@FF – sorry – didn´t see yours before.

Posted by: b | May 4 2005 17:27 utc | 4

I understand the US economic interests in grabbing Afghani/Iraqi/Iranian/Caspian oil. The british economic interests are less clear to me. Doesn’t Europe already get Caspian oil access via Russia? Or does that exclude the UK?

Posted by: gylangirl | May 4 2005 18:45 utc | 6

@Glynagirl, I think BP lost some wells in Iraq, or otherwise wants a piece of the action. It was just as much about oil for Britain as it was for xUS.

Posted by: jj | May 4 2005 19:40 utc | 8

another surreal day
neocon israeli spy arrested for passing secrets but the way cnn/bbc report it you’d think he had just passed wind
little lady england guilty not guilty guilty – whatever – in front of courts that hose the sins of their deviants
spectacular movements of the insurgency in a number of areas that suggest they are intensifying – tho their methods are barbaric they are at war with barbarism – tho any intensity in action is so clearly covered up because who wants the bad old story
nothing about the planes or ships or men
australians doing a little show business with the man they have already sacrificed
& for all the talk on the strauss thread – about institutions, constitutions, laws etc etc – tony blair having made a mockery of it all in rupert murdochs parliament – will win again

Posted by: remembereringgiap | May 4 2005 20:05 utc | 10

Top-shelf social theory from great minds in the Texas legislature

Edwards argued bawdy performances are a distraction for students resulting in pregnancies, dropouts and the spread of sexually transmitted diseases.

Posted by: slothrop | May 4 2005 20:54 utc | 12

& another two kids murdered by the israeli army in cisjordanie
& at least here what appears to be radio silence on the israeli spy franklin
for fuck’s sake there are thousands of arb people in american jails – without any of the benefits of the so called common law – indeed the law is either corrupted or being laughed at & an israelis spy tonight has tête à tête with the assasin in chief rumsfield
journalists, my ass
they are all slaves or future slaves of the monster murdoch

Posted by: remembereringgiap | May 4 2005 22:23 utc | 14

Wonder if Karen Kwiatkowski will weigh in on Franklin, w/whom/under whom I believe she worked.
What struck me about arrest of Franklin is that they didn’t arrest anyone @AIPAC…receiving classified documents, being in posession of them is a similar crime I believe.

Posted by: jj | May 5 2005 3:10 utc | 16

on the franklin story, gorilla in the room has some pertinent questions for self-respecting members of the media to ask.
on bushCo’s “death-dealing hypocrisy”, chris floyd keeps reminding us that we can’t afford to be tone deaf

Posted by: b real | May 5 2005 3:28 utc | 18

and then there is that notorious loooooong memory. remembered everyday.

Posted by: anna missed | May 5 2005 9:42 utc | 20

From Financial Sense market wrap for 5/4/05:

The biggest news of the day came from the U.S. Treasury Department with their announcement they are considering new offerings of the 30-year Treasury Bond. The Treasury will give their final decision for the 30-year bond on August 3rd when they announce the auction details for the third quarter refunding to take place on August 9, 10 and 11. It is expected the government will conduct the first sales of the bonds in February 2006. Timothy Bitsberger of the U.S. Treasury said, “We are doing this because times have changed, and our debt portfolio has changed.” Simply put, we have more debt and less time to pay it back.

A new investment option for your private account.

Posted by: lonesomeG | May 5 2005 12:24 utc | 22

nothing about the loscal elections in occupied palestine which the hams will win decisively
the murder of two kids by the lsraeli army and no doubt more by the end of nightfall
the death of parliamentary process in ‘united’ kingdom
tho i give best wishes to gorgeous george galloway

Posted by: remembereringgiap | May 5 2005 13:47 utc | 24

Le non illusoire de la gauche – Jürgen Habermas

Posted by: Nugget | May 5 2005 13:54 utc | 26

merci nugget for the habermas
& on another german question
the honuring today of the murders at auschwitz – birkenau & while thos deaths must be honoured & understood – which they patently are not – & while acknowledging the death camp was merely an extension of the british concenration camp in sth africa. this is worthy or memory & of recognition
but as raul hilberg points out the millions of people were killed by the killing actions of the einsatzgruppen & of the german army in the east. are histroians still so antisoviet that they cannot accept what every holocaust scholar accepts – that the deaths of millions were done by men & armies – that they were done knowingly & that there were not only jews in their number – there were communists, gypsies & nationalists
& the other reality of the east – was the willing & active participation of the polish, the ukrainians., the estonian, the lithunian, the bylorussian, especially the latvians – that these nations created their own celebrations of the murder of their jews
there is the reality of both france & holland where the collaboration assisted the nazis in a task that they otherwise were not capable of doing & the nations of france & holland wanted to go further than the nazis
the scum writers brassillach & louis ferdinand celine sd “also take the little ones” – when the nazis had some doubts about taking the children of the jewish dead
& while my france can hide behind the ‘limited’ numbers of jew of french nationality – the jews from all over europe who had sought refuge in france – like walter benjamin – were almost in their entirety – liquidated
that is still the hidden story of the destruction of european jewry populations & govt took an active part in that destruction
& it is a destruction – that ironically we find parallels in both occupied palestine & in iraq

Posted by: remembereringgiap | May 5 2005 14:41 utc | 28

merci dismal science for the photo of uncle still alive & vigorous after all these years

Posted by: remembereringgiap | May 5 2005 17:06 utc | 30

Colombian police arrested two U.S. soldiers [Wednesday] for alleged involvement in a plot to traffic thousands of rounds of ammunition – possibly to outlawed right-wing paramilitary groups, authorities said Wednesday.

The Colombian attorney general’s office said the arrested American soldiers had been in contact with a former Colombian police sergeant, Will Gabriel Aguilar, who has been linked to paramilitary groups. Aguilar, another retired policeman and two other Colombians were also arrested, the police official said.
The cache was composed of more than 40,000 rounds of ammunition sent to Colombia by the United States under its Plan Colombia aid program, aimed at crushing a leftist insurgency and the drug trafficking that fuels it, officials said.

Posted by: b real | May 5 2005 17:25 utc | 32

well well well what a surprise – he law is the law is the law
from cnn
WASHINGTON (CNN) — Navy investigators have determined a U.S. Marine acted in self-defense when he shot an apparently wounded and unarmed Iraqi inside a Falluja mosque in November, a senior Pentagon official said Wednesday.
The Marine corporal, who will not face charges, was under investigation in the shootings of four enemy combatants as part of an operation during the siege of Falluja on November 13, 2004. The mosque shooting was captured on videotape by an embedded reporter.

Posted by: remembereringgiap | May 5 2005 18:35 utc | 34

thx b, hadn’t seen that.
Hackworth died? No. Oh no. Not acceptable.
I raise a glass. To all honourable…

Posted by: Blackie | May 5 2005 20:10 utc | 36

AIDS drugs were tested on hundreds of foster children in the United States during the past two decades by government-funded researchers who often failed to provide the children with basic protection outlined by federal law and required by some states, the Associated Press reported.
The National Institutes of Health funded more than four dozen studies in at least seven states — Illinois, Louisiana, Maryland, New York, North Carolina, Colorado and Texas. The HIV-infected foster children used in the research were mostly poor or minority and ranged in age from infants to those in their late teens.
In several of the studies, the children suffered side effects, including vomiting, rashes and severe drops in levels of infection-fighting blood cells. One study reported a “disturbing” higher death rate among children who took higher doses of a drug, the AP reported.
In that study, researchers weren’t able to determine a safe and effective dosage for the drug.
Federal law requires that independent advocates be appointed for foster children enrolled in studies that involve greater than minimal risk and lack the promise of direct benefit. In many of these AIDS drug studies, the foster children weren’t provided with such advocates, the AP reported.
The U.S. Office for Human Research Protections, which was created to protect research participants after the Tuskegee syphilis studies on black men, is investigating the use of foster children in AIDS research. The office declined to discuss the probe, the AP said.

Posted by: Nugget | May 5 2005 20:29 utc | 38

asia times online covers the AQ arrest
Al-Qaeda arrest: Hold the celebrations By Syed Saleem Shahzad

Asia Times Online analysis based on months of inquiries suggests that Abu Faraj will prove of little value in helping the US or anyone else reach Osama bin Laden, or in debilitating al-Qaeda.

The Pakistan striptease (continued) by B Raman

One need not be surprised that President George W Bush seems happier than even Musharraf over the arrest of Abu Faraj, whom he has described as a top general of bin Laden and whose arrest he has hailed as a critical victory in the so-called “war against terrorism”. It should help temporarily in drawing attention away from the continuing rampage of the resistance fighters and terrorists in Iraq, who have already killed 12 Americans and about 200 Iraqis, mainly Shi’ite and Kurdish recruits to the police, since April 29, thereby negating the claims of the US that the resistance movement and the foreign terrorists headed by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi were showing signs of internal dissension and loss of morale since the elections in Iraq earlier this year.

Posted by: b real | May 5 2005 20:34 utc | 40

Congress to force agencies to identify video news
“Congressional negotiators have agreed to bar government agencies for one year from issuing video news releases that do not clearly identify themselves as the source, Democratic Sen. Robert Byrd said on Tuesday.
Senate and House negotiators agreed to include the measure in an emergency spending bill banning the use of taxpayer dollars for producing the releases, which often resemble news segments…”

Posted by: b real | May 5 2005 21:56 utc | 42

LONDON – Tony Blair won a historic third term as prime minister Thursday but his Labour Party suffered a sharply reduced parliamentary majority in apparent punishment for going to war in Iraq, according to projections based on exit polls.
Such an outcome, if confirmed by the actual vote count, could set the stage for Blair to be replaced in midterm by a party rival such as Gordon Brown. As Treasury chief, Brown was widely credited for the strong economy that appears to have clinched Labour’s victory, outweighing the bitterness many voters said they felt over Iraq.
The BBC and ITV television stations projected that Labour would have a 66-seat majority, down from its 161-seat lead over the combined opposition in the previous House of Commons.
The projections had Labour taking 37 percent of the popular vote, the lowest winning share ever. The Conservatives, showing their first signs of life since losing power eight years ago, were estimated at 33 percent.
Such a result matched the “bloody nose” — a humiliation but not a defeat — that opponents had hoped to give Blair.

Posted by: Nugget | May 5 2005 22:49 utc | 44

One wonders what could be worse than a ‘loss of morale’ among suicide bombers. Don’t get these guys depressed.
QUIT IT!!!! I almost blew my brewsky to LA.
Sad note. David Hackworth just died. Hopefully God will permit him to continue his website in heaven, and piss on the Pentagon from above.

Posted by: FlashHarry | May 5 2005 23:37 utc | 46

The World Health Organization (WHO) said yesterday that it had detected a case of the crippling polio virus in Indonesia, indicating that an outbreak rooted in Africa has leapt the Indian Ocean….

Posted by: Nugget | May 6 2005 1:39 utc | 48

U.S. beefs up military units in the Pacific: B-2 bombers, F-15E fighters in Guam, Aegis ships in Japan

Posted by: Nugget | May 6 2005 3:43 utc | 50

I called the television station myself, just now, to confirm this story:
The pastor of East Waynesville Baptist Church led a drive to kick out 9 members of his congregation who support abortion and homosexual rights. The pastor said, basically, that anyone who voted for John Kerry was not a christian.
Forty members of the church resigned in protest. One report said that members of the congregation clapped as the “infidels” were cast out of the temple of christo-fascism.
–anyway–I called the news desk and they confirmed the story. They said it would air again tomorrow. I asked if they had the story online and they said they didn’t, but in the kos thread, someone has some sort of video (I didn’t check it out.)
I hope the people who were asked to leave make sure the IRS removes the tax exempt status of that church.
Hopefully, the talibornagains will continue to show their true colors and the majority in this country will recognize how dangerous this assholes truly are. I am refraining from saying things like I hope that a plague of exploding toads falls down from the heavens upon this pastor and ruins his helmet haircut.

Posted by: fauxreal | May 6 2005 5:06 utc | 52

Anyone for a bona fide “smoking gun”?
IMPEACHMENT TIME: “FACTS WERE FIXED.”
By Greg Palast
Here it is. The smoking gun. The memo that has “IMPEACH HIM” written all over it.
The top-level government memo marked “SECRET AND STRICTLY PERSONAL,” dated eight months before Bush sent us into Iraq, following a closed meeting with the President, reads, “Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam through military action justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.”
Read that again: “The intelligence and facts were being fixed….”
For years, after each damning report on BBC TV, viewers inevitably ask me, “Isn’t this grounds for impeachment?” — vote rigging, a blind eye to terror and the bin Ladens before 9-11, and so on. Evil, stupidity and self-dealing are shameful but not impeachable. What’s needed is a “high crime or misdemeanor.”
And if this ain’t it, nothing is.
The memo uncovered this week by the Times, goes on to describe an elaborate plan by George Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair to hoodwink the planet into supporting an attack on Iraq knowing full well the evidence for war was a phony.
A conspiracy to commit serial fraud is, under federal law, racketeering. However, the Mob’s schemes never cost so many lives. …
[The leaked Downing Street memo is reproduced in full in the piece.]

Posted by: JMF | May 6 2005 12:25 utc | 54

The best coffee you ever had was not by Starbucks:
Starbucks won’t brew Springsteen CD

Starbucks Corp., a growing force in the music scene, says it chose to keep Bruce Springsteen’s new album, “Devils & Dust,” off the menu at its coffee shops, partly because of concerns about its explicit lyrics.

Reno lyrics

She slipped me out of her mouth
“You’re ready,” she said
She took off her bra and panties
Wet her fingers, slipped it inside her
And crawled over me on the bed
She bought me another whisky
Said “here’s to the best you ever had”
We laughed and made a toast
It wasn’t the best I ever had
Not even close

Posted by: b | May 6 2005 13:49 utc | 56

Got it. The work of Andre Gunder Frank remembered:
Always ahead of his time, Frank stood tradition and received theory on their heads over a wide range of issues. Many of his analyses and predictions concerning the developing world have proved accurate: the persistence of poverty despite foreign investment and because of unmanageable debt servicing; the failures of national capitalism in developing countries and of Soviet-bloc and Chinese communism; and the negative effects of global capitalism.
He anticipated the reappearance of persistent structural economic crisis and imbalance on an international scale, and the ineffectiveness of Keynesian and fiscal stimulatory means to redress this; the polarising consequences of globalisation,giving rise to social movements for progressive change; and the simultaneous emergence of nationalist, ethnic and religious fundamentalist movements that may eventually undermine the democratic culture.
Central to his outlook was a rejection of Eurocentrism in favour of a humanocentric, world-historical perspective which views the west’s global dominance as already passing.

Posted by: Dismal Science | May 6 2005 15:27 utc | 58

I am told: “You’re a tax-and-spend liberal democrat. People like you are the reason everyone else votes for guys like Reagan or George W.”
Are you a Republican? ahem – 14%

Posted by: b | May 6 2005 19:43 utc | 60

Posted by: citizen | May 6 2005 20:18 utc | 62

Mr Blair acknowledged that the Iraq war had been “deeply divisive” but said he believed people wanted to move on.
bbc
i can’t believe these morons. they really think og politics as some form of soap opera or pantomime. they love their ‘closures’, their ‘moving on’, their ‘getting on with it’, their beloved ‘timelines’, their coarse ‘narratives’
i am more tired than i imagine by their tattle
but felicitations to gorgeous george galloway & respect

Posted by: remembereringgiap | May 6 2005 20:33 utc | 64

upps – Microsoft just retracted:
Microsoft Reverses, Will Back Gay Rights

Posted by: b | May 6 2005 21:58 utc | 66

nice find catlady
The broadcast flag is dead – for now:
Court Blocks TV Anti-Piracy Technology Rules

A federal appeals court handed a major setback to Hollywood and the television networks today when it struck down an anti-piracy regulation that required computer and television makers to use new technology that would make it difficult for consumers to copy and distribute digital programs.
The unanimous ruling by the three-judge panel, in an important case at the intersection of intellectual property and technology, was a stinging rebuke for the Federal Communications Commission. The court said the commission had exceeded its authority when it approved the rules in 2003.
It was an important victory for libraries, consumer groups and civil liberties organizations. They had maintained that the regulation, known as the “broadcast flag” rule, would stifle innovation in technology and make it more difficult for consumers and users of library services to circulate material legitimately.

Posted by: b | May 7 2005 0:47 utc | 68

Does anyone here actually get the NYT hard copy? If so, would you pass along how they’ve featured or not the Scoop coming out of Britain affirming what we’ve know all along – elites decide what they want to do then create justificatory “facts on the ground” to manufacture consent – this one about Iraq invasion.

Posted by: jj | May 7 2005 4:39 utc | 70

Bernhard, any info you can share from the German press would be greatly appreciated??
We seem to have a little problem here….
The Official Program for the German National Tennis Tournament being played this week printed vintage Nazi era stuff – accompanied by a picture of…Hermann Goering (Not making this up):
The German Open has been rocked by a scandal over pro-Nazi, anti-Semitic comments, along with a photo of the Nazi leader Hermann Goering, in a program published by the elite club hosting the women’s tennis tournament, German media reported Friday.
The mass-market Bild newspaper reported that the brochure by the century-old LTTC Red White Berlin tennis club said the flight of Jewish tennis players from Nazi Germany in the 1930s and 1940s only led to a brief drop in membership, and that it finally ushered in a “golden age” at the organization.
“The number of members was reduced by half but in this way the former so-called Jews’ club opened itself to new members,” the anonymous author wrote on page 71 of the magazine. “This change did not lead to a break for the club or German top tennis. Instead, it led to a golden age.”
Link
German official claims that MaleMuslims responsible for the program. I tend to believe this as a) I cannot imagine a German allowing this – sounds like the whole thing was cut & pasted from Nazi era program of some sort b) The anti-semitism of MaleMuslims needn’t be elaborated c) Germany is not putting on this tournament next year, rather allowing the MaleMuslims of Qatar to steal it. People are very very unhappy about that. What better way to deflect fury, so people will say Screw Germany, thank god we’re outta there.
Personally, I hope Germany makes amends by continuing to sponsor the tournament.

Posted by: jj | May 7 2005 5:41 utc | 72

Nugget, the article states:
“The chairman of LTTC Red White Berlin, Hans-Jürgen Jobski, told Bild that the organizers of the Qatar Total tournament were responsible for the publication.”
This means that the Club is not responsible, rather the Qatar Tennis Federation, which organized it, as the title implies.
As for my so-called “prejudices”, I view these bastards w/the same horror & revulsion I do Am. MaleFundies, or Cardinal Ratzo, or Medieval MaleCatholics. I look forward to their evolution.

Posted by: jj | May 7 2005 6:28 utc | 74

The Democrats and Iraq
….Now Hayden has written a respectful but pointed open letter to Democratic Chairperson Howard Dean. In it (www.thenation.com/edcut/index.mhtml?bid=7&pid=2356), he urges Dean and the Democrats to get some backbone and, out of moral and practical necessity, decisively break with the Republican Party on the Iraq War.
Hayden is impatient with Dean and the Democrats for abandoning their critique of the war. It’s understandable that Democrats have decided to take their stand against the Republicans on domestic issues. Defending Social Security and fighting the over-reach of the religious right are winnable issues. But they are not enough.
In framing his open letter, Hayden acknowledges his own position in favor of immediate withdrawal.
“I do not believe the Iraq War is worth another drop of blood, another dollar of taxpayer subsidy, another stain on our honor,” he writes. “Our occupation is the chief cause of the nationalist resistance in that country. We should end the war and foreign economic occupation. Period.
“To those Democrats in search of a muscular, manly foreign policy,” Hayden continues, “let me say that real men (and real patriots) do not sacrifice young lives for their own mistakes, throw good money after bad, or protect the political reputations of high officials at the expense of their nation’s moral reputation…”

Posted by: Nugget | May 7 2005 7:00 utc | 76

Financial Sense has an extensive (streaming radio) interview with John Perkins author of “Confessions of an Economic Hit Man”.
Recommended as well as Amy Goodman`s (of Democracy now) interview with him.
About his book:

Covertly recruited by the United States National Security Agency and on the payroll of an international consulting firm, he traveled the world—to Indonesia, Panama, Ecuador, Colombia, Saudi Arabia, Iran and other strategically important countries. His job was to implement policies that promoted the interests of the U.S. corporatocracy (a coalition of government, banks, and corporations) while professing to alleviate poverty—policies that alienated many nations and ultimately led to September 11 and growing anti-Americanism.
Perkins’ story illuminates just how far he and his colleagues—self-described as economic hit men—were willing to go. He explains, for instance, how he helped to implement a secret scheme that funneled billions of Saudi Arabian petro dollars back into the U.S. economy, and that further cemented the intimate relationship between the Islamic fundamentalist House of Saud and a succession of American administrations. Perkins reveals the hidden mechanics of imperial control behind some of the most dramatic events in recent history, such as the fall of the Shah of Iran, the death of Panamanian president Omar Torrijos, and the U.S. invasions of Panama and Iraq.
Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, which many people warned Perkins not to write, exposes the little known inner workings of a system that fosters globalization and leads to the impoverishment of millions of people across the planet. It is a compelling story that also offers hope and a vision for realizing the American dream of a just and compassionate world that will bring us greater security.

Posted by: b | May 7 2005 13:00 utc | 78

Most detainee abuse reports don’t qualify as torture – Gonzales
Many of the accounts detailing abuse of detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay by American military and civilian personnel don’t meet the definition of torture, U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said.
Gonzales, who grew up in Houston, said Congress requires proving that intentional infliction of severe physical and mental pain or suffering occurred to have a prosecutable case of torture….

Posted by: Nugget | May 7 2005 17:35 utc | 80

just scanned the journals & i found out that the british won the 2nd world war at tobruk & in the battle of britain
did it all by themselves evidently
except for the help offered by the freedomloving & jewhating baltic nations which are now judenfrei
the americans came of course to offer a helping hand & to set up a loans & saving company
& the russians – what they were doing
what they do best obviouslly – being evil
fiendishly evil
yes the ghosts of 30 million of them
history shmistory

Posted by: remembereringgiap | May 7 2005 20:55 utc | 82

Who Beat Hitler?;
By ALEXANDER COCKBURN
Monday, May 9, brings us the sixtieth anniversary of the defeat of Nazism in Europe. I remember the first VE Day in 1945, sitting on my father’s shoulders on the side of some London street, watching the tanks rumble by and a soldier in a tin hat popping up and down in the hatch.
Each time May 9 rolls around Americans have to be reminded who do most of the fighting and who bore most of the losses. In 1944 the Allied forces commanded by Eisenhower faced 53 German divisions in western Europe. The Red Army had to deal with 180 German divisions in the east. The US lost about 400,000 in its armed forces, Britain, 260,000. Historians have been revising upwards Soviet military deaths, to a level as high as 14 million and beyond, with estimates of civilian casualties ranging from 7 to 20 million.
You can say ­ and many do ­ that many among these millions died because Stalin’s generals were willing to sacrifice division upon divisions in order to obey the schedules demanded by a psychotic tyrant. True no doubt, but that doesn’t alter the sacrifice or the immensity of the numbers lost on the eastern front in the defeat of fascism, or the fact that it was the Soviet Union that played the prime role in defeating Hitler.
Not for the first time, the White House’s contribution to these commemorations of victory over Hitler has been to indulge in seamy political antics. On his way to a D-Day memorial in 1988 Reagan stopped off to salute the dead at Bitburg, including members of Hitler’s SS. Bush Jr is playing to the Baltic and Georgian galleries.
Roberta Manning, professor of history at Boston College, has a good comment on these antics:
“For Russians, Belorussians, Ukrainians and many Caucasians and Central Asians, like the Jews, World War II was a Holocaust, given the magnitude of the sheer human sacrifice now estimated to range for the former USSR anywhere from 28-35 million war dead. If Israel can mourn the loss of six million of people without having anyone throwing the ongoing plight of the Palestinians in their face, surely Russia and the Soviet successor states have the right to do the same.
“There is no Putin problem. The problem is Bush, whose advisors finally realized that it is easier to divide the EU over anti-Russianism than over Iraq. Dividing the EU over Russia is essential to the global strategy of the Republican Party’s increasingly powerful and ever more totalitarian Neo-Conservative-Born-Again Ideologues who openly espouse US-Evangelical domination of the world and its resources in the 21st Century. A unified EU that develops close ties to a democratic Russia would prove a potent obstacle to these plans. The real problem of the world today is to manage America’s decline while dealing with an ideologically driven US leadership that lives in a world of fantasy and cannot deal with the rise of China and India much less a real European Union no longer under its political control. We should remember that United States never once criticized Yeltsin’s dictatorship.”
counterpunch weekend

Posted by: remembereringgiap | May 8 2005 0:14 utc | 84

Gul: We decided to accept request by the U.S. to use Incirlik base
ANKARA (AA) – Turkish Foreign Minister & Deputy Prime Minister Abdullah Gul said on Wednesday, “We have decided to accept the request of the United States to use the Incirlik Air Base, and provide it with the necessary facilities. Flights at the base will be restricted to transportation of unlethal cargo to Afghanistan and Iraq…”

Posted by: Nugget | May 8 2005 4:02 utc | 86

U.S. soldier lifts lid on Camp Delta
For the first time, an army insider blows the whistle on human rights abuses at Guantánamo

An American soldier has revealed shocking new details of abuse and sexual torture of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay in the first high-profile whistleblowing account to emerge from inside the top-secret base

.

Erik Saar, an Arabic speaker who was a translator in interrogation sessions, has produced a searing first-hand account of working at Guantánamo. It will prove a damaging blow to a White House still struggling to recover from the abuse scandal at Abu Ghraib jail in Iraq

.

In an exclusive interview, Saar told The Observer that prisoners were physically assaulted by ‘snatch squads’ and subjected to sexual interrogation techniques and that the Geneva Conventions were deliberately ignored by the US military

.

He also said that soldiers staged fake interrogations to impress visiting administration and military officials. Saar believes that the great majority of prisoners at Guantánamo have no terrorist links and little worthwhile intelligence information has emerged from the base despite its prominent role in America’s war on terror

.

Saar paints a picture of a base where interrogations of often innocent prisoners have spiralled out of control, doing massive damage to America’s image in the Muslim world

.

Saar said events at Guantánamo were a disaster for US foreign policy. ‘We are trying to promote democracy worldwide. I don’t see how you can do that and run a place like Guantánamo Bay. This is now a rallying cry to the Muslim world,’ he said

.

Saar arrived at Guantánamo Bay in December 2002, and worked there until June 2003. He first worked as a translator in the prisoners’ cages. He was then transferred to the interrogation teams, acting as a translator

.

Saar’s book, Inside the Wire, provides the first fully detailed look inside Guantánamo Bay’s role as a prison for detainees the White House has insisted are the ‘worst of the worst’ among Islamic militants. His tale describes his gradual disillusionment, from arriving as a soldier keen to do his duty to eventually leaving believing the regime to be a breach of human rights and a disaster for the war on terror

.

Among the most shocking abuses Saar recalls is the use of sex in interrogation sessions. Some female interrogators stripped down to their underwear and rubbed themselves against their prisoners. Pornographic magazines and videos were also used as rewards for confessing

.

In one session a female interrogator took off some of her clothes and smeared fake blood on a prisoner after telling him she was menstruating. ‘That’s a big deal. It is a major insult to one of the world’s biggest religions where we are trying to win hearts and minds,’ Saar said

.

Saar also describes the ‘snatch teams’, known as the Initial Reaction Force (IRF), who remove unco-operative prisoners from their cells. He describes one such snatch where a prisoner’s arm was broken. In a training session for an IRF team, one US soldier posing as a prisoner was beaten so badly that he suffered brain damage. It is believed the IRF team had not been told the ‘detainee’ was a soldier

.

Staff at Guantánamo also faked interrogations for visiting senior officials. Prisoners who had already been interrogated were sat down behind one-way mirrors and asked old questions while the visiting officials watched

.

Saar also describes the effects prolonged confinement had on many of the prisoners. He details bloody suicide attempts and serious mental illnesses. One detainee slashed his wrists with razors and wrote in blood on a wall: ‘I committed suicide because of the brutality of my oppressors

.’

Saar details a meeting with an army lawyer where linguists, interrogators and intelligence workers at the base were told the Geneva Conventions did not apply to their work as the detainees could not be considered normal prisoners of war. At the end of the meeting the group was told: ‘We still intend to treat the detainees humanely, but our purpose is to get any actionable intelligence we can and quickly

.’

But Saar said that many, if not most, of the detainees were rarely interrogated at all after their initial arrival. They just sat listlessly in their cells for months on end. He believes that many of them were either simple footsoldiers caught up in the war in Afghanistan or elsewhere, or innocent men sold out to the Americans by local enemies settling a grudge or looking to collect reward money

.

Saar accepts that some genuine terrorists have been held at Guantánamo. ‘There are individuals there who I hope will never be set free,’ he said, but he contends that they are in the minority. ‘Overall, it is counter-productive,’ he said

.

Saar was an enthusiastic supporter of George Bush in the 2000 elections but he has changed his world view after being exposed to Guantánamo Bay. ‘I believe in America and American troops,’ he said, ‘but it has drastically changed my world view and my politics

.’

Saar left the army and has become a hate figure for some right-wing groups which say he and his book are unpatriotic. But Saar believes exposing the abuses of Guantánamo will lessen the damage done to America’s reputation in the long run. ‘The camp is a mistake. It does not need to be that way. There should be a better way, more in line with American morals,’ he said

.

Posted by: Nugget | May 8 2005 5:40 utc | 88

another bioscientist dies
One of Australia’s leading scientists and a pioneering policewoman are among the 15 victims of the nation’s worst plane crash in almost 40 years.
Police today said all aboard the Fairchild Metroliner III aircraft were killed when it crashed and exploded in flames yesterday near the Lockhart River Aboriginal community in Cape York, in far north Queensland.
The plane smacked into a 500m high, tree covered hillside on approach to Lockhart River airstrip on a flight from Bamaga at the tip of Cape York.
Although there was rain, low cloud and strong wind at the time, the two pilots had not reported problems. Investigators said it was too early to determine the cause of the crash.
They hope to recover the aircraft’s flight recorder and take it to Canberra for analysis.
Among the dead was Dr David Banks, 55, the principal scientist with quarantine authority Biosecurity Australia.
from melbourne age

Posted by: remembereringgiap | May 8 2005 13:07 utc | 90

Wow, this must go over great with Bush’s Muslims friends – well if not, it sure is a great ad for Bin Forgotten!
Dismay at US Koran ‘desecration’

It says that US personnel on one occasion flushed a copy of Islam’s most holy book “down the toilet”.

Posted by: Fran | May 8 2005 17:05 utc | 92