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Jupiter, Nostradamus, Edgar Cayce, and the Return of the Mongols
- Laura Knight-Jadczyk
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Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part
8, Part
9, Part
10, Part 11, Part 12, Part 13
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Picture
of the Day
Cumulonimbus
- April 30, 2004
©2004 Pierre-Paul
Feyte
The
final years of civilization as we know it promise to be exciting. In the
years since Bush and cronies stole the last US presidential election,
the road to chaos has been steamrollered and paved. Down that road at
full throttle have come, internally in the US, the Patriot Act, which
has abridged many rights that Americans had considered as fundamental
and a theocracy where the Constitution of the United States takes a back
seat to the Bible. In foreign policy, well, it amounts to do as we say
or we'll bomb the hell out of you or use trade sanctions.
Maneuvers
to impose full control over civilian populations are being implemented.
The clampdown on free expression has started. Of course, all of these
draconian measures are being imposed under the name of defending liberties.
And
clearly, if they are going to want to impose as close to total control
as possible, they are going to need to restrict the movement of money
and the means people have to earn a living outside of "accepted channels."
We
use the service PayPal to collect payment on orders of our books, cups,
and t-shirts, as well as a means of accepting donations from people who
wish to support our work.
The
following arrived yesterday.
Date sent:
Tue, 04 May 2004 06:02:43 -0700
From: service@intl.paypal.com
To: ***@cassiopaea.com
Subject: Notification of Limited Account Access
Dear Arkadiusz
Jadczyk,
We regret
to inform you that your PayPal account has been limited for violating
the Offensive Material Acceptable Use Policy. PayPal, at its sole discretion,
prohibits the sale of items which graphically portray violence or victims
of violence, and lack substantial social, artistic or political value.
The policy
related to this issue is listed here
In order
to reinstate your account, please either remove the graphic violence
or products, or remove PayPal as a payment option from your website.
Then, complete the on-line check list that appears on your PayPal account.
Please note that disagreement with the Acceptable Use Policy is not
an appeal.
Please
understand that enforcement of our policies is not reflective of seller
status or volume of sales. This action has been taken only after careful
consideration of the severity of the violation, or your accounts history
of previous offenses for this violation. We have reviewed each offense
to verify that the correct action was taken by PayPal at the time.
If you
have any questions, please email us at aup@paypal.com
We thank
you in advance for your cooperation.
Sincerely,
PayPal Compliance Department
Please
do not reply to this e-mail. Mail sent to this address cannot be answered.
All of the information necessary to restore your account access is available
on the PayPal website. For assistance, log in to your PayPal account
and choose the "Help" link in the header of any page.
PayPal
Email ID PP519
PayPal
(Europe) Limited is authorized and regulated by the Financial Services
Authority in the United Kingdom as an electronic money institution.
In
other words, PayPal has frozen our account.
Their
excuse: their policy "prohibits the sale of items which graphically
portray violence or victims of violence, and lack substantial social,
artistic or political value."
We
tried contacting PayPal to find out which of our products or pages was
the offensive item. They were unable to give us the answer. The woman
who answered the phone read out the same blurb as in the email. When we
asked for the specific items or pages, she informed us that she was not
privy to that information. She told us to send in the appropriate form
on their web site.
This
we did, but having now done some research on PayPal, we are not confident
that we shall we be hearing from them any time soon. Apparently, PayPal
freezes the accounts of 2000 of its customers every day, as this story
from a disgruntled former PayPal user discusses:
Knoxville,
TN - MyStockForum.Com Declares Paypal.com the Next Enron: Files Law
Suit Against Paypal
PayPal
Inc. an eBay owned company is being sued by Maximus Illuminati a.k.a.
MyStockForum.Com for fraudulently suspension of PayPal account with
close to $8000.00 in it. But Mr. Illuminati is only one of hundreds
of thousands of people who have been and are being victimized by PayPal.
(PRWEB)
March 4, 2004 -- PayPal Inc. an eBay owned company is being sued by
Maximus Illuminati a.k.a. MyStockForum.Com for fraudulently suspension
of PayPal account with close to $8000.00 in it. But Mr. Illuminati is
only one of hundreds of thousands of people who have been and are being
victimized by PayPal. PayPal has admitted that they freeze about 2000
accounts per day. The reason they do it, the real reason is because
PayPal is running the greatest scam of all time.
Most of
the accounts it freezes have less than $100 in them and because PayPal
makes it a complete nightmare to have the account unfrozen most people
give up. This in turn brings in millions of dollars per year for PayPal
and on top of that they make huge interest off the money they freeze.
However,
a Judge in California has ruled Paypal's user agreement illegal and
he ruled that every member can sue PayPal in small claim court in the
city and county where they live. Now, with Mr. Illuminati having launched
PayPalAlert.Com
victims have a place to go for support and advice on how to proceed.
A
list of stories of peoples's problems with PayPal can be found here.
PayPal
appears to hide itself from customer complaints through its web site.
The people who answer their phones claim to know nothing, repeating word
for word the content of email messages. They refer customers to the web-based
forms on the site, forms that generate auto-responder messages that are
no help and offer no concrete information on how to resolve problems.
When contact is made with a human, you are asked to furnish reams of faxes,
faxes that have a tendency to go missing, requiring the faxing of more
faxes. The entire process is designed to discourage people from proceeding.
According
to one former employee, their policy of freezing accounts, as well
as the system of lost faxes and generalized incompetence, was a company
decision taken to combat the loss on fraudulent transactions. Rather than
find the real culprits, they get the money from honest customers:
So an "alternate
strategy" for offsetting the charge-back losses slowly evolved
at PP. It's the perfect scheme really; since PP can't usually catch
the scammers and dosen't [sic] want to loose [sic] customer base by
making things more stringent to start with- they decided to simply re-coup
their chargebacks from the pockets (and accounts) of good, solid people
under the easily-defensible and impossible-to-criticize guize of "Fraud
Prevention and Enforcement".. Simply put, if you're a seller and
somebody pays you with a stolen credit card, you're targeted by PP security
and might very well have your account siezed, "investigated",
closed- and the money retained by PP. (Yes... they simply "add"
it to their revenues and spend it like any other income. You basically
gave them permission to do this under the "terms and conditions"
you originally agreed to. No, I KNOW you didn't really read it, but
I bet you will the next time!). Even if the person paying you has NOT
used a stolen credit card, he could have been been flagged by PP as
"somebody to keep an eye on" for any one of numerous reasons.
If he does business with YOU, especially multiple times- you're frozen.
OCCASIONALLY some lucky soul will complain about the siezure, and when
the case is "investigated" by PP he is "cleared"
and the money unfrozen. This good fortune has nothing to do with an
actual "investigation" (there aren't any, really). Pay-Pal
WILL unfreeze a small percentage of the accounts (as a future defense
against a potential class action), so you MAY benefit from a simple
luck of the draw. See, if it ever comes down to a massive class-action
lawsuit, or even testimony before the SEC or other regulatory body,
PP wants to be able to stand up in court and say "But your honor,
we DON'T just freeze accounts and pocket the money. We really DO perform
a painstaking investigation. Here's the proof... look at all these people
who WERE suspected, but were then cleared by our "crack security
staff"! If this was really a scam, why would we have given all
of THIS this money back?"
I'm amused
by the posts that say, "But I've been a good customer of PP since
the beginning and have paid thousands in fees.... why would they have
done this to ME?" Let me answer that with a hypothetical question:
If you were an unregulated financial services company so embittered
by fraud losses that you, yourself, had completely lost whatever moral
compass you might have once possessed, what would YOU rather have: a
happy, content customer whos [sic] business might account for $5000
worth of fees over the next 10 years, or a person who's pissed off and
will NEVER do business with you again, BUT you've got his $5000 up-front,
TODAY- siezed directly out of his account with no appeal possible. Believe
me, it's a no-brainer to these people. They have sort of developed a
wierd [sic] corporate mindset wherein their past (and ongoing) victomization
[sic] at the hands of con-artists somehow gives them license to "pass
it along" to others. Think the E-Bay purchase will make it all
better? Guess again. If ANY company knows the reality of on-line schermes
and scams, it's E-Bay. While they certainly know that a nice chunk of
their fees come from people who ultimately turn out to be thieves (but
hey... their money is just as green as that of the honest folks) do
you think E-Bay wants to open THEMSELVES (or a subsidary company) up
to the same risks as their bidders are exposed to? No way.
We
have profiled the psychopathic
character of US culture. This case is but another example. Honest
customers are made to pay for the frauds. This payment doesn't come from
a small percentage placed on every transaction, rather, it comes from
stealing the entire accounts of those so lucky to be chosen.
So,
we have a corporation that operates on the principles of the psychopath.
The next step is to use them to close down dissident political activists
or anyone who is raising questions about the real character of our world.
Michael
Riviera at What
Really Happened had his PayPal account frozen a year ago. His discussion
of "what really happened" can be found on his PayPal
page.
Riviera
got his readers to write PayPal and complain and finally his account was
unfrozen. He then closed it. He found out that a large number of porn
sites use PayPal:
Now, as
an experiment, type the words "PayPal" and "Porno"
into any search engine. I used Google and got a list of hundreds of
pornography web sites that PayPal does not seem to have any qualms about
doing business with!
Due
to this pressure from What Really Happened readers, PayPal changed their
policy, although they said it was simply a business decision due to the
high number of fraudulent transactions that happened on porn sites.
In
March 2004, La Voz de
Aztlan received word from PayPal that their account was being
closed because of "anti-Semitic" content. He sent the following
letter to his readers and subscribers:
Beware
of Zionist controlled PayPal
Los Angeles,
Alta California
March 13, 2004
Dear Readers
and Subscribers:
This morning
I had a telephone conversation with a representative of PayPal concerning
the sudden closure of La Voz de Aztlan's account that we were using
to receive credit card donations. The young lady at PayPal said that
the account was closed because our news and information service is antisemitic.
We had been warned by hateful Zionists that they would do everything
possible to shut our website down.
Our readership
is well aware of the constant harassment and attempts by Zionists as
well as by Zionist organizations such as the ADL of B'nai B'rith and
the Los Angeles based Wiesenthal Center to permanently silence us. These
Zionists have sent us a constant barrage of threats through e-mail,
U.S. mail and by telephone. They have created serious trouble for us
with our Internet Service Providers and with companies we contract with
to host our website. Recently, they also sabotaged Verizon Telephone
Company equipment that resulted in knocking us offline for days. This
time the Zionist have issued orders to PayPal to close our account resulting
in our loss of a significant source of funds we utilize to remain online.
La Voz
de Aztlan must be quite a threat to the Zionists for them to go to such
extents to destroy us. We are deeply sympathetic of Mr. Mel Gibson for
the immense tribulations he went through due to his film "The Passion
of the Christ". The same Zionists that went after Gibson and his
father are the same ones that are going after La Voz de Aztlan. Shame
on PayPal for bowing down to these sinister characters.
Readers
and subscribers of La Voz de Aztlan, we need your help now more than
ever. Don't allow these censors of the truth get their way. They want
"Freedom of the Press" only for themselves. They seek to squash
anyone that questions their activities here and in Israel. The only
way now that we can receive your donations is through U.S. mail. Now
that the Zionists have cut us off from receiving funds through PayPal,
please send your donations to:
The Aztlan
Fund
P.O. Box 4282
Whittier, California 90607
Respectfully,
Hector
Carreon
Publisher
La Voz de Aztlan
Following
this letter, Mr. Carreon received hundreds of emails from readers recounting
their own problems. He did some more research and found out the following:
Beware
of Zionist controlled PayPal
Please
Note: Since I wrote and published the ... letter of warning concerning
PayPal, we have received hundreds of e-mails of similar or worst incidents
concerning their Enron like business practices. Before you decide to
use PayPal, I encourage you to do a little research on this Zionist
controlled company, which is actually owned by EBay Incorporated. San
Jose, Alta California based EBay is controlled by the Zionist Meg Whitman
who was recenlty forced to resign from the Board of Directors of Goldman
Sachs amid concerns over shares she received in hot initial public offerings
managed by Goldman. A controversy heated up in October when congressional
investigators disclosed that Meg Whitman received shares in more than
100 IPOs managed by Goldman since 1996 and quickly resold many of the
shares at a profit. Many users of PayPal have had their funds suddenly
frozen never to see them again. There are many websites attempting to
warn Internet merchants and consumers about PayPal. One of these is
here:
We
have not yet been able to verify any connections between Meg Whitman and
Jewish groups, other than her formerly sitting on the board of Goldman,
Sachs. But one does not need to be an outright Zionist these days to fall
prey to the "poor little us" routine perpetrated by the supporters
of Israel. We are not certain which of the two cases would be worse, that
she or EBay is supportive of or owned by Zionists, or that they are no
more so Zionist than any other company in the US. It has become de
rigeur to be worried about increasing anti-Semitism, ignoring the
important distinction between hatred of Jews and criticism of Israel because
of its genocide of the Palestinians.
In
either case, the cry of "anti-Semitism" carries more weight
than acts against Blacks or Moslems. Notice that when a Jewish cemetery
or Synagogue is attacked, it makes the front pages of the newspapers,
that the local politicians all step up and rant on and on about how horrible
it is. Then, see what happens if it is a Mosque that is attacked. Are
the reports equal in weight?
Regardless
of whether Whitman and EBay/PayPal are overtly Zionist, they are acting
at the behest of Zionism and Jewish supremacism. They are active participants
in the move to crush dissent against the foreign policy of the US.
The
Internet has become a powerful tool for those who wish to bypass the mainstream
media. It has permitted many individuals to find new means of livelihood
-- and here we do not mean the psychopaths and scammers. Obviously, it
cannot be permitted to continue in its present state. Moves such as PayPal's
freezing of accounts on sites that raise too many questions are part of
the plan to bring the Internet under control.
Other
anti-PayPal sites:
PayPalSucks
PayPalWarning.com
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here to comment on this commentary
With
thoughts of war very much in mind, the mainstream media focus of late
has been on what war can, and does do, to the people who have to wage
the bloody battle. With the battle of the photographs, staged or otherwise
, currently being waged, the British and American public are struggling
to accept the reality that their sons and daughters are both being brutalised
and doing the brutalising too. As history is forever repeating, a focus
on some soldiers who fought in the First World war seems timely.
The
responses of three soldiers, Seigfried Sasson, Robert Graves and Wilfred
Owen, may assist in honing attention on the humanity of the lambs now
being put to the slaughter in Iraq and other conflict zones around the
globe. The particular context for these three poets was fighting for England
during World War one, but what they experienced and their response to
it, could apply to any soldier anywhere in the world. All three men expressed
their experiences through poetry. During the slaughter of the First World
war reports from the war front were much more sanitised than those we
are currently subject to in the mainstream press. These three soldier
poets in no small way, helped to bring home the horrific reality of war
to a slumbering and blindly jingoistic British public.
Finally,
the soldier had a voice. Almost 90 years later, the written words of these
men resonate as a testament to the millennial long feeding cycle of fear
and pain now manifest under the guise of Operation Terror.
"I
AM making this statement as an act of willful defiance of military authority,
because I believe that the war is being deliberately prolonged by those
who have the power to end it.
I am a
soldier, convinced that I am acting on behalf of soldiers. I believe
that this war, upon which I entered as a war of defense and liberation,
has now become a war of aggression and conquest. I believe that the
purposes for which I and my fellow-soldiers entered upon this war should
have been so clearly stated as to have made it impossible to change
them, and that, had this been done, the objects which actuated us would
now be attainable by negotiation.
I have
seen and endured the sufferings of the troops, and I can no longer be
a party to prolong these sufferings for ends which I believe to be evil
and unjust.
I am not
protesting against the conduct of the war, but against the political
errors and insincerities for which the fighting men are being sacrificed.
On behalf
of those who are suffering now I make this protest against the deception
which is being practiced on them; also I believe that I may help to
destroy the callous complacence with which the majority of those at
home regard the continuance of agonies which they do not share, and
which they have not sufficient imagination to realize."
Siegfried
L. Sassoon...July 1917
Siegfried
Sassoon was born in Weirleigh, Kent, England on September 8, 1886 into
a leisurely society of country living. His father, a Sephardic Jew, and
mother a Catholic. His main interests were hunting and poetry. He enlisted
in the military just before the draft at the age of 28, and joined the
Royal Welch Fusiliers, where he met and befriended fellow poet, Robert
Graves. Like most soldiers, Sassoon joined the military thinking of war
as a noble enterprise. The loss of a brother and bitter experience in
battle made him think otherwise. After he made the above declaration,
the army had him declared temporarily insane.
During
a spell of convalescence in which he was treated for shell shock at Craiglockhart
Hospital in Edinburgh, Scotland he met and befriended the poet, Wilfred
Owen, who was being treated for the same ailment. Wilfred Owen, then an
unpublished writer, died a week before the end of the war, and Sassoon
worked as editor and publisher of his work, thus ensuring Owen's lasting
poetic legacy.
Anthem
for Doomed Youth
What passing-bells
for these who die as cattle?
Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisons.
No mockeries for them from prayers or bells,
Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs,-
The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;
And bugles calling for them from sad shires.
What candles may be held to speed them all?
Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes
Shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes.
The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall;
Their flowers the tenderness of silent minds,
And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.
Wilfred
Owen:
"My
subject is War, and the pity of War. The Poetry is in the pity."
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here to comment on this commentary
Powell:
Abuse Photos Send Horrible Image
By EDITH
M. LEDERER, Associated Press Writer
UNITED NATIONS
- U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell expressed concern Tuesday that
photographs of U.S. soldiers abusing Iraqi prisoners had sent a "horrible
image" of the U.S. military around the world.
But he urged
the international community to remember that a small number of soldiers
were responsible and he offered assurances that they would be brought
to justice and such "despicable" acts would never be repeated.
The photographs
allegedly showing Iraqis stripped naked, hooded and being tormented by
their U.S. captors were first broadcast on the CBS program "60 Minutes
II" and drew international outrage when beamed around the world,
especially from Muslim nations.
Their publication
has generated fears of a new wave of anti-Americanism, warnings from the
State Department, and concern that the U.S. standing abroad will be affected.
[…]
Comment:
And again, we must ask the question, who would benefit the most from a
new wave of anti-Americanism and Arab outrage engulfing the mid-east?
Who would benefit the most from a complete destabilization of the region?
Who could be brought down and who could rise?
"I'm
deeply concerned at the horrible image this has sent around the world,"
Powell said. "But at the same time, I want to remind the world that
it's a small number of troops who acted in an illegal, improper manner."
[…]
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Citizens
of Fallujah survey scattered city
Scores of Fallujans have ventured out to check the state of their city
after weeks of heavy fighting appeared to have ended with an agreement
struck between the US Marines and a group of former Iraqi Army soldiers.
"The
destruction is huge and it was beyond our imagination," 50-year-old
Abu Mohammed said yesterday as he stood near his destroyed house in the
al-Jolan district in the north-west of the city.
"Who
is going to compensate us after what happened?" said Daher Abu Maan,
a 40-year- old worker, who returned with his family to find that his house
was also completely destroyed.
"We
cannot start to rebuild again. We suffered over 12 years of UN sanctions
during Saddam Hussein's regime. We hoped that peace will prevail, but
instead we lost our houses and our hope again," he added.
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The
Parable of the Old Man and the Young
So Abram
rose, and clave the wood, and went,
And took the fire with him, and a knife.
And as they sojourned both of them together,
Isaac the first-born spake and said, My Father,
Behold the preparations, fire and iron,
But where the lamb for this burnt-offering?
Then Abram bound the youth with belts and strops,
And builded parapets and trenches there,
And stretched forth the knife to slay his son.
When lo! an angel called him out of heaven,
Saying, Lay not thy hand upon the lad,
Neither do anything to him. Behold,
A ram, caught in a thicket by its horns;
Offer the Ram of Pride instead of him.
But the
old man would not so, but slew his son,
And half the seed of Europe, one by one.
Wilfred
Owen
Furious
Iraqi slams US over his lengthy detention
Iraqi shopkeeper
Amjad Saffo claims that a US commander told him he would be held for just
two days when he was taken away for questioning in a US Army Humvee.
Four months
later, and after a spell in a prison hospital wing, he finally returned
home, furious over the way he had been treated. He is not surprised that
the US-led coalition has been engulfed by a prison abuse scandal.
[...] He
was in Abu Ghraib for several months, where he knew only that he was listed
as a "suspect", but said he was not interviewed once there until
he was released in early December.
"They
(the Americans) are not good people. They arrest people at random. It
was only after three months that my family knew where I was, and that
was by chance after I asked someone to deliver a message for me."[...]
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Telltale
Signs of Torture Lead Family to Demand Answers:
Wife, Daughters
Tell of Iraqi Man Discharged from U.S. Custody in Coma
Not all evidence
of military personnel mistreating Iraqis held in US custody come from
leaks within the American- and British-run detention facilities. In many
cases, such as that of Sadiq Zoman, 57, who last year entered US custody
healthy but left in a vegetative state, the story originates with family
members desperate to share their loved one’s story with anyone willing
to listen.
American
soldiers detained Zoman at his residence in Kirkuk on July 21, 2003 when
they raided the Zoman family home in search of weapons and, apparently,
to arrest Zoman himself.
More than
a month later, on August 23, US soldiers dropped Zoman off, already comatose,
at a hospital in Tikrit. Although he was unable to recount his story,
his body bore telltale signs of torture: what appear to be point burns
on his skin, bludgeon marks on the back of his head, a badly broken thumb,
electrical burns on the soles of his feet. Additionally, family members
say they found whip marks across his back and more electrical burns on
his genitalia.
[...] Rheem
Zoman, the 19 year-old daughter of Sadiq, spoke frankly about her father
and his condition. "I was horrified," she said of his bittersweet
return to his worried family. "He had whip marks all across his back
and electrical burn marks all over his body."
[...] The
Army has so far offered no explanation of why the Zoman home was raided
or the reason for Zoman’s capture.
Sadiq Zoman
remains completely unresponsive. His family cares for him in a stark home
nearly devoid of furnishings, situated in the Al-Dora neighborhood of
Baghdad. The family moved there from Kirkuk last fall in order to facilitate
better care and conditions for Zoman. The family has sold nearly everything
that remained after the Army raid to purchase food and medical supplies.
Entire rooms in their new Baghdad home are completely empty since nearly
all their furnishings have been sold off.
[...] The
family of Sadiq Zoman says they have received no explanation, nor any
compensation for his situation from either the US military or the US-run
Coalition Provisional Authority.
Major Aberle
said the 4th Infantry Division, now back at Fort Hood, Texas, maintained
that Iraqi detainees are treated well because of the need to establish
credibility among the Iraqi people. "Building the trust, building
the relationships between the Iraqis and coalition forces -- that is so
critical. When you have an instance of a detainee being allegedly abused
or treated improperly, that makes us no different than the former regime."
Daughter
Rheem stated, "My father is a good man who helped so many people
in our community. Why have they done this to him? Can you tell me? Everyone
who knows him can say that he did so many good things to help people."
With tears
in her eyes, Hashima Zoman added, "Is it fair for any man's family
to be made to suffer like this? Is it right that his daughters must see
him like this? Our lives will never be the same again, no matter what
happens."
Comment:
This family's cries are likely to be lost in the wind despite the media
coverage in the New Standard. With the accused 4th Infantry Division now
back in Texas, one wonders what state of mind the perpetrators of such
deeds are in, and are they wandering around the streets of the good ole
USA eating burgers like nothing happened?
The
article after the poem below below shows how the American military treats
its own battle weary soldiers. It begs an acknowledgement of and better
treatment for the soldiers who become mentally unstable as a result of
the insane business of war. Essentially it all seems to be a hush hush
scenario of 'patch em up and send em out again'. One could argue that
just getting into military uniform is a sign of insanity, but many still
believe it is a noble enterprise.
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Does
It Matter?
DOES it
matter?--losing your legs?...
For people will always be kind,
And you need not show that you mind
When the others come in after hunting
To gobble their muffins and eggs.
Does it
matter?--losing your sight?...
There's such splendid work for the blind;
And people will always be kind,
As you sit on the terrace remembering
And turning your face to the light.
Do they
matter?--those dreams from the pit?...
You can drink and forget and be glad,
And people won't say that you're mad;
For they'll know you've fought for your country
And no one will worry a bit.
Seigfried
Sassoon
Rumsfeld
Stops Short of Direct Apology Over Abuses
By Sue Pleming
May 5, 8:06 AM (ET)
WASHINGTON
(Reuters) - Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said on Wednesday "any
American" felt apologetic for abuses of Iraqi prisoners by U.S. soldiers
but stopped short of offering a direct apology himself.
Asked on
ABC's morning television show whether he would like to apologize to the
Iraqi people, he replied: "Oh my goodness,
any American who sees the photographs that we have seen has to feel apologetic
to the Iraqi people who were abused and recognize that that is something
that is unacceptable and un-American."
Rumsfeld
was asked at a news conference on Tuesday whether he would offer an apology
to the Iraqi people over abuses by U.S. soldiers at an Iraqi prison.
He declined to give one then. [...]
Pressed over
whether he might be forced to resign over the scandal, Rumsfeld
did not reply directly to the question. [...]
Comment:
Well of course Rummy didn't apologize - he stated that any American who
sees the torture photos has to feel apologetic...
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A
prisoner recalls the abuse
Ian Fisher/NYT
The International Herald Tribune
Wednesday, May 05, 2004
BAGHDAD The
shame is so deep that Hayder Sabbar Abd feels he cannot move back to his
old neighborhood. He would prefer not even to stay in Iraq. But now the
entire world has seen the pictures, which Abd looked at yet again on Tuesday,
pointing out the key figures, starting with three American soldiers wearing
big smiles for the camera.
That is Joiner,
he said, pointing at one male soldier in glasses, a black hat and blue
rubber gloves. His arms were crossed over a stack of naked and hooded
Iraqi prisoners. That is Miss Maya, he said, pointing to a young woman's
fresh face poking up over the same pile.
He gazed
down at another picture. In it, a second female soldier flashed a toothy
thumbs-up and pointed with her other hand at the genitals of a man wearing
nothing but a black hood, his fingers laced on top of his head. He did
not know her name. But the old scars on the torso left no doubt about
the identity of the naked prisoner.
"That
is me," he said, and he tapped his own hooded, slightly hunched image.
Abd, 34,
is at the center of an explosive scandal over American mistreatment of
Iraqi prisoners, yet he showed little but calm in a precisely detailed,
two-hour account of his time at the fearsome Abu Ghraib prison. He spoke
with no particular anger at the American occupation, though he has seen
it closer than most Iraqis. In six months in prisons run by American soldiers,
in fact, he said most of them treated him well and with respect.
"Most
of the time, they wouldn't even say 'shut up,'" he said.
That changed
one night in November, when punishment for a prisoner fight at Abu Ghraib
degenerated into torture. That night, he said, he and six other inmates
were beaten, stripped bare (a particular shame in the Arab world), forced
to pile on top of each other, to straddle each others' backs naked, to
simulate oral sex. American guards wrote, with Magic Marker, words like
"rapist" on their skin.
The
curiosity, through much of the ordeal apart from the beatings, was the
camera. It was a detail he mentioned repeatedly as he
recalled being forced against a wall and ordered by the Arabic translator
to masturbate as he looked at one of the female guards.
"She
was laughing, and she put her hands on her breasts," Abd said. "Of
course, I couldnt do it. I told them that I couldn't, so they beat me
in the stomach and I fell to the ground. The translator said, 'Do it!
Do it! It's better than being beaten.' I said, 'How can I do it?' So I
put my hand on my penis, just pretending."
All the while,
he said, the flash of the camera kept illuminating the dim room that once
held prisoners of Saddam Hussein, recording images that have infuriated
the Arab world and badly sullied America's image in a country more willing
these days to think the worst of its occupiers.
"It
was humiliating," he said. "We did not think that we would survive.
All of us believed we would be killed and not get out alive."
Abd's account
could not be verified, but a military official here said that the prisoner
number Abd gave, 13077, matches that of a former prisoner who submitted
a sworn statement alleging abuse by American soldiers and that the man's
account was consistent with accounts verified by a military investigator.
Several episodes that Abd recounted also agreed, in some detail, with
testimony given by a U.S. soldier horrified by what he saw. [...]
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 This
torture started at the very top
A profound
racism infects the US and British establishments
Ahdaf Soueif
The Guardian
Wednesday May 5, 2004
The media
in this country is politely shocked at photos of Iraqis being tortured
and humiliated by US and British soldiers. A BBC1 news presenter says
the pictures seem to have been "merely mementos". That's all
right, then. The folks at home will have a good laugh and paste them into
the family album.
In the first
half of the last century, the French in Algeria and Morocco used to send
home postcards of prostitutes posing sullenly, with breasts bared and
skirts pulled up to their thighs, over captions like "Le harem Arabe"
or "Fille Mauresque". The Americans have pushed it further:
their pornography of occupation is at once more childish, playful, crude
and sinister than that of "old Europe". Also, we assume the
prostitutes were paid.
BBC commentators
and British politicians have been reminding us that the soldiers' activities
"do not compare with Saddam Hussein's systematic tortures and executions".
Hussein is now the moral compass of the
west.
The media
are fearful that these images will go down badly in the Arab world because
"they show Muslim men being humiliated by American women".
Again the not-so-subtle reduction of the Arab world to an entity
that reacts only to religious prodding. Actually the photographs
have confirmed people's belief that the US and Britain are not in Iraq
as an act of goodwill. They have strengthened the feeling that there is
a deep racism underlying the occupiers' attitudes to Arabs, Muslims and
the third world generally.
It was only
a matter of time. In the past year the world has seen photos of many Iraqis
stripped with their wrists tied behind their backs with plastic cord.
At first we could look into their eyes and bear witness to what was happening.
Then they were bagged. At no point was there an outcry.
We
have grown used to seeing Arab men bound and hooded, in the occupied territories
and Gaza. Israel advises the US on how to control civilians and interrogate
them. Ariel Sharon has made the Israeli army's "rules
of engagement" available to the US military. The world notes the
similarity between the practices of the US army in Iraq and those of the
Israeli army in Palestine. There is evidence that scenes like the ones
now shocking the world have been common in "Facility 1391" (Israel's
secret prison), and some say in other jails. We just haven't seen the
photos.
It is no
use for US spokesmen to talk about "rogue elements", how "contractors"
are not answerable to the military and how Staff Sergeant Chip Frederick
had not read the Geneva conventions before taking charge of prisoners
at Abu Ghraib. This abuse is going to turn out to be widespread. Amnesty
International has already said it is systematic.
The acts
in the photos being flashed across the networks would not have taken place
but for the profound racism that infects the American and British establishments.
At squaddie level, Sarah Oliver reports in the Mail on Sunday that "the
British soldiers loathe the dirtiness of Iraq and the native population's
slothfulness, kleptomania and determination to do as little as possible
for themselves".
There have
been reports of US troops outside Falluja talking of the fun of being
a sniper, of the different ways to kill people, of the "rat's nest"
that needs cleaning out. Some will say soldiers will be soldiers. But
that language has been used by neocons at the heart of the US administration;
both Kenneth Adelman and Paul Wolfowitz have spoken of "snakes"
and "draining the swamps" in the "uncivilised parts of
the world". It is implicit in the US
administration's position that anyone who does not agree that all of history
has been moving towards a glorious pinnacle expressed in the US political,
ideological and economic system has "rejected modernity"; that
it is America's mission to civilise and to punish.
I've
seen a photo of a young American soldier with two Iraqi boys. There is
no nakedness or torture, but it is no less nasty for that. The boys are
holding a cardboard sign. They and the soldier are smiling and doing a
thumbs up. He is pointing at the cardboard sign, on which he's written:
"Lcpl Boudreaux killed my Dad. then he knocked up my sister!"
Imagine the scene: Lance Corporal Boudreaux, a soldier on a liberating,
civilising mission, asks the natives to pose for a "memento".
He gives them the sign to hold. What lie did he tell them about its message?
"Iraq is liberated", or "Mission accomplished"? And
who, in this scene, is the more civilised?
The
one good thing in all of this is that there are soldiers in the US and
British armies who could not live with what was happening and who blew
the whistle. The world needs to see the photos coming
out of Iraq not as "deviant" but as an authentic message from
the heart of the thought system that is seeking to control our planet.
Comment:
Individual soldiers can and have been easily silenced. It is the media
that has suddenly seized on the opportunity to spread the word of what
is occurring in US-controlled prisons. As such, one might argue that there
is no "good thing in all of this" as the author states. The
powers that be have simply changed the tune they are playing on their
fiddles and the masses are still dancing.
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The
Military's Mounting Mental Health Problems
"A Fort Lewis soldier and veteran of the war in Iraq turned himself
in [April 21]... saying he had committed a homicide, a Pierce County sheriff's
spokesman said. The soldier's 28-year-old wife subsequently was found
dead, apparently from homicidal violence. ...The soldier ... returned
to Fort Lewis last month after serving for a year in Iraq with the 555th
Combat Engineer Group." - The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, April 22,
2004
Over the
past year there have been an unusually high number of suicides among U.S.
troops in Iraq, and hundreds of soldiers experiencing psychological problems
have been evacuated from the country. [...]
Twenty-four
soldiers – 20 army personnel, two Marines and two sailors –
have taken their lives during the past year in Iraq and Kuwait. In addition,
there have been seven suicides among "newly States-sided troops,"
including two soldiers who killed themselves while patients at Walter
Reed Army Hospital, the Toronto Star recently reported.
The suicide
rate for army troops in Iraq has been 17.3 per 100,000 soldiers, compared
to the overall Army rate of 11.9 per 100,000 between 1995 and 2002. According
to StrategyPage.com, this rate is higher than the rate for all branches
of the military during the Vietnam War, which was 15.6, and higher than
during the 1991 Persian Gulf War which had a 3.6 rate for all branches.
"The
higher suicide rate in Iraq can be attributed to the higher percentage
of married and reserve troops, and the lower amount of stress training
and screening in basic training for non-combat troops," military
analyst James F. Dunnigan, author of The Next War Zone: Confronting the
Global Threat of Cyberterrorism, wrote in a recent commentary.
Comment:
Sounds like psycho-babble nonsense; so why are married troops more
likely to loose their minds? And the type of 'stress training' being referred
to is what?. How does one steel the mind sufficiently to cope with the
carnage now occurring in Iraq? From some recent reports by Iraqi citizens,
it seems some American soldiers are high on drugs; laughing irrationally
as they shoot from their hips and their Humvees. It would not be surprising
if this turned out to be true, as Vietnam vets can attest.
[...] Secretary
Rumsfeld's tour extensions came a few weeks after the Army issued a report
on the mental health conditions of the troops serving in Iraq. A previous
"after-action" report written in October 2003, and obtained
by United Press International, indicated the Pentagon had "'inappropriately'
deployed soldiers to Iraq who already were diagnosed with mental problems."
"Variability
in pre-deployment screening guidelines for mental health issues may have
resulted in some soldiers with mental health diagnoses being inappropriately
deployed," the earlier report stated. That could "create the
impression that some soldiers develop problems in theater, when, in some
cases, they actually have pre-existing conditions."
Comment:
Or maybe being at war, under constant threat of death and doing things
like blowing children's brains out, could just tip most people over the
edge. Despite the examples of the last century alone, the powers that
be don't want people to consider that war can drive you crazy. And it
seems that people are quick to forget the horror last time.
[...] At
a recent Boulder, Colorado, symposium titled "The Unseen Costs of War"
Dr. Gene Bolles, who for the two years following the 9/11 attacks served
as the chief of neurosurgery services at Landsthul Regional Medical Center
in Germany claimed that thousands of GIs have been admitted to Landsthul
for psychiatric care. According
to medical officials interviewed by the Denver Post, "Between 8 and
10 percent of all soldiers returning from Iraq will suffer from post-traumatic
stress disorder or will need some counseling once stateside."
Comment:
You could quadruple that figure and still be far off the mark. The fact
of the matter is that (like the number of Iraqi citizens killed) true
figures will never be revealed.
Taking
care of the wounded and the sick after they arrive home has not been the
Pentagon's strong suit. Last October, the UPI's Mark Benjamin wrote an
award-winning series of groundbreaking stories exposing the horrendous
treatment soldiers wounded in Iraq were receiving at overcrowded and understaffed
facilities in the U.S.
At a time
when the Bush Administration seems intent on shutting down veterans centers
and closing down VA hospitals, what will happen to traumatized soldiers
when they return to the states?
From
a QFS member:
My
first husband, back in the Nam days, was a Marine too.
The short story is (and I better keep it short for the twists and turns
of this story would make you dizzy); we planned our wedding over the
mails because we found we couldn't stand being apart while he was in
boot camp.
Oh boy...were those red flags flying right in front of my stupid eyes
when he got home. He was NOT the same man who left only months before.
He had changed almost 100%. But did I look deep enough to make any changes
in our upcoming plans? Of course not. I would just "love"
him enough to make him better. Yeah right.
After a year of living with him and taking care of my new baby I was
praying he would get orders to go to Nam. He did. Then I prayed he would
die while there. He didn't.
When he came home, my marriage of 3 years didn't even have a chance
for not even a hint of who he was was left in him and what was he drank
away.
This picture will be the story of so many soon and if the draft for
woman becomes a reality it will be ever so much worse.
The National
Gulf War Resource Center's (NGWRC) Steve Robinson told the audience at
the Boulder symposium that all too often soldiers and their families are
not adequately cared for after they complete their tours of duty. "We
fall short on getting them the proper care, compensation, and readjustment
services that they need to recover from the wartime experience,"
Robinson said. "So if we're going to commit them to fighting for
the nation, we need to commit to providing every resource for them when
they come home. It's a covenant."
Comment: A covenant?
A promise, a pledge, a treaty...a contract no less, says the dictionary.
Now, dear soldier, just think; when has the American government been known
for keeping its promises?. Knowing what they know after a tour of duty,
one has to ask what makes a soldier go back for more. A covenant? Just
following orders?, a sense of duty and obligation?. Or are they completely
barking mad, ignorant and proud of it?, like that Marine interviewed by
CNN in the "Take
No Prisoners" video clip featured on yesterday's Signs:
Marine: "Like, man, those guys are dead now, ya know. But, it was…it
was a good feeling. (smiling and nodding) I mean, afterwards, yer like,
Hell, yeah, that was awesome! Let's do it again!"
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Mental
Cases
Who are
these? Why sit they here in twilight?
Wherefore rock they, purgatorial shadows,
Drooping tongues from jaws that slob their relish,
Baring teeth that leer like skulls' teeth wicked?
Stroke on stroke of pain,-but what slow panic,
Gouged these chasms round their fretted sockets?
Ever from their hair and through their hands' palms
Misery swelters. Surely we have perished
Sleeping, and walk hell; but who these hellish?
-These
are men whose minds the Dead have ravished.
Memory fingers in their hair of murders,
Multitudinous murders they once witnessed.
Wading sloughs of flesh these helpless wander,
Treading blood from lungs that had loved laughter.
Always they must see these things and hear them,
Batter of guns and shatter of flying muscles,
Carnage incomparable, and human squander
Rucked too thick for these men's extrication.
Therefore
still their eyeballs shrink tormented
Back into their brains, because on their sense
Sunlight seems a blood-smear; night comes blood-black;
Dawn breaks open like a wound that bleeds afresh.
-Thus their heads wear this hilarious, hideous,
Awful falseness of set-smiling corpses.
-Thus their hands are plucking at each other;
Picking at the rope-knouts of their scourging;
Snatching after us who smote them, brother,
Pawing us who dealt them war and madness.
Wilfred
Owen
To Lucasta
on going to the War - for the Fourth Time
IT doesn’t
matter what’s the cause,
What wrong they say we’re righting,
A curse for treaties, bonds and laws,
When we’re to do the fighting!
And since we lads are proud and true,
What else remains to do?
Lucasta, when to France your man
Returns his fourth time, hating war,
Yet laughs as calmly as he can
And flings an oath, but says no more,
That is not courage, that’s not fear—
Lucasta he’s a Fusilier,
And his pride sends him here.
Let
statesmen bluster, bark and bray,
And so decide who started
This bloody war, and who’s to pay,
But he must be stout-hearted,
Must sit and stake with quiet breath,
Playing at cards with Death.
Don’t plume yourself he fights for you;
It is no courage, love, or hate,
But let us do the things we do;
It’s pride that makes the heart be great;
It is not anger, no, nor fear—
Lucasta he’s a Fusilier,
And his pride keeps him here.
Robert
Graves
Lazy
Guide to Net Culture: Iraqi image issues
[...] If
we've liberated the people of Iraq then it'd be nice if they felt liberated.
Given some of the bloodier mistakes being made in Iraq, idiot squaddies
creating simulated orgies with Muslim prisoners are definitely surplus
to requirements.
One idiot
squaddie in particular has attracted much online interest, Lance Corporal
Ted J Boudreaux Jr, a reservist with Headquarters and Service Company,
3rd Battalion, 23rd Marines.
He became
famous about a month ago when a picture began to circulate of him standing
beside two Iraqi boys. At first glance there was nothing controversial
in the snap. The soldier was grinning (appropriately, it would turn out)
like an idiot and both boys were smiling shyly. All three were giving
the thumbs up.
Oh and one
boy, who obviously couldn't read English, was holding a cardboard sign.
It said simply: "Lcpl Boudreaux killed my dad then he knocked up
my sister!"
As Julius
Caesar observed on his last visit to the Senate: "Oops."
Lieutenant
Colonel David Couvillon of the 3rd Battalion, 23rd Marines, made this
comment: "Look, he didn't actually do what that sign says. This is
stupid, lance corporal stuff that he thought was cute. But it's not."
It may surprise
you to learn that Boudreaux has not been rewarded with a senior diplomatic
post.
He has however
become somewhat well known on the web, thanks to the enduring craze for
image manipulation...
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'We
were slaves in the American kitchens'
New Delhi
- A group of 20 Indians who ran away from a United States military camp
in Iraq, where they worked in the kitchen, claim they were abused for
nine months, it was reported on Tuesday.
The men from
southern Kerala state paid 75 000 rupees (about R11 700) each for visas
to Kuwait in August 2003. They were cheated by employment agents and landed
in Baghdad.
One man,
Hameed, said they were taken to a US military camp in Mosul where they
were told that they had been bought to work in the kitchen, the Hindustan
Times newspaper reported.
"We
were slaves in the American kitchens. We barely got two hours of sleep.
Any slip-ups and we were tortured for days," Hameed said. [...]
They got
their chance to escape when their camp was attacked at the end of April.
An Iraqi truck driver took them to Baghdad from where they travelled to
Fallujah, Jordan, Doha, finally arriving in Mumbai on April 28.[...]
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'Long
live the heroes who threw the US out'
The olive-green
uniform of Saddam Hussein's army is making a comeback in this turbulent
city, where soldiers of the former regime are taking over security from
United States Marines.
The end of
a nearly month-long Marine siege may signal an important turning point
for Iraqis seeking to regain control of their country and raises questions
about how US forces will operate after sovereignty is handed over on June
30.
The end of
the siege and the establishment of the new Fallujah brigade are another
sign of Iraqis reasserting themselves against the US-led occupation, even
before the power transfer.
Many Iraqis
are vehemently opposed to a new flag adopted by the US-backed Governing
Council. After the disclosure of abuses of Iraqi prisoners at a US-run
prison, Iraqi authorities are demanding that they take part in the interrogation
of detainees and the running of occupation prisons.
The formation
of the new brigade also draws attention to what is now widely perceived
as a major American policy error - the disbanding of the Iraqi army a
year ago. That decision embittered tens of thousands of soldiers, many
of whom are believed to have joined the anti-American insurgency.
The siege
of Fallujah, a hotbed of anti-US resistance since American troops arrived
13 months ago, has elevated the city to heroic status, galvanised anti-occupation
sentiment across this nation of 25 million people and restored much of
the prestige which the Sunni Arab minority lost under a post-Saddam administration
that favoured the Shi'a majority and large the Kurdish community.
US officials
have tried to put their own spin on Fallujah, saying that brave Iraqis
stepped forward to save the city from "terrorists".
 "Some
people showed up and wanted to take charge of security," US National
Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice said on Tuesday on Lebanon's LBC-Hayat
television. "Helping taking Fallujah out of the hands of terrorists
is very important... It is good for Iraqis to come forward and deal with
the security situation.
"After
what happened in Fallujah, there will be no room for those who co-operated
with the Americans," Mohammed Abdullah, a Fallujah cleric, said at
a Sufi mosque where residents lined up for emergency relief rations.
Comments:
And so the war continues, with the old soldiers under Saddam's regime
proud to be wearing the olive-green again, and doubtless by their example,
advocating this to their sons - the next generation of fodder, in the
never ending war. Doubtless the old universal lie lives on in whatever
'camp' you choose to inhabit.
Of
course, though many do not wish to consider this, our understanding of
the two race theory puts a different slant on those who are proud of and
wish to die in battle. Perhaps there are some who enjoy killing and literally
have no soul that might cause them to have any qualms or struggles of
conscience? Ever heard the phrase "It is a wonderful and great honour
to fight and die for your country"? Perhaps the best known poem from
the First World war:
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Dulce
et Decorum Est Pro Patria Mori
It is a
wonderful and great honour to fight and die for your country
Bent double,
like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.
Gas! GAS!
Quick, boys! – An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime . . .
Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all
my dreams before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
If in
some smothering dreams, you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues, –
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.
US
army probes deaths in custody
Tuesday,
4 May, 2004, 21:21 GMT 22:21 UK
US Defence
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has promised that any Americans abusing Iraqi
prisoners will be punished.
The US military
says there have been investigations into 25 deaths in US custody in Iraq
and Afghanistan.
In two cases
the dead men were found to have been murdered by Americans, according
to a US army official.
Senior US
politicians have called for public hearings on mistreatment of prisoners,
and have demanded the right to question Mr Rumsfeld.
Angry senators
said they had been kept in the dark by the defence department until photographs
of apparent abuse emerged in the media.
'Un-American'
But Mr Rumsfeld
said armed forces chiefs acted swiftly and properly as soon as the claims
came to light in January.
Mr Rumsfeld
said those responsible for the "unacceptable and un-American"
conduct would be brought to justice.
Comment:
Yes, the US government is very good at bringing people "to justice",
but normally only when it serves their political aims.
The Pentagon
has confirmed that criminal charges have been filed against six US soldiers
in relation to the photos, while six senior officers have been reprimanded.
Comment:
There's that word again - "reprimanded". Why haven't we yet
heard anyone saying, "war crimes"?
But there
have been concerns that the mistreatment is more widespread.
Comment:
And yet, Powell stated in the above article:
"
I want to remind the world that it's a small number of troops who acted
in an illegal, improper manner." So which is it? A small number of
"rogue" soldiers committing these acts - just a few loonies
no one seemed to have any supervision of - or is this more widespread
than we might think? And were they following orders?
A senior
army official said there had been investigations into 25 cases of death
and 10 of abuse in US custody in Iraq or Afghanistan since December 2002.
The BBC's
Pentagon correspondent Nick Childs says of the 25 deaths, 12 were found
to be either of natural or "undetermined" causes, one was a
"justifiable homicide", and two were murders. Ten inquiries
are ongoing, he says.
Comment:
Would someone mind telling me, please, just what, exactly, is a "justifiable
homicide"???
Not jailed
An Army official,
speaking to Reuters on condition of anonymity, said a soldier had been
convicted of killing one of the prisoners by hitting him with a rock.
He was thrown
out of the army but did not go to jail.
The other
murder was committed by a private contractor who worked for the CIA, the
official said.
Following
the emergence of the photos, taken at the Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad,
army chiefs were called before an emergency hearing of the Senate Armed
Services Committee.
Afterwards
senators said they were angry that details of what the army knew - particularly
the contents of an internal Pentagon report - had been given to the media
before Congress.
Comment:
And who gave this report to the media? Who wanted to make sure that this
story got out?
"The
ramifications are so serious and so severe, and the implications are so
grave, that that report should have been forthcoming here immediately,"
said the committee's top Democrat, Senator Carl Levin.
Senator John
McCain, a former prisoner-of-war in Vietnam, went further, saying: "It
is a severe problem. But it is a pattern on the part of the defence department
of not keeping the Congress informed."
Comment:
Congress. Those supposedly representing the people. Why should the defense
department want to keep them informed?
'Sadistic
abuses'
The internal
report by Maj Gen Antonio Taguba was commissioned in January following
persistent allegations of abuse at Abu Ghraib and its findings are believed
to have been made available early last month.
US media
which have seen the report say Gen Taguba found evidence of "sadistic,
blatant, and wanton criminal abuses of Iraqi prisoners". His findings
said:
- Detainees
were threatened with a loaded pistol
- Cold water
was poured on naked prisoners
- Inmates
were beaten with a broom handle and chair
- Male detainees
were threatened with rape
- A prisoner
was sodomised with a chemical light
- Detainees
were forced into various sexual positions to be photographed
- Naked
inmates were arranged in a pile and then jumped on
The abuse
of Iraqi detainees has been condemned across the US political spectrum
including by President George W Bush.
But Mr Rumsfeld
also defended the actions of the armed forces, saying they had acted promptly
and properly, launching an investigation in January the day after abuse
allegations were first made - and issuing a press release two days after
that.
Gen Peter
Pace, Vice-Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, said "everyone"
had been told about the allegations and the findings of the Taguba report
but that it was normal that top officials such as himself and Mr Rumsfeld
had not yet read it, as the report had to make its way slowly up the chain
of command.
Comment:
Boy, considering that we live in an age where it only takes seconds to
send and receive messages electronically, it sure takes a long time to
get minor things such as human rights abuse reports up the "chain
of command" in the the US government. How long would it have taken
had the information not been made public?
Damage control
As the US
tried to contain the damage caused as the pictures of abuse were shown
in the press in the Arab world, US National Security Adviser Condoleezza
Rice appeared on the Al-Jazeera channel to appeal for trust.
"The
president guarantees that those who did that be held accountable... and
people will see that we are determined to get to the truth," she
said.
Comment:
Where's that sick bag? Had one around
here a second ago…
But in Iraq,
the US-appointed human rights minister, Abdul-Basat al-Turki, resigned
on Tuesday in protest at the abuses.
Meanwhile
a lawyer for one of the soldiers allegedly involved in the abuse cases
at Abu Ghraib said they were simply "following orders".
Comment:
Again, which is it? Criminal, rogue soldiers that need to be "taught
a lesson", or soldiers following orders? Whatever the truth may be,
it appears that those farther down in the hierarchical chain will be the
ones to take the fall, while those higher up, also responsible, will only
get reprimanded. Standard operating procedure for the reality we happen
to inhabit.
Guy Womack,
attorney for Charles Graner Jr, said the campaign was coordinated by governmental
agencies, including the CIA.
The former
head of the prison, Brig Gen Janis Karpinski, said she believed military
commanders were trying to shift the blame onto her and other reservists
and away from the intelligence officers still at work in the prison.
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Prisoner
Abuse May Be More Widespread
Tue May 4,12:57
PM ET
By ROBERT BURNS, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON
- The scandal of the U.S. military's abuse of Iraqi prisoners threatened
to widen Tuesday as lawmakers emerging from a closed-door briefing with
Pentagon officials said similar abuses — though "small in number"
— may also have occurred at other Iraqi facilities and in Afghanistan
.
Outraged
by the sexual humiliation and abuses of Iraqis by U.S. military personnel
at Abu Ghraib prison, senators called for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld
to explain the situation in an open hearing as soon as possible.
"There
were some incidents in Afghanistan," said Sen. John Warner, chairman
of the Senate Armed Services Committee , after the panel's closed briefing
with Pentagon officials. "We did not get the full details but were
left with the impression that they were relatively isolated and certainly
small in number."
[...] "We're
extremely disappointed that anyone would mistreat detainees in the manner
that they have in Iraq," Casey said. "What you see on those
pictures is not indicative of our training or our values. It is a complete
breakdown of discipline."
Sen. Edward
Kennedy, D-Mass., emerged from the briefing saying he feared allegations
made public so far are "the beginning rather than the end" of
the abuse allegations.
Comment:
And perhaps the "beginning of the end" for George Bush?
Sen.
John McCain, R-Ariz., told reporters outside the hearing he was "extremely
hopeful that ... this was not a widespread pattern of abuse and that the
conduct of the overwhelming majority of Americans is honorable and decent."
Members of
the Senate committee promised a full investigation of the abuses and said
they were outraged that they had not been informed of the incidents earlier.
"We
must be open about this," Levin said. "We must assure the world
thereby that in this open society, actions of this kind are going to be
dealt with both criminally and within the military code as appropriate."
[...] Meanwhile,
an attorney for a military police officer being investigated in the abuse
probe, said on NBC's "Today" show that the photographs of the
Iraq prisoners that have inspired widespread revulsion "were obviously
staged" in order to manipulate the prisoners into cooperating with
intelligence officials.
"They
were part of the psychological manipulation of the prisoners being interrogated,"
said Guy Womack, attorney for Charles A. Graner, Jr., a Greene County,
Pa. corrections officer who was activated to the military in March 2003
and served at Abu Ghraib.
"It
was being controlled and devised by the military intelligence community
and other governmental agencies, including the CIA ," Womack said.
The soldiers, he said, were simply "following orders."
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Wife:
Soldiers in Iraqi Abuse Case Are Scapegoats
Tue May 4,10:45
AM ET
By Sue Pleming
WASHINGTON
(Reuters) - U.S. soldiers accused of abusing Iraqi prisoners were following
orders and are being used as scapegoats to protect their superiors, the
wife of one of the soldiers and the lawyer for another said Tuesday.
Martha Frederick
defended her husband, a soldier who faces prosecution for the abuse of
Iraqis at the Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad.
"He
was told to do these things and when he did them he thought that he was
doing them in the sense of national security," Frederick said.
The U.S.
military has brought charges of assault, cruelty and maltreatment against
six soldiers, members of a military police battalion.
It has also
reprimanded six officers in connection with abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison
after photographs were broadcast around the world showing naked Iraqi
prisoners stacked in a pyramid or positioned to simulate sex acts.
In e-mails
to his wife, Staff Sgt. Ivan Frederick questioned some of the abuses he
witnessed, such as leaving inmates naked in their cells or making them
wear female underwear and handcuffing them to the doors of their cells.
"He
questioned it from my understanding and he even tried to come up with
some rules knowing that pretty much this was something he did not normally
do," said his wife in an interview on NBC's "Today" show.
She
complained her husband was being thrust into the limelight while others
were protected. "Those who are responsible are standing behind the
curtain and watching him take the fall for it. It's almost like being
a pawn in a chess game," she said.
[...] Womack
said the pictures were staged and part of the psychological manipulation
of prisoners, adding that his client was told to smile for the camera
along with a female soldier who was pointing at a prisoner's genitals.
"These
pictures themselves are abhorrent, but you have to put them in context,"
Womack said.
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Army
Has 20 Open Iraqi Prisoner Probes
By ROBERT
BURNS, AP Military Writer
WASHINGTON
- The deaths of 10 prisoners and abuse of 10 more in Iraq and Afghanistan
are under criminal investigation, the Army disclosed Tuesday as U.S. commanders
in Baghdad announced interrogation changes and the White House reached
out to the Arab world to try to blunt a widening and increasingly damaging
controversy.
President
Bush planned to do two 10-minute interviews with Arab television Wednesday
to underscore his feelings about photographs of naked prisoners and gloating
U.S. soldiers.
"This
is an opprtunity for the president to speak directly to the people in
Arab nations and let them know that the images that we all have seen are
shameless and unacceptable," White House spokesman Scott McClellan
said Tuesday night. […]
Comment:
What makes Bush think that the Arab world is going to believe a single
word he says?
In somber
tones at his first Pentagon news conference since the reports of abuse
surfaced, Rumsfeld said Americans should not believe that the behavior
captured in the photographs of grinning U.S. soldiers posing with naked
Iraqi prisoners is tolerated.
"The
images that we've seen that include U.S. forces are deeply disturbing,
both because of the fundamental unacceptability of what they depicted
and because the actions by U.S. military personnel in those photos do
not in any way represent the values of our country or of the armed forces,"
Rumsfeld said.
The defense
secretary rejected suggestions that part of the Bush administration's
justification for invading Iraq — to remove a ruthless government
that tortured its own people — had been undermined by the behavior
of U.S. soldiers responsible for detention facilities.
"The
pattern and practice of the Saddam Hussein regime was to do exactly what
you said, to murder and torture, and the killing fields are filled with
mass graves. And equating the two, I think, is a fundamental misunderstanding
of what took place" at Abu Ghraib, Rumsfeld said.
Comment:
There is no fundamental misunderstanding as to what is taking place in
Iraq. Murder, torture and the occupation and destruction of a people and
a country are what is taking place. As for mass graves, what are those
soccer fields now full of Iraqi casualties? Or does one need to pile all
the bodies into one hole for it to be considered a mass grave?
Rumsfeld
said he hoped the photos represented an isolated case.
But the basis
for such hope seemed to be eroding.
Maj. Gen.
Donald Ryder, the Army's provost marshal, told reporters there were 10
investigations underway of prisoner deaths — mostly in Iraq —
and 10 pending cases involving possible assault of prisoners, including
one sexual assault. Also, one prisoner's death was ruled to have been
a justified homicide.
Investigations
into 12 other detainee deaths that have occurred in Iraq and Afghanistan
since December 2002 had concluded that the causes were either undetermined
or natural, Ryder said.
The Pentagon
does not recognize detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan and at Guantanamo Bay,
Cuba as prisoners of war. The Army's second-ranking officer, Gen. George
Casey, was asked at a news conference with Ryder whether that policy might
have led soldiers to think they could use excessive force against the
detainees.
Casey said
no.
"It's
very basic for us, how we treat detainees," Casey said. "We
treat all of the folks we come in contact with with dignity and respect."
[…]
Comment:
Oh, yeah. Right. It's very dignified to attached electrodes to the genitals
of detainees. It shows a great deal of respect to strip them naked and
make them simulate sex with each other. How can these people keep a straight
face when they say things like this? And how can the US get away with
not recognizing detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay as prisoners
of war?
In Baghdad,
Iraq's U.S.-appointed human rights minister, Abdul-Basat al-Turki, said
Tuesday he had resigned to protest abuses by American guards, and Interior
Minister Samir Shaker Mahmoud al-Sumeidi demanded that Iraqi officials
be allowed to help run the prisons.
Al-Turki
said he resigned "not only because I believe that the use of violence
is a violation of human rights but also because these methods in the prisons
mean that the violations are a common act."
Many of the
allegations of abuse were contained in an internal Pentagon report completed
in March.
Senate Minority
Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., demanded to know why Bush was not earlier
informed of the report and why Rumsfeld and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman
Gen. Richard Myers had not yet read the two-month old document.
At the White
House, spokesman Scott McClellan said Bush first became aware of the allegations
of abuse some time after the Pentagon began looking into it, but did not
see the pictures until they were made public last week. Bush did not learn
of the classified Pentagon report until news organizations reported its
existence, McClellan said.
Rumsfeld
said he had read an executive summary of the report. He denied any foot
dragging by the Pentagon and said the correct military procedures were
being followed.
"These
things are complicated, they take some time," he said of the investigations.
"The system works."
Gen. Peter
Pace, vice chairman of the Joints Chiefs of Staff, said the February report
had been moving up the chain of command. "There had been no attempt
to hide this," said Pace, who joined Rumsfeld in briefing reporters
at the Pentagon.
Pace said
Pentagon officials agreed with the internal Army report's findings that
the prisons in Iraq were understaffed for the number of prisoners incarcerated
and that those serving as prison guards had been inadequately trained.
Comment:
Trained, or not. Understaffed, or not. What would allow anyone to
commit these crimes in the first place? And not only carry out the torture
and humiliation, but also enjoy doing so? Is being inadequately trained
and understaffed an excuse for psychopathic, diabolical behavior?
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The
Boy Who Cried "Wolf!"
Signs Editorial
05/04/2004
Here is a
story in which the main character is nothing more than a disinformation
artist. He takes a plausible scenario: A wolf killing sheep; then takes
something that is untrue: A wolf killing sheep at that precise moment;
and turns it into disinformation. In essence he lies to the villagers,
preying on their fears, in order to elicit something from them: Fear of
loss of their sheep for his own entertainment.
Nobody believes
a liar...even when he is telling the truth! Or so the story tells us.
But is that the real meaning? We don’t think so. The story of The
Boy Who Cried "Wolf!" in our opinion, has less to do with the
shepherd boy, and more to do with the villagers. Although in some versions
the boy loses his life, in others he lives to cry another day. The theme
in all the variations of the story is this: The Villagers always lose
their livelihood.
In the story,
sheep are symbolic of the villagers' wealth and potential for survival.
No sheep, no wool; no wool no money; or no sheep, no food.
Regardless
of how you look at it the villagers lose everything, and somewhere in
the story is a very fat wolf needing some Pepto Bismol.
Perhaps the
moral should read thus: If you put your faith in liars, you are screwed
upstream without a paddle.
Fool me once,
shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.
A reader
wrote to the Signs team with images purportedly of U.S. soldiers gang-raping
Iraqi women. Yes, I did just say what I said. Being the in-house graphic
artist, I was assigned the task of analyzing/researching the images to
discover whether or not they were real while the early edition carried
the story as a "tentative" item.
What I uncovered
in my detailed analysis of the images was that they were nothing more
than pornography; pornography of the most disgusting kind. (Either that,
or Dubya has gotten so cheap that the U.S. Marines are now issueing Wal-Mart
Paintball guns and cheap loafers to soldiers in combat.)
The images
are not fake however, they are real; a real portent of things to come.
These photos
reveal to us just how sick America is as a culture; a culture wherein
the American people staunchly back the invasion and oppression of a sovereign
country and then lust for pornographic pictures of its native inhabitants
being violated, for Gawd's sake!
Americans
want to steal Iraqi oil, kill Iraqi children, and now they want to get
their cookies off on images of Iraqi women being raped - mothers, sisters
and daughters - simulated or no.
But hey!
Let’s not get too pessimistic now, eh? We just need to step into
our diamond imperishable bodies, and open our heart centers to music,
art, Christmas … and … puppies.
I want a
sick bag. Heck, I invented 'em.
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U.S.
soldier dies in Iraq after dump truck attack
05 May 2004
14:52:23 GMT
BAGHDAD,
(Reuters) - A U.S. soldier died south of Baghdad on Wednesday after his
Humvee was rammed by a dump truck at the checkpoint he was manning, the
U.S. military said. [...]
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Official:
Bush to Seek $25B for Iraq War
By ALAN FRAM,
Associated Press Writer
May 5, 2004
WASHINGTON
- The Bush administration will ask Congress for an additional $25 billion
for U.S. operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, Republican congressional
aides said Wednesday, a change from the White House's earlier plans to
not request such money until after the November elections.
White House
budget chief Joshua Bolten and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz
journeyed to the Capitol on Wednesday to present the proposal to House
Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn.,
and other top Republicans. [...]
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Peacemakers
Seek New Palestinian Leaders
By BARRY
SCHWEID
AP Diplomatic Writer
UNITED
NATIONS (AP) -- The United States and three peacemaking partners called
Tuesday for "responsible and accountable" Palestinian leaders
who would crack down on terrorists and welcomed Israeli Prime Minister
Ariel Sharon's proposal to withdraw from Gaza.
The statement,
issued after a 2 1/2-hour meeting at the United Nations hosted by Secretary-General
Kofi Annan, drew Palestinian criticism and Israeli praise.
The Palestinians'
U.N. observer, Nasser Al-Kidwa, said the United States dominated the deliberations,
which issued a statement that amounted to nothing more than "mumbling
that could mean anything."
By contrast,
Daniel Ayalon, the Israeli ambassador to Washington, said the Quartet
- the United States, the United Nations, the European Union and Russia
- had focused on "the real problem" of terror and a need for
change within the Palestinian movement.
"Cracking
down on terrorism and reforms are imperative for any meaningful political
dialogue," Ayalon said in a telephone interview.
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Rice
Says U.S. Has 'Generational' Mideast Plan
Tue May 4,
5:52 PM ET
By David Morgan
WASHINGTON
(Reuters) - The U.S. national security adviser said on Tuesday that Iraq
was crucial to American efforts to export democracy to the Middle East,
a transition that would require the commitment of a generation.
Condoleezza
Rice said the American drive for reform beginning with Iraq and Afghanistan
aimed to dispel a "terrible, virulent ideology" that led to
the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington.
Comment:
Such a "drive for reform" to dispel a "terrible, virulent
ideology" should have started in Washington and Israel, not Afghanistan
and Iraq.
"When
Iraq is free and stable and prosperous and democratic, it will be the
linchpin in a different kind of Middle East," Rice told a conference
hosted by the powerful Jewish Anti-Defamation League lobby group.
"And
when there is a different kind of Middle East, one that is reforming and
one that is moving toward democratic development, we will be safer in
the United States, Israel will be safer in its neighborhood, the world
will be safer."
Comment:
How safe do you think Iraqis feel at this very moment? How stable? How
prosperous? Where is this security, stability, prosperity, freedom and
democracy that the US is so good at spouting? How is it even possible
that people can believe that an occupational power truly has these intentions?
What portion of the Iraqi population needs to be exterminated to bring
such "freedom and democracy"? How much of the country destroyed
and made barren for generations to come?
Rice, one
of President Bush 's closest aides, said U.S. policymakers had no illusions
about the task including the return of sovereignty to Iraq that has been
complicated by insurgencies among Sunni and Shi'ite Muslims.
Comment:
It has been complicated by the occupation and rape of their country, which
led to the uprisings - not a result of the uprisings themselves. In any
case, what kind of "sovereignty" are we talking about here when
it will be simply Iraqi puppets on the US payroll running Iraq? Will Iraqis
vote in their leaders? Even if they do, what are the chances that such
elections will be tampered with?
[...] Rice
said U.S. policies were facing "a terrible time of testing"
in Iraq, where she described militants battling the U.S.-led occupation
as opponents of democracy.
Comment:
Of course, just as anyone criticizing Israeli governmental policy towards
the Palestinians is called an anti-semite. If you don't like having your
country occupied, then you hate democracy. You are a "terrorist".
But she reiterated
White House determination to remain in Iraq after a June 30 deadline for
transferring sovereignty to an interim government.
"We
have never left before a job is done and I commit to you that this job
will be done," said Rice.
Comment:
Yes, even if that means leveling the entire region and throwing it back
into the Stone Age.
She spoke
of forging a common vision of peace for the region that could be pursed
aggressively to produce "a Middle East that is democratizing, a Middle
East that is reforming, a Middle East in which the ideologies of hatred
that produced 9/11 cannot flourish."
Comment:
A Middle East occupied, governed and controlled by Israel and America.
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PA
welcomes Quartet statement
By LAMIA
LAHOUD
May. 4, 2004 23:58 | Updated May. 5, 2004 9:35
Palestinian
Authority officials interpreted the Quartet's statements on Tuesday as
an attempt to counter US President George W. Bush's letters of assurances
to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, and welcomed the group's decision to form
a mechanism for monitoring and implementation of the US road map for peace.
"For
us, the most important thing from the Quartet meeting is that they reiterated
their commitment to all the relevant UN resolutions, a withdrawal from
the land occupied in (the war of) 1967 and the Arab League peace initiative,"
PA Negotiations Minister Saeb Erekat told The Jerusalem Post.
However,
he said, "what was lacking in the statement was a timeline for the
implementation and the specifics of the mechanism of implementation and
the time line."
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Settlers
feel their day has come
Tue., May
04, 2004
By Nadav Shragai
[...] The
settlers of Gush Katif sense a time of grace is upon them. Rabbis, local
council heads, and especially young people speak frequently of the need
to expand their door-to-door campaign.
Yoni, a teenager
from Atzmona, said: "We need to speak to the public over the heads
of the politicians and especially of the media, which filter our message.
We proved it's possible."
[...] The
Gush Katif settlers want to further what they call the "settlement
of hearts" an expression coined years ago by Rabbi Yoel Ben Nun,
a leading settler activist. In this spirit, many in Gush Katif spoke yesterday
of "disengaging" from Gaza: "We are actually part of the
western Negev. Take a look at the map," some teenage girls from Neveh
Dekalim told a foreign TV crew.
The Hevel
Aza Local Council is now seeking to link Gush Katif, in the southern Gaza
Strip, not only to hearts, but to the state of Israel, by means of an
expanded corridor in the Kissufim area east of the Gush. No one presently
takes the so-called "Two Fingers" plan seriously - on the map,
Kissufim is a two-finger span from Gush Katif - but it will be presented
to political circles in the near future. Gush Katif activists will begin
marketing the idea to the public as well.
In recent
weeks, some Gush Katif residents have been berating themselves for closing
themselves off to potential new residents. In Neveh Dekalim, the largest
settlement in the Gush, a selection committee has been filtering out candidates
for years. The same is true for other settlements in the region, with
interviews of potential new residents being long and painstaking. During
the days before the referendum, a number of rabbis made a promise - if
we win, we will work to open the region to a wider public. It's the old
debate of quality versus quantity. In Gush Katif they have begun to understand,
a little late, that in order to become a "settlement bloc" that
politicians take seriously, they have to grow.
The longing
for legitimacy dominated sentiment among the residents of Gush Katif before
the referendum. "People went around with long faces," local
council workers said yesterday.
"It
was a burning humiliation," said area resident David Hoffman. "No
politician or national leader got up the courage to come to us and explain
the plan. They probably couldn't look us in the eye. The residents were
hardly mentioned even in the disengagement document. Only the assets."
The referendum
victory did nothing to blunt these feelings. They don't understand Sharon,
in fact, they fear him. Ehud Olmert they almost loathe - "that man
talks about our presence here like Yossi Beilin and Yossi Sarid. He's
got a virus in his head" said Shilo, a young soldier.
Many residents
of Atzmona went to bed yesterday at dawn after a day and a half without
sleep. Children went back to their studies after weeks of coming in late
and leaving early. Many adults took time off from work.
"Anyone
who was part of this operation saw what spiritual energy is," said
Rabbbi Yigal Kaminsky, Gush Katif's regional rabbi. "Everyone gave
his spirit, his soul, his body to the struggle. When you begin to peel
open the hearts, the bond between us and all of Israel is revealed in
a big way."
Comment:
Ah, yes. Spirit and heart. How often do people validate their beliefs
by appealing to spirit and heart. That is why we are so wary of people
who talk about the knowledge that comes from the heart, who talk about
knowing something because it feels right. Belief in such is asking for
trouble. What kind of spirituality is there in people who are willing
to kill off the Palestinians to express their faith? Yet they claim heart
and spirit. This example should show how useless they are as means of
verifying anything.
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Late
bid to save Gaza peace plan
By Ed O'Loughlin
Jerusalem
May 5, 2004
Weary leaders
and officials in Jerusalem, Washington and New York were yesterday combing
through the wreckage of the latest bid to break the bloody Middle East
stalemate, less than three weeks after it was launched.
[...]
Yesterday
The New York Times claimed Mr Bush had given Israel a blank cheque and
got nothing in return. An editorial in The Washington Post said: "President
Bush's ill-considered bet on Israel's Ariel Sharon is looking shaky barely
two weeks after it was made."
Leaders close
to Mr Sharon insisted yesterday he was still committed to ending the Israeli
presence in the Gaza enclave, where 7500 ultra-nationalist and religious
Jewish settlers live amid 1.2 million Palestinians. Although the plan
was rejected by 60 per cent of Likud members, the plan is supported by
60 per cent of Israelis, who believe it would save lives, money and international
support.
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Defiant
Sharon vows new initiative
Backers insist
vote won't stop pullout from proceeding
By Dan Ephron,
Globe Correspondent | May 4, 2004
JERUSALEM
-- Prime Minister Ariel Sharon vowed yesterday to draw up a new plan for
separating Israel from the Palestinians, a day after members of his own
Likud party voted down his initiative to evacuate Israelis from the Gaza
Strip and from four settlements in the West Bank, officials said.
Israeli newspapers
described the outcome as a humiliation for the prime minister. Some Israelis
expressed anger that Sharon set up a vote that allowed a relatively small
number of members from a single party to tie up an initiative that a majority
of Israelis have supported in opinion polls. [...]
''I want
to say in the clearest fashion there will be another plan and I will come
up with it," an official quoted Sharon as saying at the Likud meeting
in parliament. ''I will come up with a plan that will get wide support."
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Israeli
Court Indicts Palestinian Teen
Tue May 4,
5:33 PM ET
By RAVI NESSMAN, Associated Press Writer
JERUSALEM
- An Israeli military court on Tuesday indicted a 15-year-old Palestinian
boy on charges of recruiting teenagers to become suicide bombers —
the first time such charges have been leveled at a Palestinian youth.
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Disney
Blocks Anti-Bush Film
NEW YORK,
May 5, 2004
(CBS/AP)
Disney has ordered a subsidiary not to distribute a Michael Moore film
critical of President Bush's stance on terrorism, according to a newspaper
and Moore's Web site.
The New York
Times reports Disney has barred Miramax films from distributing "Fahrenheit
911," an upcoming film in which Moore explores alleged connections
between the Bush family and wealthy Saudis, and criticizes the president's
counter-terrorism policies both before and after Sept. 11.
A
Disney executive says it told Miramax last May that it did not want to
be connected to the North American distribution of the film because it
could be politically divisive.
But Moore
claims Disney is worried it could lose tax breaks it gets in Florida,
where the president's brother Jeb Bush is governor. Disney denies that,
according to The Times.
Miramax says
its deal with Disney only allows the company to block distribution of
a film if it is over-budget or gets an NC-17 rating, neither of which
appears to apply to Moore's movie. The two companies could go to mediation
over the dispute.
"I would
have hoped by now that I would be able to put my work out to the public
without having to experience the profound censorship obstacles I often
seem to encounter," Moore wrote in the statement on his site.
"Some
people may be afraid of this movie because of what it will show,"
Moore wrote. "But there's nothing they can do about it now because
it's done, it's awesome, and if I have anything to say about it, you'll
see it this summer — because, after
all, it is a free country."
Miramax bought
the film last May when Mel Gibson's Icon Picture backed out, triggering
complaints by conservatives to Disney. Overseas distribution rights have
already been sold.
"Fahrenheit
911" will be one of 18 films in competition next week at the Cannes
Film Festival, Moore wrote.
The newspaper
says Mirimax could find another distributor for North America, but that
doing so would be costly.
Moore is
the director of films such as "Roger & Me" and "Bowling
for Columbine," for which he won an Oscar. He has stirred controversy
before, calling Mr. Bush a "deserter" earlier this year, and
earning both cheers and boos when he questioned the legitimacy of Mr.
Bush's 2000 election at the 2003 Academy Awards.
Distribution
of his book "Stupid White Men," a broadside against the Bush
administration, was delayed because it was due out shortly after Sept.
11.
Comment:
Freedom and democracy! Don't ya love it!? The truth cannot be printed
in the US because it would be "politically divisive"!
Censorship
of many kinds
"Democracy dies behind closed doors"
Mid-East Realities
5
May 2004:
Disney now insists on blocking the distribution of the new Michael Moore
film, at least until the election, and AOL-TimeWarner is censorshing MER
articles dealing with the Israeli-Jewish lobby and the Jewish neocons
in the Bush Administration who are primarily responsible for the Iraq
war. This is indeed a new America.
But the corporate
media's daily self-censorship is the most dangerous thing of all; and
there are so many examples of this most dangerous phenomena, especially
in Washington where the celebrity press and the lobbyists mix so socially
with the politicians and where the Israeli-Jewish lobby vilifies and punishes
any and all who even dare to ask.
At the moment,
for instance, why does no one ask the following simple questions even
though everyone from the President on down is now constantly on TV interview
programs working overtime to put out the 'torture scandal' fires.
* QUESTION
#1 - "Those hoods on the prisoners, Mr. President, just when did
the U.S. start using them and why." (Note: Yesterday the new American
General ordered that the hoods no longer be used. Hint: Israel has used
hoods on Palestinians for many years as well as many of the same techniques
the Americans have been using in Iraq).
* QUESTION
#2 - "Have any foreign persons, or 'private contractors' working
for the CIA or military intelligence, been involved in any way with the
toturing and abuse of Iraqi prisoners?" (N ote: The top Pentagon
neocons -- Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith -- are thought to have made
it possible for Israeli Mossad persons to not only 'train' Americans but
to be on sight and involved in Iraq).
* QUESTION
#3 - Earlier this year one of the leaders of the PLO, Abu Abbas, died
in American custody in Iraq. In view of what we now know just who has
investigated this death and just who conducted the autopsy?" (Note:
As MER and others said at the time, very suspicious death and likely the
result of torture. But few were listening then).
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Free
speech? Not along Main Street
Salt Lake
City judge upholds land swap in Mormon church plaza case
Tuesday,
May 4, 2004 Posted: 10:04 AM EDT (1404 GMT)
SALT LAKE
CITY (AP) -- A federal judge on Monday upheld a land swap that permits
the Mormon church to restrict speech on a block of Main Street that it
purchased from Salt Lake City.
U.S. District
Judge Dale Kimball dismissed a lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties
Union and others that said the deal violated the First Amendment by limiting
speech and effectively endorsing the church. [...]
Lee Siegel,
a writer and one of the plaintiffs, said: "I did not expect a ruling
in favor of ... fundamental constitutional right from any federal judge
who's a product of Utah and its theocracy, which suffers from a severe
and unhealthy allergy to dissent."
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E-Voting
Oversight Overwhelms U.S. Agency
Tue May 4,11:11
AM ET
By RACHEL KONRAD, Associated Press Writer
SAN JOSE,
Calif. - As alarm mounts over the integrity of the ATM-like voting machines
50 million Americans will use in the November election, a new federal
agency has begun scrutinizing how to safeguard electronic polling from
fraud, hackers and faulty software.
But the tiny
U.S. Election Assistance Commission says it is so woefully underfunded
that it can't be expected to forestall widespread voting machine problems,
which would cast doubt on the election's integrity.
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Study:
Voters Trust Electronic Voting
Tue May 4,
5:57 PM ET
By RACHEL KONRAD, Associated Press Writer
SAN JOSE,
Calif. - One in five voters will cast ballots electronically in the November
presidential election, and the vast majority of them are confident their
vote will be recorded accurately, according to a poll released Tuesday.
A lobbying
group whose members include manufacturers of the controversial electronic
voting machines, released a survey that found 77 percent of registered
voters were either "not very concerned" or "not concerned
at all" about the security of election systems.
More than
90 percent of voters expressed confidence in lever and optical scan systems
— the most trusted systems for casting ballots. Electronic systems
finished third, with 88 percent of voters saying they trusted the accuracy
of digital ballots, according to the survey sponsored by the Information
Technology Association of America.
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Africa
gets into the minds of terrorists
A multi-national
training programme to arm police in South Africa and a number of other
African countries with some of the most sophisticated anti-terrorism skills
in the world has been launched outside Pretoria.
The four-week
long Anti-Terrorism Training Program (ATTP) will see police from 11 African
countries learning how to track and crack the world's most powerful terrorist
organisations.
Twenty-two
police officers from Angola, Malawi, Botswana, Mozambique, Namibia, Mauritius,
Lesotho, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Tanzania and South Africa are to take part
in the intensive training programme in which trainees will be taught to
"work their way into the minds of terrorists".
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Six
die in floods in Kenya
Nairobi -
At least six people have drowned and several thousands displaced by floods
following torrential rains currently hitting Kenya.
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NGO
David takes on American food Goliath
A small non-governmental
organisation has asked for a court order forcing American multinational
Monsanto and the Department of Agriculture to reveal information on the
safety of genetically modified food.
Biowatch
South Africa says there are plans in the pipeline to make this the first
country to commercially produce genetically engineered wheat, yet they
could not obtain any information on its safety.
According
to Biowatch, South African authorities have also issued permits for tests
and trials of a variety of crops, including genetically engineered potatoes
and canola.
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Religious
violence claims 80
Abuja - Fighters
of a predominantly Christian tribe attacked a town dominated by a rival
Muslim ethnic group, razing homes and mosques and killing at least 80
people, Nigerian police said on Tuesday.
The ethnic
Tarok assailants, armed with machetes, British colonial-era muskets and
homemade guns, attacked the predominantly Hausa town of Yelwa, 350km east
of the capital Abuja, early on Monday morning, said Raymond Nyama, a police
officer who visited the scene.
Police counted
80 bodies littering otherwise abandoned streets, Nyama added. An unknown
number of mosques were burned.
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Girl,
14, Beaten Unconscious By Other Girls At School Dance
WFTV.com
11:37 am EDT May 5, 2004
MOUNT VERNON,
Wash. -- A 14-year-old girl was beaten unconscious by several other girls
at a chaperoned dance for middle school honors students, police said.
Two girls,
ages 12 and 14, were in custody for investigation of felony assault, Lt.
Ken Bergsma said Tuesday.
The victim, who attended Mount Baker Middle School, suffered cuts and
bruises, and was treated at a hospital.
Witnesses
said the victim and the attackers had been arguing at the dance Friday
night for Mount Baker and LaVenture Middle School students, at the LaVenture
campus.
"When
the victim turned to walk away, she was assaulted," Bergsma said.
"She fell to the ground where she was kicked numerous times."
[...]
About 150
students attended the dance, Tate said. All
had to meet academic and behavioral standards to be invited.
Three Mount
Baker students were expelled, including the girls who were arrested, Tate
said.
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Scientists
Embrace Plot For 'Tomorrow'
Scientists Hope Movie Will Increase Interest In Global Warming
May 4, 2004
LOS ANGELES (AP) A super storm envelops the globe, sending tornadoes skittering
through Los Angeles, pounding Tokyo with hail the size of grapefruit and
burying New Delhi in snow.
Brace yourself.
After decades spent tackling volcanoes, aliens, earthquakes, asteroids
and every other disaster imaginable, Hollywood has turned its attention
to one of the hottest scientific and political issues of the day: climate
change.
No
one is pretending the forthcoming film "The
Day After Tomorrow" is anything but implausible: In the $125
million movie, global warming triggers a cascade of events that practically
flash freeze the planet.
It's
an abruptness no one believes possible, least of all the
filmmakers behind the 20th Century Fox release. "It's very cinematic
to choose the worst-case scenario, which we did," said co-screenwriter
Jeffrey Nachmanoff.
Nonetheless,
scientists are embracing the movie, unusual for those whose stock in trade
is fact.
"My
first reaction was, 'Oh my God, this is a disaster because it is such
a distortion of the science. It will certainly create a backlash,'"
said Dan Schrag, a Harvard University paleoclimatologist.
"I have sobered up somewhat, because the public is probably smart
enough to distinguish between Hollywood and the real world."
He now hopes
the movie will do for interest in global warming what "Jurassic Park"
did for dinosaurs.
In the new
movie, due for release Memorial Day weekend, global warming melts the
polar caps, sending torrents of fresh water into the world's salty oceans.
That flood in turn chills a major current in the north Atlantic and tips
the planet into a new Ice Age.
Quickly unleashed
is every type of violent weather that filmmakers could cram into the movie,
directed by Roland Emmerich of "Independence Day" fame. Most
were invoked as an excuse to use cutting-edge special effects, Nachmanoff
said.
Several
scientists who are familiar with the film were charitable, even overlooking
the rapidity with which events unfold in the movie.
"The science is bad, but perhaps it's an opportunity to crank up
the dialogue on our role in climate change," NASA research oceanographer
William Patzert said of the premise.
Most,
including the filmmakers, acknowledge time had to be compressed to keep
the audience's interest. When scientists who study climate refer to abrupt
changes, they refer to decades, if not hundreds or thousands of years.
"From
the box-office point of view, controversy is good. It makes people talk
about it," he said. "You couldn't buy this kind of publicity."
Comment:
So there you have it, straight from the horse's mouth. Nothing to worry
about, just go and see the movie and with your inherent ability to distinguish
fact from fiction, as the abovementioned "scientist" claims
we all possess, you will surely understand that the whole idea of a world
wide cataclysm is a load of hogwash, at least as it is presented in the
movie. The final comment from one of the "scientists" in the
above is VERY telling; "You couldn't but this kind of publicity"
he states. We don't doubt it, especially from the point of view of "the
powers that be".
The
problem with the entire message in the above is that it is pretty much
false. There is overwhelming evidence that "sudden glacial rebounds"
have happened in our recent history, the last ice age for example. "Sudden",
in this instance, does not mean hundreds or thousands of years as is claimed
above, but very clearly it means "sudden" in the dictionary
sense; "Sudden - occurring or being done unexpectedly and without
warning". "Sudden", means that large animals get "flash
frozen", to be later exhumed with skin and flesh intact.
As
Laura Knight Jadczyk states in her newly revised and updated book "Ancient
Science":
Paleontologist
George G. Simpson considers the extinction of the Pleistocene horse
in North America to be one of the most mysterious episodes in zoological
history, confessing, “no one knows the answer.” He is also
honest enough to admit that there is the larger problem of the extinction
of many other species in America at the same time. The horse, giant
tortoises living in the Caribbean, the giant sloth, the saber-toothed
tiger, the glyptodont and toxodon. These were all tropical animals.
These creatures didn’t die because of the “gradual onset”
of an ice age, “unless one is willing to postulate freezing temperatures
across the equator, such an explanation clearly begs the question.”
Massive
piles of mastodon and saber-toothed tiger bones were discovered in Florida.
Mastodons, toxodons, giant sloths and other animals were found in Venezuela
quick-frozen in mountain glaciers. Woolly rhinoceros, giant armadillos,
giant beavers, giant jaguars, ground sloths, antelopes and scores of
other entire species were all totally wiped out at the same time, at
the end of the Pleistocene, approximately 12000 years ago.
This event
was global. The mammoths of Siberia became extinct at the same time
as the giant rhinoceros of Europe; the mastodons of Alaska, the bison
of Siberia, the Asian elephants and the American camels. It is obvious
that the cause of these extinctions must be common to both hemispheres,
and that it was not gradual. A “uniformitarian glaciation”
would not have caused extinctions because the various animals would
have simply migrated to better pasture. What is seen is a surprising
event of uncontrolled violence. In other words, 12000 years ago, a time
we have met before and will come across again and again, something terrible
happened - so terrible that life on earth was nearly wiped out in a
single day.
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Search
Under Way for Woolly Mammoth
AFP
July 17,
2003 — The central Japanese city hosting the Expo 2005 world exposition
plans to excavate an entire frozen mammoth and display it at the fair
under a multi-million dollar Siberian expedition project, organizers said
Thursday.
Seto and
the other cities in Aichi prefecture, 250 kilometers (155 miles) west
of Tokyo, have set up the Mammoth Excavation and Exhibition Organization
Committee to send a mission to explore the Siberian permafrost.
"I believe
chances of success will be 80-90 percent, given technological advances
and information accumulated over the years," said Shinji Furukawa,
chairman of the new committee.
The first
stage of the mission, set for August-September of this year, will be information-gathering
on the whereabouts of frozen mammoth remains and surveys of areas around
Khatanga and Yakutsk in northern and eastern Siberia, respectively.
[...]
The world
fair, which takes place every five years, is to open in Seto in March
2005.
As a boon
to a group of Russian and Japanese scientists who are hoping to clone
mammoths, specimens from legs of what they believe are the extinct animal
arrived at Kinki University's Gifu Science and Technology Center in western
Japan on Thursday.
"The
bone marrow, skin and muscle specimens, frozen in nitrogen liquid, ...
look fine," the center's president, Akira Iritani, said after receiving
the samples from Russia.
Comment:
So how, we wonder, does a mammoth get frozen over hundreds or thousands
of years, while keeping it's skin and muscle intact? The "scientists"
may not want to tell us, but we can certainly propose a very logical theory.
The
Last Extinction Event
One of the
most thorough students of this last great catastrophe was Sir Henry Howorth
whose works are now virtually unobtainable. Although his interpretation
of the evidence was, and still is, rejected by geologists committed to
Lyell's principle of uniformity, he nevertheless put on record a tremendous
amount of data, much of it gathered at firsthand, which is not nearly
as well known as it should be. In one of his major works, The Mammoth
and the Flood, he collected data regarding the innumerable known cases
of mammoths frozen in northern latitudes, particularly in Siberia. (165)
And yet in spite of this information, which is always very well documented,
a comparatively recent paper by William R. Farrand entitled, "Frozen
Mammoths and Modern Geology," spoke of only some 39 known frozen
carcasses, of which only four are by any means complete; and it never
once mentions the books and papers published by Sir Henry Howorth.
Howorth
continued:
If animals
die occasionally (in large numbers) from natural causes, different species
do not come together to die, nor does the lion come to take his last sleep
with the lamb! The fact of finding masses of animal remains.of mixed species
all showing the same state of preservation, not only points to a more
or less contemporary death, but is quite fatal to the theory that they
ended their days peacefully and by purely natural means. If they had been
exposed to the air, and to the severe transition between mid-winter and
mid-summer, which characterizes Arctic latitudes, the mammoths would have
decayed rapidly. But their state of preservation proves that they were
covered over and protected ever since.
This renowned
but neglected authority concluded:
It
is almost certain in my opinion that a very great cataclysm or catastrophe
occurred by which the mammoth and his companions were overwhelmed over
a very large part of the earth's surface. And that the same catastrophe
was accompanied by a very great and sudden change of climate in Siberia,
by which the animals which had previously lived in fairly temperate conditions
were frozen . . . and were never once thawed until the day of their discovery.
No other theory will explain the perfect preservation of these great elephants.
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Flashback:
September 6, 2002 -
A perspective on potential climate changes presented by Dr.
Robert B. Gagosian, President and Director of Woods Hole Oceanographic
Institution - Global warming could actually lead to a big chill in some
parts of the world. If the atmosphere continues to warm, it could soon
trigger a dramatic and abrupt cooling throughout the North Atlantic region—where,
not incidentally, some 60 percent of the world’s economy is based.
When
I say “dramatic,” I mean: Average winter temperatures could
drop by 5 degrees Fahrenheit over much of the United States, and by 10
degrees in the northeastern United States and in Europe. That’s
enough to send mountain glaciers advancing down from the Alps. To freeze
rivers and harbors and bind North Atlantic shipping lanes in ice. To disrupt
the operation of ground and air transportation. To cause energy needs
to soar exponentially. To force wholesale changes in agricultural practices
and fisheries. To change the way we feed our populations.
In short,
the world, and the world economy, would be drastically different. [...]
And when I say “abrupt,” I mean:
These changes could happen within your lifetime, and your grandchildren’s
grandchildren will still be confronting them.
And
when I say “soon,” I mean: In just the past year, we have
seen ominous signs that we may be headed toward a potentially dangerous
threshold. If we cross it, Earth’s climate could
switch gears and jump very rapidly—not gradually— into a completely
different mode of operation. [...]
These
warm-to-cold transitions happen in about 3 to 10 years. The
cold periods lasted for 500 to 1,000 years. Such oscillations in temperature
and ocean circulation have occurred on a regular basis.
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Flashback:
Galactic
dust storm enters Solar System
05
August 03
NewScientist.com news service
The Sun's
shifting magnetic field is set to focus a decade-long storm of galactic
dust grains towards the inner Solar System, including Earth.
The
effect this will have on our planet - if any - is unknown.
But some researchers have speculated that sustained
periods of cosmic dust bombardment might be related to ice ages and even
mass extinctions.
During the
last decade, the magnetic field of the Sun acted like a shield, deflecting
the electrically charged galactic dust away from the Solar System. However,
the Sun's regular cycle of activity peaked in 2001.
As expected,
its magnetic field then flipped over, so that south became north and vice-versa.
In this configuration, rather than deflecting the galactic dust, the magnetic
field should actually channel the dust inwards.
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Flashback:
Climate
Change: The Science Isn't Settled
By James
Schlesinger
Monday, July 7, 2003
At
the time the U.S. Department of Energy was created in 1977, there was
widespread concern about the cooling trend that had been observed for
the previous quarter-century. After 1940 the temperature,
at least in the Northern Hemisphere, had dropped about one-half degree
Fahrenheit -- and more in the higher latitudes. In 1974 the National Science
Board, the governing body of the National Science Foundation, stated:
"During the last 20 to 30 years, world temperature has fallen, irregularly
at first but more sharply over the last decade."
Two years
earlier, the board had observed: "Judging
from the record of the past interglacial ages, the present time of high
temperatures should be drawing to an end . . . leading into the next glacial
age." And in 1975 the National Academy of Sciences
stated: "The climates of the earth have always been changing, and
they will doubtless continue to do so in the future. How
large these future changes will be, and where and how rapidly they will
occur, we do not know."
Comment:
So here we have a slightly different story from another horse's mouth,
and a supposedly more knowledgeable one, given that they employ most of
the "scientists" that speak on their behalf. According to the
above source, "they do not know". Plain and simple. Well, at
least that is a little more honest than completely trashing the idea of
very rapid glacial rebound, particularly when there exists ample evidence
showing that it is in fact a reality of our planet.
The
point is, dear readers, that we are all being lied to, in a most despicable
way, about something that may be of vital importance to our very existence
and any possible future we might experience. More than likely "the
powers that be", know, and have known for a long time, that we are
facing some very serious "earth changes" of a potentially cataclysmic
and CYCLICAL nature, and they are determined to ensure that knowledge
of this does not enter the public domain, or, even better from their point
of view, allow some twisted and distorted version of this knowledge to
be widely disseminated. Why? Because for humanity to be caught unaware
by a traumatic event generates so much more fear and confusion, which
in turn makes people so much more susceptible to being lied to about "what
is happening". Get it? Okay then, here is where you come in. Here
is what you can DO.
So
the government is lying to us? What is the correct response? Stage a coup
d'etat? Well, that is a little ridiculous, not only would it be futile,
but why would you attempt to physically oppose a government that has done
nothing to physically harm you? (so far). Okay, so they put fluoride in
our water and rat poison (aspartame) in our drinks, but you can always
choose what to drink. But they have not as yet physically imprisoned the
population. What they have done is infinitely worse. They have created
a world of lies and illusion for you to live in, right from the moment
you are born. They lie to you about everything. Basically, they have imprisoned
your mind. The natural response then is to free your mind. Reject the
lies and illusion that they attempt to foist upon us, use the mind that
"they" use to research and critically examine your reality.
Your mind is the one thing that they covet, take it back and we may yet
have hope to be masters of our own destiny...
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Global
warming debate aside, West is heating up
Tuesday,
May 4, 2004 Posted: 5:27 PM EDT (2127 GMT)
FLAGSTAFF,
Arizona (AP) -- Just outside this mountain town, where the acres of ponderosa
pine turn into a Christmas green blur, Tom Whitham eyes the weary, struggling
forest.
Death is
everywhere. Their limbs bare and bark brittle, the trees quickly turn
this forest into an aching reminder of the devastation of drought and
a massive bark beetle infestation.
Whitham pulls
his pickup truck over and gestures to the dead trees -- 75 percent in
this area alone.
Forget talk
of global warming and speculation of what it might do in 50 years, or
100. Here and across the West, climate change already is happening. Temperatures
are warmer, ocean levels are rising, the snowpack is dwindling and melting
earlier, flowers bloom earlier, mountain glaciers are disappearing and
a six-year drought is killing trees by the millions.
Most scientists
agree humans are to blame for at least part of that warming trend, but
to what degree?
"That's
the $64,000 question," said Whitham, a regents' professor of biology
at Northern Arizona University. "If we aren't causing it, we're certainly
contributing to it. Humans can take a drought and make it even worse."
[…]
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Mayan
discovery points to sophisticated society
Wednesday,
May 5, 2004 Posted: 2:59 AM EDT (0659 GMT)
(CNN) --
Excavations at a little-known Mayan ruin in Guatemala indicate it was
once one of the largest and most sophisticated cities in the preclassic
Mayan world.
Archaeologist
Francisco Estrada-Belli of Vanderbilt University and colleagues have been
conducting research excavations at the site, called Cival, since 2000,
with support from the National Geographic Society.
They said
the city thrived from about 500 B.C. to 100 A.D., when it was apparently
sacked by invaders and then abandoned.
"We
were extremely fortunate to have found a completely preserved preclassic
city that is not buried by later construction, giving us the rare opportunity
to fully explore its architecture, and the monuments, and the burials,"
Estrada-Belli said Tuesday in a conference call with reporters.
Among the
items of interest uncovered so far are two large stucco masks associated
with the Mayan corn deity.
[...] "What's
also most remarkable about the offerings in the Cival plaza is that they
are related to the main axis of the site, which is directed toward the
rising sun," Estrada-Belli said. "And this shows that the plaza
was for public rituals celebrating the recreation of cosmological order
in the beginning of the cycle of maize, as well as the accession of Mayan
rulers."
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Rebels:
U.S. eyes Latin America with trade zone plan
Tuesday,
May 4, 2004 Posted: 3:55 PM EDT (1955 GMT)
BOGOTA, Colombia
(AP) -- Colombia's main rebel group accused the United States on Tuesday
of using a proposed hemisphere-wide trade zone to colonize Latin American
countries. […]
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Bombs
hit Athens police station
Wednesday,
May 5, 2004 Posted: 3:59 AM EDT (0759 GMT)
ATHENS, Greece
-- Three bombs have exploded outside a heavily-guarded police station
in central Athens, in a series of timed blasts, as the nation begins a
100-day countdown to the Olympic Games.
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Thousands
homeless after strong earthquake in China
BEIJING
: Tents and other supplies were being rushed to an area of western China
after a strong earthquake left thousands of people homeless but no-one
injured, local officials said.
"There
have been no casualties, no-one killed or injured but over 3,100 houses
have been damaged to soon extent, 700 to 800 seriously damaged,"
Mia Shouhua, director of the Delingha Seismological Bureau, told AFP.
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Earthquake
tremors felt in Miri and Bintulu
KUALA LUMPUR:
Tremors from an earthquake, which occurred in the South China Sea at 7.29am
yesterday, were felt in several places in Sarawak, including Miri and
Bintulu.
The Meteorological
Services Department here said the earthquake measured 4.8 on the Richter
Scale.
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Inquest
into 1953 Porton Down death re-opens
Press Association
Wednesday May 5, 2004
An inquest
into the death of a young RAF man was reopened today almost 51 years after
he died while taking part in secret government chemical weapons tests.
The investigation
into what happened to Ronald Maddison, 20, an airman, in May 1953 was
being seen as a test case for those who believe he and many others were
duped into taking part in dangerous trials. Maddison died after being
exposed to nerve gas at Porton Down, the biological and chemical weapons
research base on Salisbury Plain, Wiltshire.
The inquest
could result in civil action against the government by others claiming
to be affected by the tests, lawyers have said.
The coroner
for Swindon and Wiltshire, David Masters, said the inquest would be unprecedented:
"No coroner or jury has been required before this day to investigate
a death that took place as long ago as this one." [...]
Comment:
Certainly, but if the tests that were unlawfully carried out on Ronald
Maddison are still being conducted then it is of critical importance to
us all. See our Signs
Ethnic Specific Weapons Supplement for more on this.
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here to comment on this article
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