your kids
actually may want to join the military, if they hope
to do it on their own terms, after a deep breath and
due consideration, repeat these words after them: "No,"
"Not now" and "Back off!"
"I've been trained to be pretty friendly. I guess
you might even say I'm kind of passive," Axel told
me last week, just after his mother and older sister
had tracked him to a Seattle testing center and sprung
him on a ruse.
The next step of Axel's misadventure
came when he heard about a cool "chin-ups"
contest in Bellingham, where the prize was a free Xbox.
The now 18-year-old Skagit Valley Community College
student dragged his tail feathers home uncharacteristically
late that night. And, in the morning, Marcia learned
the Marines had hosted the event
and "then had him out all night, drilling him to
join."
A single mom with a meager income, Marcia raised her
kids on the farm where, until recently, she grew salad
greens for restaurants.
Axel's father, a Marine Corps
vet who served in Vietnam, died when Axel was 4.
Clearly the recruiters knew all that and more.
"You don't want to be a
burden to your mom," they told him. "Be a
man." "Make your father proud."
Never mind that, because of his
own experience in the service, Marcia says enlistment
for his son is the last thing Axel's dad would have
wanted.
The next weekend, when Marcia went to Seattle for
the Folklife Festival and Axel was home alone, two recruiters
showed up at the door.
Axel repeated the family mantra, but he was feeling
frazzled and worn down by then.
The sergeant was friendly but, at the same time, aggressively
insistent. This time, when Axel said, "Not interested,"
the sarge turned surly, snapping, "You're making
a big (bleeping) mistake!"
Next thing Axel knew, the same
sergeant and another recruiter showed up at the LaConner
Brewing Co., the restaurant where Axel works.
And before Axel, an older cousin
and other co-workers knew or understood what was happening,
Axel was whisked away in a car.
"They said we were going somewhere but I didn't
know we were going all the way to Seattle," Axel
said.
Just a few tests. And so many free opportunities,
the recruiters told him.
He could pursue his love of chemistry.
He could serve anywhere he chose and leave any time
he wanted on an "apathy discharge" if he didn't
like it. And he wouldn't have to go to Iraq if he didn't
want to.
At about 3:30 in the morning, Alex
was awakened in the motel and fed a little something.
Twelve hours later, without further sleep or food, he
had taken a battery of tests and signed a lot of papers
he hadn't gotten a chance to read. "Just formalities,"
he was told. "Sign here. And here. Nothing to worry
about."
By then Marcia had "freaked out."
She went to the Burlington recruiting center where
the door was open but no one was home. So she grabbed
all the cards and numbers she could find, including
the address of the Seattle-area testing center.
Then, with her grown daughter in tow, she high-tailed
it south, frantically phoning Axel whose cell phone
had been confiscated "so he wouldn't be distracted
during tests."
Axel's grandfather was in the hospital dying, she
told the people at the desk. He needed to come home
right away. She would have said just about anything.
But, even after being told her son would be brought
right out, her daughter spied him being taken down a
separate hall and into another room. So she dashed down
the hall and grabbed him by the arm.
"They were telling me I needed
to 'be a man' and stand up to my family," Axel
said.
What he needed, it turned out, was a lawyer.
Five minutes and $250 after an attorney called the
recruiters, Axel's signed papers and his cell phone
were in the mail.
My request to speak with the sergeant who recruited
Axel and with the Burlington office about recruitment
procedures went unanswered.
And so should your phone, Marcia Cobb advised. Take
your own sweet time. Keep your own counsel. And, if
you see USMC on caller ID, remember what answering the
call could mean. |
Tikrit: A senior US
military chief has admitted "good, honest" Iraqis
are fighting American forces.
Major General Joseph Taluto said he could understand
why some ordinary people would take up arms against the
US military because "they're offended by our presence".
In an interview with Gulf News, he said:
"If a good, honest
person feels having all these Humvees driving on the road,
having us moving people out of the way, having us patrol
the streets, having car bombs going off, you can understand
how they could [want to fight us]."
General Taluto, head of the US 42nd Infantry Division
which covers key trouble spots, including Baquba and Samarra,
also said some Iraqis not involved in fighting did support
insurgents who avoided hurting civilians.
He said: "There is a sense of a good resistance,
or an accepted resistance. They say 'okay, if you shoot
a coalition soldier, that's okay, it's not a bad thing
but you shouldn't kill other Iraqis.'"
However General Taluto insisted the US and other foreign
forces would not be driven out of Iraq by violence. "If
the goal is to have the coalition leave, attacking them
isn't the way," he said. "The way to make it
happen is to enter the political process cooperate and
the coalition will be less aggressive and less visible
and eventually it'll go away."
His comments come in stark contrast
to the assertions of other top US figures, who persist
in claiming all insurgents are either Baathists or Al
Qaida terrorists.
General Taluto also admitted he did not know how many
insurgents there were. "I stay away from numbers
how can I quantify this? We can make estimates by doing
some kind of guesswork," he said.
"I think there is a small core of foreign fighters.
I don't know how big that is but there is some kind of
capability here, and it's being replenished.
"Then there is a group of former regime personnel
they're the facilitators. They make all the communications,
move the money, they enable things to happen. Their goal
isn't the same as the foreign fighters but they're using
them to do what they want to do.
"Then we have the foot soldiers. Some are doing
it for the money. Some are doing it because they're offended
by our presence and believe we are a threat to their way
of life. There are various levels."
He added: "Who knows how big these networks are,
or how widespread? I know it's substantial enough to be
a threat to the government and it will be for some time."
General Taluto said "99.9 per cent"
of those captured fighting the US were Iraqis,
but was also adamant most people in Iraq wanted a free,
democratic and independent country.
He predicted attacks would continue to surge in intensity,
as key milestones were reached, including the upcoming
constitutional referendum. |
CANBERRA -
Five embassies in the Australian capital, including
the U.S., British and Japanese missions, were shut down
on Thursday after they received suspicious packages
containing white powder, police said.
Similar parcels were also posted to the South Korean
and Italian embassies, Australia's Department of Prime
Minister and Cabinet and parliament house in Canberra,
forcing the closure of part of
the parliament building for the second time in a week.
Police said two of the packages had been cleared as
harmless.
"All seven packages are being tested. The packages
sent to the British High Commission and the Italian
embassy have already been cleared as harmless,"
a police spokesman told Reuters.
"It is too early to be specualating on whether
these incidents are linked or what the motive might
be."
He said the packages were delivered through the post.
All the missions involved in
the security scare have troops in Iraq, while
Australia is a staunch U.S. ally and among the first
to join the war on Iraq two years ago.
"We received an envelope containing white powder.
We closed off the area and appropriate precautions were
taken," said a U.S. embassy spokeswoman, adding
that police had restricted access to the embassy.
The Indonesian embassy, which twice closed in the
past week after being sent parcels containing harmless
white powder, said it did not receive any packages on
Thursday.
The Australian government has said it believes the
Indonesian embassy security scares are most likely linked
to Indonesia's jailing of an Australian woman on drug
smuggling charges, which has sparked public anger in
Australia.
|
Jerusalem -- Israel's rigorously
guarded nuclear secrets could have been tampered with
in an international computer hacking scandal known as
the Trojan Horse affair, the Yediot Aharonot newspaper
reported Thursday.
Police are investigating a complaint by water company
Gal-Al that a rival firm stole drawings and formulas
on how to produce and separate heavy water in a project
at Israel's Dimona nuclear reactor.
Producing and separating heavy water is needed to manufacture
a hydrogen bomb. Israel has never admitted having a
nuclear arsenal, but is widely believed to have around
200 nuclear warheads.
Gal-Al director Baruch Zisser refused to make any comments
on the case on public radio.
Twenty people, including top business
executives, have been arrested in an unprecedented industrial
espionage scandal in Israel that has so far implicated
15 companies - including some of the most prestigious
in Israel.
Evidence gathered by the police shows among those infiltrated
were car importers, television stations, PR firms and
telephone companies, to track all actions carried out
in the system and even to control the computer remotely.
The investigation has spread from Israel to Britain,
Germany and the United States.
On Wednesday, a key Israeli suspect
in the hacking scandal, Yitzak Rath, fell from the second
storey of a police station after undergoing a lengthy
interrogation in what police believe was a suicide attempt. |
JERUSALEM, June 10
(Xinhuanet) -- Avi Dichter, former head of Israel's Shin
Bet security service, supports the Gaza disengagement
plan and does not believe that it will worsen Israel's
security situation, local newspaper Ha'aretz reported
Friday. [...]
In fact, Israel will have greater freedom
for military action if needed, because once the settlements
and the IDF are out of Gaza, the number of Israeli targets
in the strip will be much smaller, Dichter said.
The former Shin Bet chief also believed the disengagement
will be implemented, saying "extreme scenarios are
possible, but the critical mass of the evacuees will resist
passively."
"It will be difficult and unpleasant
and it isn't going to look good on television, but we'll
get through it," he added. |
In his two books "Why
America Slept" and "Secrets of the Kingdom"
Gerald Posner refers to Abu Zubaydah as the third man
in al-Qaeda. But then the terrorist Khalid Sheikh Mohammed
is mentioned and Posner refers to him as "an even
higher ranking" al-Qaeda man. How is this? If he
is higher than Abu Zubaydah were does that leave Ayman
Al-Zawahiri and Usama bin Laden himself? Who is second?
Who is first in this overcrowded room?
This is nothing compared with the more outrageous claims
by the author. Since his first book he must have discover
that Prince Ahmed bin Salman was a businessman and a very
successful thoroughbred owner and that no one believed
that he could possibly have any kind of connection with
al-Qaeda, so Posner comes up in his second book with a
new twist to the old lie. He claims that Prince Ahmed
might have been "a conduit of information for someone
higher ranking" like his father Prince Salman bin
Abdul Aziz. Posner knows that Prince Salman is governor
of Riyadh but then goes on to say that "he is one
of the Kingdom's most influential ministers…"
He claims that Prince Salman's office overlooks Sahat
al-Adl, or Justice Square. It does not. Posner is talking
about the Prince's old office. For over ten years now
Prince Salman's office overlooks the Imam Turki bin Abdullah
Mosque. Sahat al-Adl is on another side and anyway the
big window of the office is behind the Prince's desk and
visitors cannot see through it.
With his wealth of knowledge, Posner claims that Prince
Salman, Prince Sultan and Prince Abdullah (in this lopsided
order) are "the de facto rulers of Saudi Arabia".
Where does that leave the King, or Prince Nayef among
others? The book claims that the governor of Riyadh has
"strong ties to the religious conservatives, particularly
those in the regional strongholds of Buraydah and Darriya".
Is there more than one Prince Salman bin Abdul Aziz in
Saudi Arabia? Is there one who is governor of Riyadh,
another a minister and a third with political and religious
alliances? Posner talks about Prince Faisal bin Salman
and says he is the head of a media company that is violently
anti-American and anti-Israli disseminating propaganda.
Now this is becoming personal; I was the first editor-in-chief
of Asharq al-Awsat and I hired every single member of
the editorial staff. Posner should know about propaganda
as his book is a classic case of cold war disinformation
and shear ignorance.
He is ignorant enough to claim that Prince Feisal bin
Salman is the head of education in Saudi Arabia. I feel
bad that I did not congratulate him on this exalted position,
or Prince Salman on his cabinet position.
All the above is contained in the first chapter of the
book, which ends with Posner quoting himself. When I saw
some of the outrageous mistakes made I went to the Notes
at the end of the book and discovered that he also quotes
the clown Stephen Schwartz and Dore Gold, a one time ambassador
of Benjamin Natanyahu to the UN, so I don't need to explain
his objectivity and humanity.
All this expertise however, does not help Posner and
in the short second chapter he talks about the history
of the House of Saud and their country. He knows that
"bin" means "son" in Arabic, but after
he mentions Imam Mohammed bin Abdul Wahab he starts referring
to him as al-Wahab not realizing that Abdul Wahab is one
word and that al-Wahab (Giver) is one of the 99 names
of God in the Koran. The poor Imam must be rolling in
his grave at the thought of him being called God.
More serious is mixing up Ibn Saud, the popular name
of King Abdul Aziz, and Saud. The index lists the names
of all the Saudi kings. The index guides me to this line,
Ibn Saud eldest son and heir was also named Saud. Of course,
Ibn Saud is Abdul Aziz, which is definitely not Saud.
Posner also refers to Crown Prince Feisal visiting New
York in 1944, a year when the Saudi Crown Prince was Saud.
The worst case of ignorance, one that destroys any semblance
of real knowledge or research, is Posner's presentation
of Wahhabis and Wahhabism. He does not seem to know that
there are four sects of Sunni Islam and that Imam Mohammed
bin Abdul Wahab was an interpreter of the Hanbali sect
found mostly in Saudi Arabia and Qatar. It is by far the
smallest of the Sunni sects. Posner says that Sayyid Qutb,
"a prolific Muslim scholar, who did a watershed six
volume commentary on the Koran, setting the guidelines
for modern Wahhabi adherence." Of course Sayyid Qutb
was a Shafei like all Egyptians, and extremist Wahhabis
reject his thinking altogether. I may add that the Lebanese
are Shafei, the Palestinians Malki or Shafei, the Sudanese
and Moroccans Malki, the Iraqis and Afghanis Hanafi.
All the detailed ignorance is contained in the first
three chapters, in 37 pages out of a 254-page book. I
could not continue and I would not have reviewed the book
to the readers had I not known that Posner is seen in
the US as an expert and an authority in his chosen field.
He is not. If he is then I can claim that I am a Talmud
scholar. |
LIMA, June 9 (Xinhuanet)
-- Bolivia's Supreme Court President Eduardo Rodriguez
was sworn in as the country's new president late Thursday
night after Congress unanimously accepted the resignation
of his embattled predecessor Carlos Mesa in an emergency
session.
Rodriguez was given the job after both Senate leader
Hormando Vaca Diez and House leader Mario Cossio refused
to accept the postin succession, said reports from Sucre,
the constitutional capitalof Bolivia.
Under constitution, new elections must be held within
the next six months under current circumstances.
However, in his inauguration speech, Rodriguez did not
set a date for early elections, but said: "one of
my tasks will be to call an electoral process to renew
and continue building a democratic system that is more
just."
Late on Monday, Mesa announced his decision to resign
after mass anti-government protesters paralyzed the country
for several weeks. Earlier this year, he also offered
resignation, but was turned down by Congress.
For the past months, protests and social
disorder have frequently hit the South American country,
often paralyzing traffic.
The unrest erupted after Congress passed a law on May
17 to levy a 50-percent tax on foreign oil and gas companies
operating in Bolivia, which has the second largest gas
reserves in South America after Venezuela.
The opposition demands higher taxes on foreign firms
and the nationalization of the country's lucrative oil
and gas industry.
Demonstrations have escalated into riots since May 24
when demonstrators blocked a downtown square in La Paz,
where the executive and legislative branches of government
are located, and began to smash windows in buildings and
cars in the surrounding streets.
In a bid to halt oil and gas production, hundreds of
peasants in the eastern Santa Cruz province have blockaded
roads and entrances to four natural gas fields operated
by foreign firms. |
As Al-Ahram Weekly
went to press, Bolivian President Carlos Mesa who tendered
his resignation late Monday, warned that the country was
on the brink of civil war. He called for the holding of
immediate elections as the only way out of Bolivia's political
impasse.
Bolivia, an impoverished, landlocked country, has been
monopolising the news lately in much of South America.
As civil unrest increases, observers are wondering what
the threatened violence in this traditionally unstable
nation may mean for the rest of the region.
For a long time, Bolivia was touted
as a success story by the IMF crowd, who couldn't stop
congratulating themselves, and, less noisily, the Bolivians,
for having been the first to adopt a far-reaching "stabilisation"
programme. It is true that Bolivia did manage to recover
from the hyperinflation which plagued two of its more
prosperous neighbours, Brazil and Argentina. But the promised
economic renaissance, which was to result from rigorous
respect for recipes more concerned with fixing numbers
than doing something about prevailing poverty, simply
never materialised.
For years Bolivia's poor have been not
only abandoned to their fate, but in fact made to feel
irrelevant in the decision-making process of the country's
elite. Complicating the situation is the fact that there
are two separate elites, the traditional mining elite
which holds sway in the western, poorer region, of the
country, and the newer elite which rules the more prosperous
east, where the presence of natural gas reserves promises
to bring about a bonanza for a fortunate few.
Since the natural resources of the west have been largely
depleted, all eyes are on the natural gas reserves of
the east, where the proportion of "whites",
that is to say, those not of indigenous descent, is more
pronounced. This has given rise to pressure from two different
directions on the central government in La Paz. The west,
represented by indigenous associations and the maverick
leader, Evo Morales, himself of Indian descent, have been
leading the resistance against attempts to export Bolivian
natural gas at what they consider to be disadvantageous
terms for the country. The east, on the other hand, whose
leaders would dearly love to see the natural gas flowing
out of the country, has been clamouring for autonomy,
which some believe may be the first step in a process
which could end in the dismemberment of Bolivia.
Even by the standards of Bolivia's unsettled past --
the unpopular President Sanchez Losada was recently forced
to resign as a result of a popular uprising which took
place in the west of the country -- the current situation
is highly explosive. This week, the no less unpopular
President Carlos Mesa attempted to resign as well, but
the Bolivian congress refused to accept his resignation.
Meanwhile, the powerful Catholic Church has called for
national conciliation.
Is Bolivia about to fall apart? Certainly the situation
is critical. In the western region, a two- week-old strike
calling for the resignation of Mesa, the dissolution of
congress and a new constituent assembly, has left La Paz
and nearby El Alto with serious food shortages. Meanwhile,
heavily armed right-wing militias, calling themselves
"blackshirts", have been promising to "defend"
the interests of the east. Indigenous demonstrators
who "dared" to set foot in Santa Cruz de la
Sierra, the major city in the east, have been brutally
beaten in what many agree were horrifyingly racist incidents
which television cameras recorded.
It is clear that Bolivia has a serious identity problem.
Different Bolivian factions describe the strife plaguing
their country through the lens of white versus indigenous,
rich versus poor, "jackbooted fascists" versus
"subversives".
Both Argentina and Brazil, Bolivia's largest neighbours
and traditionally regarded as friendly by the Bolivians,
have offered to mediate, but have thought better of it,
as it became clear any intervention on their part could
be misinterpreted. Corporate interests from both countries
have invested heavily in the Bolivian natural gas sector,
and as such could be viewed as politically motivated parties.
As for the Organization of American States, of which Bolivia
is a member, it too must tread carefully as to avoid being
accused of taking sides.
The pressure is on for Mesa to resign, for a constituent
assembly to be convened, as demanded by the indigenous
protesters and by Morales, and for a referendum to be
held in the western provinces, as demanded by leaders
of the region, to decide whether these provinces should
have more "autonomy". But for many, these demands
are seen as impossible, as they threaten to divide the
country's elite and hence, inevitably, the entire population.
The Catholic Church's call for national dialogue may
be the only ray of hope. Though Bolivia may not get much
attention outside the region, what happens there may have
far-reaching implications. In the past two decades, military
coups and calls for outright secession by disgruntled
regions have been considered far- fetched scenarios in
this part of the world, as democracy has begun to take
hold.
If Bolivia's crisis results in either of these dramatic
scenarios, a dangerous precedent will have been set in
a continent where precedents mean a great deal. The only
hope is that common sense and a renewed desire to forge
a national identity may bring peace to a troubled country
which has suffered more than most. |
Dubai pulled together
yesterday when a power failure caught the city unawares.
Just as traffic seemed to get out of
control, just as nerves started to fray when ATMs did
not work and there were long queues at petrol stations,
and just as the heat brought beads of sweat to foreheads,
residents rose to the occasion and overcame.
The bond that makes this city so vibrant
triumphed.
According to a release by by the Dubai Electricity and
Water Authority (Dewa), a sudden failure in one of the
main transmission substations at the Jebel Ali Power Station
caused a power failure at 9.47am.
It said emergency and maintenance teams were dispatched
to attend to the fault and gradual restoration of power
to vital areas started in less than two-and-a-half hours.
[...]
Most mobile phone users in Dubai said they could not
make or receive calls, but Etisalat said otherwise in
a release.
It said: "Mobile, fixed line and the internet network
continued to function with normal efficiency. It has been
brought to Etisalat's attention that approximately 35
per cent of mobile coverage area in Dubai, concentrated
in the commercial buildings area, was affected.
"The space and facilities available in these locations
for back-up power supply is very limited, which is the
reason for the service drop."
There were no major accidents or fires, with police deploying
personnel immediately at traffic signals to ease the flow.
Yesterday being the start of the weekend, traffic flow
was not as heavy. Residents too lent a hand, directing
traffic sometimes, giving water to thirsty policemen and
calming tempers.
But for business it was a bad day. Dubai's 1.2 million
residents could have lost in excess of Dh268.46 million
in potential business.
Dubai's gross domestic product reached Dh97.98 billion
last year, which averages Dh268.46 million a day. This
translates to a Dh11.18 million hourly loss in GDP.
Dubai's share market cancelled deals and suspended trading
shortly after opening yesterday as communications between
investors and brokers snapped. [...]
The impact
Emergency: An alert city
saves the day with roads remaining calm
Business loss: Outage could
cost millions of dirhams
Airport: Passengers in long
wait for some flights
Services: Motorists queue
up at petrol stations while ATMsfail to work |
LUXEMBOURG, June 9
(AFP) - French President Jacques Chirac on Thursday called
on Britain to "make a gesture of solidarity"
over its European Union budget rebate ahead of an EU summit
next week.
Chirac made the appeal in Luxembourg, after a meeting
with that country's prime minister, Jean-Claude Juncker,
who currently holds the rotating EU presidency.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair on Wednesday bluntly
ruled out any negotiation over the EUR 4.6 billion (USD
5.7 billion) annual rebate, setting the scene for a feud
between him and Chirac at the summit.
The gathering of EU heads of state and government is
to take place in Brussels June 16-17, just before Britain
takes over the six-month EU presidency on July 1.
Many taking part - especially Chirac - hope it will show
a united face for the 25-state bloc in the wake of embarrassing
'no' results in referenda in France and the Netherlands
in the past two weeks on whether to adopt an EU constitution.
"The time has come for our British friends to understand
that they must now make a gesture of solidarity"
at the summit, Chirac told journalists.
However he excluded any challenge to a Franco-German
deal on the EU budget's biggest outlay: the Common Agricultural
Policy, which greatly benefits France's farmers.
"We cannot accept any reduction whatsoever of the
direct aids to our farmers," he said. The CAP, as
it is known, is to remain as it is until 2012 under the
deal, which was struck in 2002 much to the anger of Blair.
Chirac also said he wanted to see the ratification process
of the EU constitution continue across Europe, despite
his country's rejection of it. Blair said Monday he had
suspended plans to hold a referendum in Britain on the
issue. Theoretically, it requires approval from all 25
EU member states before it can come into effect. |
KARLSRUHE, Germany - Germany's
federal appeal court has ordered the acquittal of a
Moroccan student, Abdelghani Mzoudi, who was accused
of involvement in the September 11, 2001 attacks.
Mzoudi, 32, had been tried in Hamburg in 2003 but his
trial collapsed.
The appeals court on Thursday rejected an appeal from
federal prosecutors for a new trial, citing
a lack of evidence.
The court therefore confirmed the judgement of the
Hamburg appeals court which acquitted Mzoudi in February
2004.
After the verdict, the interior ministry
of Hamburg announced that Mzoudi had 14 days to leave
Germany, although he can appeal against this decision.
Hamburg, a northern port city, was one of the planning
nerve centres of the suicide plane attacks on the World
Trade Center and the
Pentagon which killed around 3,000 people.
Prosecutors had claimed Mzoudi was part of the 'Hamburg
cell' run by Al-Qaeda and called for him to receive
a 15-year jail sentence.
Another Moroccan, Mounir El Motassadeq, is currently
in the middle of a retrial on charges of assisting the
attackers which is being held in Hamburg.
Motassadeq denies having any knowledge of the planning
for the attacks. |
MADRID - An explosion occurred
close to the entrance to Zaragoza airport in northeastern
Spain but there were no casualties, airport officials
said amid reports that the blast followed a warning
attributed to the armed Basque separatist group ETA.
The Basque newspaper Gara said it had receiving a phone
call purporting to be from ETA and warning of a blast
before the incident occurred, just before midday.
Airport officials said there were no injuries in the
explosion, which occurred some 300 metres (yards) from
the airport terminal. |
IOWA CITY -- The shaky, amateurish
video shows everything in graphic detail: Four masked
people break into darkened university labs, pour toxic
chemicals onto computers and stacks of files, and release
hundreds of research rats and mice. They spray-paint
walls with slogans such as "Science not Sadism"
and "Free the Animals."
The November break-in at the University of Iowa's
Spence Laboratories--an act for which there have been
no arrests but for which the group Animal Liberation
Front, or ALF, has claimed responsibility--is characterized
by university and law-enforcement officials as terrorism.
The incident has made the University of Iowa, a school
in the heart of one of America's most farm-centered,
meat-producing states, ground zero in a national battleground
over animal-based research at taxpayer-funded institutions.
At the University of Wisconsin-Madison,
animal-rights activists are protesting research getting
under way that uses pigs to measure the impact of police
stun guns. No violent incidents have been reported
in Madison, but officials there have increased security
at research buildings.
Animal research labs have been targeted at the University
of Minnesota, the University of California, San Francisco,
Western Washington University and Louisiana State University.
And last month in Washington, John
Lewis, the FBI's deputy assistant director for counterterrorism,
told a Senate committee that animal-rights and environmental
activists resorting to arson and explosives are the
nation's top domestic terrorism threat.
In Iowa City, the break-in has unnerved the research
community.
"All the people who work in animal labs are now
worried about the security of their labs and of themselves
and their families," said Joseph Kearney, the associate
dean for research at the University of Iowa's College
of Liberal Arts and Sciences.
"The actions of some of these groups who target
our researchers and our facilities are no longer a nuisance,"
he said. "It is no longer vandalism. It is terrorism."
[...] |
|
Gregory
Despres, 22, now in jail in Massachusetts, faces
murder charges in New Brunswick. |
BOSTON—On April 25, Gregory Despres arrived at
the U.S.-Canadian border crossing at Calais, Me., carrying
a homemade sword, a hatchet, a knife, brass knuckles
and a chainsaw stained with what appeared to be blood.
U.S. customs agents confiscated the weapons and fingerprinted
Despres.
Then they let him into the United States.
The following day, a gruesome scene was discovered
in Despres' hometown of Minto, N.B.: The decapitated
body of a 74-year-old country musician named Frederick
Fulton was found on Fulton's kitchen floor. His head
was in a pillowcase under a kitchen table. His common-law
wife, 70-year-old Veronica Decarie, was discovered stabbed
to death in a bedroom.
Despres, 22, immediately became a suspect because
of a history of violence between him and his neighbours,
and he was arrested April 27 after police in Massachusetts
saw him wandering down a highway in a sweatshirt with
red and brown stains. He is now in jail in Massachusetts
on murder charges, awaiting an extradition hearing next
month.
Bill Anthony, a spokesperson for U.S. Customs and
Border Protection, said the Canada-born Despres could
not be detained because he is a naturalized U.S. citizen
and was not wanted on any criminal charges on the day
in question.
Anthony said Despres was questioned for two hours
before he was released. During that time, he said, customs
agents employed "every conceivable method"
to check for warrants or see if Despres had broken any
laws in trying to re-enter the country.
"Nobody asked us to detain him," Anthony
said. "Being bizarre is
not a reason to keep somebody out of this country or
lock them up. ... We are governed by laws and
regulations, and he did not violate any regulations."
[...] |
Two people accused of murdering
their children are due to be arraigned Thursday, the
start of what could be long and complex prosecutions.
But even at this early stage, their cases have fallen
into a familiar pattern.
Tonya Vasilev, a Sunday school teacher from Hoffman
Estates whom friends and relatives describe as a loving
mother, allegedly stabbed each of her two young children
more than 200 times to save them from imagined abuse.
Her lawyers say they will pursue an insanity defense.
Jerry Hobbs, an ex-convict whose rap sheet includes
several violent crimes, is charged with slaying his
8-year-old daughter and her 9-year-old friend in Zion
during a sudden rage over his child's disobedience.
His attorney says it's too soon to map out a court strategy.
The murder of a child by a parent is rare, but when
it happens, legal experts say, a stereotype usually
takes hold: Mothers are thought to kill in the grip
of madness, fathers in a spasm of anger.
"Mothers are seen clearly as the protector, so
when [a child is killed], the assumption that many jurors
have is that there's something wrong with mom,"
said Robert Hirschhorn, a Texas jury consultant who
has researched child murder. "Whereas when the
same terrible thing goes on and the dad's accused, the
dad is bad, evil."
Some researchers have found that fathers are more
likely to serve prison time or be executed for the slaying
of their children, while mothers more often receive
a stint in a mental hospital.
Others, however, say the picture is more complicated.
Fathers tend to use more violent means to kill their
children, are more likely to murder a spouse along with
the children and are less often diagnosed with a mental
illness--factors that can play into how their crimes
are perceived and punished. [...] |
The theme of the person
awaking from a deep sleep or coma to find a world utterly
changed is a popular one in science fiction. From John
Wyndham's book The Day of The Triffids through
The Omega Man to the recent film 28 Days
Later, the trope of the man arising from his hospital
bed to find that nothing is as it was has become well-worn.
That's fine - as long as it remains just a story. But
if - when - a flu pandemic comes, and millions of people
die around the world over a period of months, the reality
will be one of two alternatives. It's either going to
be like those films, with videoconferencing suddenly all
the rage, local farm produce making a big profit, empty
supermarket shelves (you have to ship the oil, and distribute
the fuel, but can the Armed Forces really do all that?),
tumbleweed blowing in the streets, a medieval attitude
to anyone not from "around here".
Or else governments will impose
a police state that will make all the ID cards and airport
checks look like a tea party. You'd not be allowed to
move anywhere without showing off a vaccination certificate.
(Sure, you'd get those on the black market, and they'd
cost more than £300, but would you really want them?
If you're not vaccinated would you really want to travel
among people who might be carriers?) Or it might be both
at once.
One more thing. You might well be one of those millions
who die in such a pandemic. If you travel to work on public
transport; if colleagues in your company travel by air
to Asia; if you're travelling abroad through a busy airport.
You'll probably touch someone or share air with someone
who's infected. The premise of Terry Gilliam's Twelve
Monkeys will become reality.
You may think this is overblown. But
discussion of the possibility of a flu pandemic has fallen
out of the news. And as the security consultant Bruce
Schneier says: "One of the things I routinely tell
people is that if it's in the news, don't worry about
it. By definition, 'news' means that it hardly ever happens.
If a risk is in the news, then it's probably not worth
worrying about. When something is no longer reported -
automobile deaths, domestic violence - when it's so common
that it's not news, then you should start worrying."
The risks posed by an outbreak of flu passed from chickens
in the Far East, in coutries such as Vietnam and Thailand,
burst into the news in February. But now they've passed
out of the news. Since then we've had more important things,
like the Crazy Frog ringtone, to concern us.
Time to worry. And the scientists are. In fact, they're
edgier than I've seen them since the BSE outbreak was
in its earliest days and people were wondering if it might
pass to humans. Quite a few scientists stopped eating
beef at that point. Oh, you didn't know?
Now, their reaction is to write papers and watch what's
happening, very closely. If you read the scientific journals
(we do, so you don't have to) the articles are piling
up. Last week the journal Nature pulled together
an entire online
resource on the threat of avian flu.
That's the trouble with scientists.
They get an idea into their heads - CFCs and ozone, carbon
dioxide emissions and the greenhouse effect, the transmission
of BSE to other species such as humans - and they worry
away at it until they determine what the answer and the
mechanism is.
Here's what's they're worrying about now. The First World
War killed seven million people. But the strain of flu
that followed it - incubated, experts reckon, in pigs
that were kept near the front lines to help feed the troops
- killed up to 100 million, helped by the movement of
troops returning home from the war.
Pandemics come around, on average,
about every 70 years or so. There were small ones
in 1957 and 1968/9, when "Hong Kong flu" - strain
H1N1 - spread around the world, and one million died.
That was tiny by pandemic standards. The
scientists reckon we're overdue for an infectious, fatal
strain of flu, one which can pass from human to human
by the usual methods - sneezing or contact.
There's already a deadly strain of flu around - "chicken
flu", better known to the scientists by the strain
of flu virus that causes it: H5N1. But it only passes
from chickens to humans, not from from person to person.
If it could do that, it would have the potential to turn
pandemic.
But maybe it already can. There have already been a couple
of cases of deaths from H5N1 where the only
logical pathway is human-to-human. The UK government
announced in February that it will buy in thousands of
doses of Tamiflu as part of the UK
Influenza Pandemic Contingency Plan (PDF, 160kB).
Too bad - the latest
results (reported by New Scientist; limited-time
free access) suggest that Tamiflu isn't effective against
H5N1. And anyway, New Scientist reports, the UK's order
for 14.6 million five-day courses of Tamiflu treatment
will take its patent owners Roche two years to fulfil.
The company is still trying to develop ways to synthesise
it from scratch.
The consequences of a really big, fatal flu epidemic
on modern society are hard to imagine, partly because
they're so enormous. Air passengers would be the first
vector of infection, followed by the people who travelled
with them in the train or Underground train or coach from
the airport, followed by the family and friends of those
people. Give it a few days and people would be falling
ill, then over the next weeks dying.
If the strain is new and unexpected, there wouldn't be
time to produce enough vaccine to treat it. According
to a New England Journal of Medicine article by Dr Michael
Osterholm of the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis
- who is also director of the Center for Infectious Disease
Research and Policy - titled "Preparing
for the Next Pandemic", the 1950s-era methods
of producing vaccines means we would need (ironically
enough) one chicken egg per person to produce the vaccine,
plus six months to culture it.
"The global economy would come to a halt, and since
we could not expect appropriate vaccines to be available
for many months and we have very limited stockpiles of
antiviral drugs, we would be facing a 1918-like scenario,"
notes Dr Osterholm, who calculates that given current
technology, we could vaccinate about 500 million people,
tops - about 14 per cent of the world population.
Of course, most of those will be in the developed world.
But are you sure you'd be one? Are you in the Armed Forces?
Do you or your business count as an essential service?
If you're not involved with the electricity, water, fuel
distribution, phone or gas industries, then probably not.
"And owing to our global 'just-in-time delivery'
economy, we would have no surge capacity for health care,
food supplies, and many other products and services,"
Dr Osterholm adds.
Let's have some more numbers from Dr Osterholm, just
to encourage you. He writes: "It is sobering to realize
that in 1968, when the most recent influenza pandemic
occurred, the virus emerged in a China that had a human
population of 790 million, a pig population of 5.2 million,
and a poultry population of 12.3 million; today, these
populations number 1.3 billion, 508 million, and 13 billion,
respectively. Similar changes have occurred in the human
and animal populations of other Asian countries, creating
an incredible mixing vessel for viruses. Given this reality,
as well as the exponential growth in foreign travel during
the past 50 years, we must accept that a pandemic is coming
- although whether it will be caused by H5N1 or by another
novel strain remains to be seen."
All this has been noted by virologists and disease experts
around the world. But what can we do? For one thing, listen
to what they're saying, and put some pressure on the politicians
who are ignoring this threat, in the hope it will go away.
Climate change may be a greater
threat than terrorism, but a flu pandemic is a more
immediate threat than either.
Or, as Canada's deputy chief public health officer, Dr
Paul Gully, put it to the Toronto
Star: "Frankly the crisis could for all we know
have started last night in some village in Southeast Asia.
We don't have any time to waste and even if we did have
some time, the kinds of things we need to do will take
years. Right now, the best we can do is try to survive
it. We need a Manhattan Project yesterday."
Let's hope they got started. Now, where's the number
of that forger for my vaccination certificate? |
A study of infants in intensive
care finds a substance used in medical supplies that
causes testicular damage in animals.
A Harvard study of babies in hospital intensive care
units has found new evidence of high levels of a hormone-altering
chemical in newborns treated with plastic medical devices.
Some intravenous lines, blood bags, feeding tubes
and a variety of other medical equipment contain the
chemical, a phthalate called DEHP, which is widely used
to make vinyl soft and flexible. In a study conducted
at two hospitals in the Boston area, babies
undergoing the most intensive care with the plastic
devices, particularly endotracheal tubes and umbilical
vein catheters, had five times more DEHP in their bodies
than babies who were not treated with them.
The findings add to a growing body of research that
has found that phthalates, also used in cosmetics, are
ubiquitous in human bodies and has raised questions
about their safety, particularly for baby boys. [...] |
Alien
thinking |
Wednesday, 8 June, 2005, 14:17
GMT 15:17 UK
By Angela Hind |
Not many scientists are prepared
to take tales of alien abduction seriously, but John
Mack, a Harvard professor who was killed in a road accident
in north London last year, did. Ten years on from a
row which nearly lost him his job, hundreds of people
who claim they were abducted still revere him.
Professor John E Mack was an eminent Harvard psychiatrist,
psychoanalyst and Pulitzer Prize winner whose clinical
work had focused on explorations of dreams, nightmares
and adolescent suicide.
Then, in 1990, he turned the academic community upside
down because he wanted to publish his research in which
he said that people who claimed they had been abducted
by aliens, were not crazy at all. Their experiences,
he said, were genuine.
They were not mentally ill or delusional, he said,
and it was the responsibility of academicians and psychiatrists
not only to take what they said seriously, but to try
to understand exactly what that experience was. And
if reality as we know it was unable to take these experiences
into serious consideration then what was needed was
a change in our perception of reality.Professor John
E Mack: Turned academic community upside down
"What are the other possibilities?" said
Mack. "Dreams, for instance, do not behave like
that. They are highly individual depending on what's
going on in your sub-conscious at the time.
"I would never say, yes, there are aliens taking
people. [But] I would say there is a compelling powerful
phenomenon here that I can't account for in any other
way, that's mysterious. Yet I can't know what it is
but it seems to me that it invites a deeper, further
inquiry."
Lifeline
For many people who claimed they had been abducted,
John Mack was a lifeline. He worked with more than 200
of them, including professionals, psychologists, writers,
students and business people.
Many had never told anyone else of their experiences
apart from Mack for fear of ridicule from colleagues,
friends and family. Here at last was a highly respected
psychiatrist who was not only prepared to listen - but
also take what they were saying seriously.
An abductee - or "experiencer" as they prefer
to be known - says that alien encounters begin most
commonly in their homes and at night. It can however
happen anytime, anywhere. They say they are unable to
move; they become extremely hot and then appear to float
through solid objects, which their logical mind tells
them can't be happening.
Usually the experiencer says they are accompanied
by one or two or more humanoid beings who guide them
to a ship. They are then subjected to procedures in
which instruments are used to penetrate virtually every
part of their bodies, including the nose, sinuses, eyes,
arms - abdomen and genitalia. Sperm samples are taken
and women have fertilised eggs implanted or removed.
Hybrid offspring
"Have I questioned my own sanity"? says
Peter Faust an experiencer and close friend of John
Mack's. "Absolutely, every day to a certain degree
because the majority of the world says you're crazy
for having these experiences. But if it was just me
who had contact with aliens, who had intimate experience
with female aliens and producing hybrid offspring, I
would say I'm certifiable, put me away, I'm crazy.
"And that's how I felt when I initially had these
experiences. My wife thought I'd lost it. But then I
began to look at the experience outside myself and realised
that hundreds if not thousands of people reported that
exact same experience. And that gave me sanity. That
gave me hope. I knew I couldn't be fantasising this."
The whole experience is often accompanied by a change
in the experiencer's understanding of humanity's place
in the universe. And it was this that forced Mack to
question who we are in the deepest and broadest sense.
"I have come to realise this abduction phenomenon
forces us, if we permit ourselves to take it seriously,
to re-examine our perception of human identity - to
look at who we are from a cosmic perspective,"
he said.
Extraordinary work
In 1990 John Mack's book Abduction: Human Encounters
with Aliens was published. It shot to the top of the
best sellers list and John Mack appeared on radio and
television programmes. Harvard decided enough was enough.
Mack was sent a letter informing him that there was
to be an inquiry into his research on alien abductions.
It was the first time in Harvard's history that a tenured
professor was subjected to such an investigation. John
Mack decided to fight back and hired a lawyer, Eric
MacLeish.
"It was appalling that John had to go through
this," says MacLeish now. "And we made it
clear that if we were to have a full blown trial here,
then we were going to have a very public trial and call
on everyone who worked with John - all of whom had nothing
but praise for his extraordinary work and dedication
to his patients - and I don't think that's what Harvard
had in mind at all."
There followed 14 months of stressful and bitter negotiations.
"They tried to criticise me, silence me - by saying
that by supporting the truth of what these people were
experiencing, possibly I was confirming them in a distortion,
or a delusion. So instead of being a good psychiatrist
and curing them, I was by taking them seriously, confirming
them in a delusion and harming them," said Mack.
The inquiry made front page headlines all over the world
and eventually Harvard dropped the case and a statement
was issued reaffirming Mack's academic freedom to study
what he wished and concluding that he "remains
a member in good standing of the Harvard Faculty of
Medicine".
He continued to work and write. But Mack was killed
in a car collision last year in north London after leaving
a Tube station. He was visiting the city to deliver
a lecture on the subject which had won him the Pulitzer
Prize in 1977, T E Lawrence.
But Mack's work lives on with an institute which now
bears his name; the hundreds of people who count themselves
in "the experiencer community" still hold
him in particular affection.
His search for an expanded notion of reality, which
allows for experiences that might not fit traditional
perceptions and worldviews, is one they, at least, will
be hoping continues. |
London: A British man wanted in
the United States for what US authorities have called
the largest hacking effort against American military
networks has been freed on bail by Bow Street Magistrates
Court.
The court heard allegations on Wednesday that Gary
McKinnon, 39, illegally accessed 97 US Government computers
between February 2001 and March 2002, causing $US700,000
($916,000) worth of damage.
Police arrested the former computer engineer, known
online as Solo, at his home in north London on Tuesday.
Lawyers for McKinnon, who was first arrested three
years ago, said he would vigorously resist extradition
to the US.
His solicitor, Karen Todner, confirmed a published
report that McKinnon was motivated by a desire to expose
the ease with which a civilian could breach government
computer systems, and by a strong
conviction that the US Government was concealing evidence
of UFOs.
A lawyer acting for the US Government, Janet Boston,
told the court McKinnon had installed unauthorised software
on computers in the US army, navy and air force, NASA
and the Department of Defence that allowed him to "completely
control the computers".
"On one instance, the US Army's military district
of Washington network became inoperable," Ms Boston
said.
|
CHICAGO (AP) - A Chicago
woman allowed her 11-year-old son to drive the family's
minivan to his elementary school, where the boy crashed
the vehicle near a group of children.
No one was hurt. The boy, however, was expelled from
school and both he and his mother were ordered to traffic
court later this month. |
Joggers are today being warned
about violent crows in London parks after an attack
left a man bloodied and needing hospital treatment.
Justin Keay was swooped on by two crows in what experts
have called a severe case of "mobbing" - where
two or more birds gang up on an assumed predator to
keep them away from their young.
Now other runners are being told to stay well away
from fledgling crows to avoid further attacks.
Mr Keay today told how he was running
his usual route through Battersea Park when the birds
swooped on him. The crows clawed his head with their
talons and pecked at him furiously.
With blood gushing from his head, he had to fight for
several minutes before they would stop attack - reminiscent
of the Alfred Hitchcock film The Birds.
Mr Keay, 44, who was attacked at lunchtime on Wednesday,
said: "These two massive crows just swooped down
on me. I hit them but they wouldn't get off my head.
"They kept on at me and I kept hitting them until
I noticed blood was pouring down my neck. My T-shirt
was drenched with blood."
Mr Keay was so shaken by his ordeal he went to the
park police, who gave him antiseptic wipes and sent
him to Chelsea and Westminster hospital for an anti-tetanus
injection. "They said it was the first occasion
they'd heard of anyone being injured," he said.
The father of two, from Battersea Church Row, said
he jogs past the same crows every day.
"They're big and look really menacing," he
said. "They have swooped
at me before but this was totally different. I had to
hit them off me."
Although it is extremely unusual for crows to attack
humans, joggers are now being warned to be extra vigilant.
[...] |
Mexico City - Western
Mexico's Volcano of Fire erupted anew with a loud rumble
late on Thursday, unleashing a column of ash that shot
high in the air but without enough force to reach nearby
communities.
The explosion inside the crater of the 3 820-metre volcano,
occurred shortly after 22:00, but it was not immediately
clear how intense it was.
Straddling the border of Colima and Jalisco states, the
Volcano of Fire has unleashed six spectacular eruptions
in the past three weeks, the strongest of which came on
Monday night, when it hurled glowing lava five kilometres
into the air and showering the nearby city of Colima with
ash.
Melchor Ursua, civil defence director for Colima state,
said Monday's eruption did not send ash raining down on
Colima city and witnesses said the skies above communities
closer to the volcano also remained clear.
"It's not causing any problems, which is the main
thing," Ursua said.
After Monday's eruption, which officials called the strongest
in two decades, officials in Jalisco announced a voluntary
evacuation of three villages nearest the crater and people
in other towns were urged to be ready to move.
The off-limits zone extended at least 7.5 kilometres
around the crater and an alert zone was in effect for
11.5 kilometres.
The first eruption seen by settlers came in 1560. The
volcanic system is considered to be among the most active
and potentially the most destructive of the volcanoes
in Mexico.
Seismologists say the increasing frequency of the eruptions
and their intensity signalled the volcano was returning
to an explosive stage like one that started in 1903 and
climaxed with a massive explosion 10 years later that
left a 2 640-metre-deep crater at the volcano's peak and
scattered ash on cities 385 kilometres away. |
Miami — Tropical Storm Arlene
developed Thursday as the Atlantic hurricane season's
first named storm, edging closer to western Cuba and
prompting authorities in parts of battered Florida to
remind coastal residents to beware.
Arlene had maximum sustained winds of 64 kilometres
an hour after strengthening from a tropical depression
that formed Wednesday, the U.S. National Hurricane Center
in Miami said.
At 2 p.m. EDT, the storm's centre was about 250 kilometres
south-southeast of the western tip of Cuba. It was moving
north about 13 km/h, and this motion could bring the
storm's centre near western Cuba as early as Thursday
night, forecasters said.
The large storm's wind and rain extended 250 kilometres
the north and east from its poorly organized centre,
meaning parts of the Florida Keys could start getting
rain later Thursday, forecasters said.
Arlene was expected to enter the Gulf of Mexico by
Friday, and residents from the Florida Panhandle to
Louisiana were told to keep an eye on the storm. [...]
|
VIENNA, Austria - It's nearly summertime
_ and the living is chilly across much of Europe.
Fresh snow fell Wednesday on parts of Austria _ so
much in some places that authorities closed roads to
cars without tire chains _ and temperatures dipped below
freezing in corners of Croatia and Scotland, fouling
moods and spoiling picnic plans.
The unseasonably cold June has even caused headaches
in Italy, a country that's normally balmy at this time
of year: Officials say cooler-than-usual temperatures
and hailstorms have inflicted millions of euros (dollars)
in damage on crops.
In agricultural areas near Verona in northeastern
Italy _ one of the hardest-hit areas _ between 30 and
40 percent of peaches and apples were lost after the
hail pummeled trees, according to Coldiretti, an Italian
farmers' association.
Heavy rains and strong winds flooded some of Rome's
cobblestone streets overnight, uprooting trees and forcing
authorities to close several roads to traffic. The gusts
continued Wednesday, rustling Pope Benedict XVI's white
vestments during his open-air audience in St. Peter's
Square and forcing the pontiff to take off his skullcap.
Parts of Austria's Alps were blanketed with up to
40 centimeters (nearly 16 inches) of fresh snow early
Wednesday, and the country's automobile club said numerous
tow trucks were called to aid stranded motorists. No
injuries were reported.
Although the snow was limited to higher elevations,
temperatures have dipped to 7 degrees Celsius (44 degrees
Fahrenheit) in Vienna. Austrians call the late spring
chill "Schafskaelte," or sheep's cold _ invoking
the image of sheep shivering in the fields after being
shorn of their first wool of the season.
To be sure, not all of Europe was chilly. In three
of Portugal's northern districts, firefighters were
on maximum alert Wednesday as a heat wave sharply increased
the risk of forest fires.
But in Croatia, a few centimeters (inches) of snow
fell overnight on the southern mountain of Biokovo,
where the mercury plunged to minus-3 degrees C (37 degrees
F) Wednesday morning, officials said.
Strong winds that reached 100 kilometers per hour
(60 miles per hour) in the area around the town of Makarska
on the southern coast prompted police to warn drivers
and cancel ferry service between the town and the popular
resort island of Brac.
Rescue teams in southern Croatia were searching for
a German tourist who fell off his sailboat Tuesday when
it got caught in storm at sea. They managed to save
his wife. A surfer also went missing in northern Croatia
after heavy winds whipped up waves.
It's been a far colder than usual in parts of Germany,
where overnight temperatures recently have dropped as
low as 2 degrees C (35 degrees F) in the east, and in
neighboring Switzerland, where high winds swept away
several tents at a fairground last weekend.
Many parts of Britain also have had an unusually cold
June.
Temperatures fell below freezing on Tuesday, with
thermometers in the village of Aboyne, Scotland, recording
minus-1.1 degrees C (30 degrees F), the Meteorological
Office said, predicting more chilly nights this week.
The Royal Air Force base at Benson in Oxfordshire
notched its lowest June temperature ever at minus-0.3
degrees C (31.46 degrees F) on Tuesday, beating the
zero degrees C (32 degrees F) mark recorded in June
1962. |
When relatives of Vivian Shulman
Lieberman went to visit her final resting place in a
Houston mausoleum one year ago today, they discovered
that the cedar chest containing her ashes was missing.
In its place, behind the locked, glass
door of Lieberman's niche in Congregation Beth Israel's
mausoleum, was a can of sour-cream-and-onion potato
chips.
The ashes are still missing, says Philip Hilder, an
attorney for Lieberman's two daughters.
"We have been devastated," Marcelle Lieberman
said this week. "We hope we will be able to find
her remains before we die, to give us closure of some
sort."
The strange disappearance led Marcelle Lieberman and
her sister, Harriet Lieberman Mellow, to file a lawsuit
recently against Congregation Beth Israel and two funeral
businesses.
Officials with the synagogue and the two companies
deny responsibility. [...] |
The resident of a Russian village
has hammered a nail into his own head. While alone at
home 37-year-old Yuri Dedov took a hammer and drove
a 122-millimeter nail into his forehead all the way
down to the nailhead, Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper
wrote.
When Dedov's mother came home, she found her son had
a fever. Upon seen the nail in his head, she called
for an ambulance. Dedov was taken to hospital and operated
on. After the successful operation, he said that he
had heard a voice saying "Take a hammer and do it."
Neurosurgeon Yuri Tanvel, who operated on Dedov, said
a piece of iron had almost gone through the latter's
head and stopped near the eyeball. "If its trajectory
had been 15 degrees different, he would have died immediately.
As it is, no vital function was violated. The main thing
is the nail did not reach the brain," the paper quoted
the doctor as saying.
In April, doctors in the Voronezh region pulled a 35
cm knife out of a man's head who lived to tell the tale.
The patient's friend had plunged the knife into his
eye. |
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