News : [CNN] Iraq war takes heavy toll on civilians

BAGHDAD, July 19 (Reuters) - U.S.-led forces, insurgents and criminal gangs have killed nearly 25,000 Iraqi civilians, police, and army recruits since the war began in March 2003, according to a survey by a U.S.-British non-government group. Nearly half the deaths in the two years surveyed to March 2005 were in Baghdad, where a fifth of Iraq's 25 million people live, according to media reports monitored by Iraq Body Count. Of the total, nearly 37 percent were killed by U.S.-led forces, the group said.

The U.S. military and the Iraqi government disputed the findings. The U.S. military said it did not target civilians. "We do everything we can to avoid civilian casualties in all of our operations," said Lieutenant Colonel Steve Boylan, a spokesman in Baghdad.

News : [Washington Post] Padilla Lawyer: Charge Him or Release Him

The Associated Press
Tuesday, July 19, 2005; 5:20 PM

RICHMOND, Va. -- A lawyer for Jose Padilla, an American accused of plotting to detonate a radioactive "dirty bomb," went before a federal appeals court Tuesday and demanded the U.S. government either charge his client with a crime or set him free.

But a Bush administration lawyer told the court that the president must have authority to indefinitely detain suspected terrorists who come to the United States intent on killing civilians.

Padilla, a former Chicago gang member and Muslim convert suspected of being an al-Qaida operative, was seized in 2002 after flying from Pakistan to Chicago on what authorities said was a scouting mission for a plot to set off a conventional bomb laced with radioactive material. Padilla also is suspected of planning to blow up apartment buildings in several cities by filling them with natural gas.

President Bush declared Padilla an "enemy combatant," a designation that allows the military to hold someone indefinitely without charges. Padilla is in the Navy brig in Charleston, S.C., and has been held for the past three years.

At issue before the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is whether Padilla _ an American seized on U.S. soil _ should have been designated an enemy combatant.

"I may be the first lawyer to stand here and say I'm asking for my client to be indicted by a federal grand jury," Padilla's lawyer, Andrew Patel, told a three-judge panel of the court, widely regarded as the most conservative in the nation.

Patel later told reporters that the government should "put up or shut up _ it's that simple."

In a packed courtroom under tight security, Circuit Judge J. Michael Luttig pressed Bush administration lawyer Paul Clement on whether the government was suggesting that the battlefield in the war on terror now includes U.S. soil.

"I can say that. I can say it boldly," Clement said.

News : [Washington Post] Baghdad hospital doctors on strike against soldiers

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - More than two dozen doctors walked out of one of Baghdad's busiest hospitals on Tuesday to protest what they said was abuse by Iraqi soldiers, leaving about 100 patients to fend for themselves in chaotic wards.

Physicians said the troubles started when soldiers barged into a woman's wing at Yarmouk hospital, opened curtains and conducted searches as patients lay in their beds on Monday.

A 27-year-old internal medicine specialist said a soldier began intimidating and abusing him.

"Before he left he said, 'Why are you looking in disapproval?' Then he came and punched me lightly on my arm before sticking his rifle into my stomach and cocking it," the doctor, who requested anonymity for fear of reprisals, told Reuters.

"I stayed quiet but relatives of the patients told him to calm down before pulling him out of the room. Just then, four more soldiers came in and pointed a rifle at my head. At that point I became scared and begged them to leave me alone."

Ministry of Defense officials were not available for comment on the incident despite repeated requests.

News : [BBC] World 'ignores' Niger food crisis

The United Nations top aid official has accused the international community of neglecting the food crisis in Niger.

Some 150,000 children will die soon without aid, out of 2.5m who need food, said Jan Egeland.

"Niger is the example of a neglected emergency, where early warnings went unheeded," he told the BBC.

Six weeks ago, the UN's Niger appeal had not received a single pledge. However, the government has also sought to play down the scale of the crisis.

It has refused demands to distribute free food and has been criticised for not doing more to prepare for the food shortages.

The crisis was widely predicted after last year's poor harvests, following poor rains and locust invasions.

News : [Financial Times] China to US : We'll nuke your bitch ass.

Published: July 14 2005 21:59

China is prepared to use nuclear weapons against the US if it is attacked by Washington during a confrontation over Taiwan, a Chinese general said on Thursday.

" If the Americans draw their missiles and position-guided ammunition on to the target zone on China's territory, I think we will have to respond with nuclear weapons, " said General Zhu Chenghu.
-[---skip---]-
Rick Fisher, a former senior US congressional official and an authority on the Chinese military, said the specific nature of the threat " is a new addition to China's public discourse " . China's official doctrine has called for no first use of nuclear weapons since its first atomic test in 1964. But Gen Zhu is not the first Chinese official to refer to the possibility of using such weapons first in a conflict over Taiwan.

Chas Freeman, a former US assistant secretary of defence, said in 1996 that a PLA official had told him China could respond in kind to a nuclear strike by the US in the event of a conflict with Taiwan. The official is believed to have been Xiong Guangkai, now the PLA's deputy chief of general staff.

Gen Zhu said his views did not represent official Chinese policy and he did not anticipate war with the US.

News : [Yahoo] Military's Energy-Beam Weapons Delayed

Sat Jul 9, 8:31 PM ET
" ARLINGTON, Va. - For years, the U.S. military has explored a new kind of firepower that is instantaneous, precise and virtually inexhaustible: beams of electromagnetic energy. "Directed-energy" pulses can be throttled up or down depending on the situation, much like the phasers on "Star Trek" could be set to kill or merely stun.
... skip ...
"When you're dealing with people whose full intent is to die, you can't give people a choice of whether to comply," said George Gibbs, a systems engineer for the Marine Expeditionary Rifle Squad Program who oversees directed-energy projects. "What I'm looking for is a way to shoot everybody, and they're all OK."

Almost as diverse as the electromagnetic spectrum itself, directed-energy weapons span a wide range of incarnations.

Among the simplest forms are inexpensive, handheld lasers that fill people's field of vision, inducing a temporary blindness to ensure they stop at a checkpoint, for example. Some of these already are used in Iraq.
..skip...
A separate branch of directed-energy research involves bigger, badder beams: lasers that could obliterate targets tens of miles away from ships or planes. Such a strike would be so surgical that, as some designers put it at a recent conference here, the military could plausibly deny responsibility.
-[---skip---]-
For Peter Bitar, the future of directed energy boils down to money.

Bitar heads Indiana-based Xtreme Alternative Defense Systems Ltd., which makes small blinding lasers used in Iraq. But his real project is a nonlethal energy device called the StunStrike.

Basically, it fires a bolt of lightning. It can be tuned to blow up explosives, possibly to stop vehicles and certainly to buzz people. The strike can be made to feel as gentle as "broom bristles" or cranked up to deliver a paralyzing jolt that "takes a few minutes to wear off."

Bitar, who is of Arab descent, believes StunStrike would be particularly intimidating in the Middle East because, he contends, people there are especially afraid of lightning.

At present, StunStrike is a 20-foot tower that can zap things up to 28 feet away. The next step is to shrink it so it could be wielded by troops and used in civilian locales like airplane cabins or building entrances.

News : [APNews] We "deport", you comply..

An Italian judge has ordered the arrest of 13 CIA agents
Jun 24, 9:28 AM (ET)

ROME (AP) - An Italian judge has ordered the arrest of 13 CIA agents for allegedly helping deport an imam to Egypt as part of U.S. anti-terrorism efforts, an Italian official familiar with the investigation said Friday.

The agents are suspected in the seizure of an Egyptian-born imam identified as Abu Omar on the streets of Milan in February 2003, according to the official, who requested anonymity because he was not authorized to release the information.

The U.S. Embassy in Rome declined to comment.

Prosecutors believe the agents seized Omar as part of the CIA's "extraordinary rendition" program, in which terror suspects are transferred to third countries without court approval, according to reports Friday in newspapers Corriere della Sera and Il Giorno.

-[---skip---]-

Italian papers have reported that Omar, 42, called his wife and friends in Milan after his release last year, recounting he had been seized by Italian and American agents and taken to a secret prison in Egypt, where he was tortured with electric shocks.

WASHINGTON (AP) - A divided Supreme Court ruled Thursday that local governments may seize people's homes and businesses against their will for private development in a decision anxiously awaited in communities where economic growth often is at war with individual property rights.

The 5-4 ruling - assailed by dissenting Justice Sandra Day O'Connor as handing "disproportionate influence and power" to the well-heeled in America - was a defeat for Connecticut residents whose homes are slated for destruction to make room for an office complex. They had argued that cities have no right to take their land except for projects with a clear public use, such as roads or schools, or to revitalize blighted areas.

As a result, cities now have wide power to bulldoze residences for projects such as shopping malls and hotel complexes in order to generate tax revenue.

News : [NYTimes] "Guantánamo's Long Shadow"
[username:"GoFuckYourself" / password:"password"]

"WHEN Vice President Dick Cheney said last week that detainees at the American prison camp in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, were treated better than they would be "by virtually any other government on the face of the earth," he was carrying on what has become a campaign to whitewash the record of abuses at Guantánamo.

Right-wing commentators have been sounding the theme. Columnist Charles Krauthammer said the treatment of the Guantánamo prisoners had been "remarkably humane and tolerant."

Yes, and there is no elephant in the room.

Agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation observed what went on in Guantánamo. One reported on July 29, 2004: "On a couple of occasions, I entered interview rooms to find a detainee chained hand and foot in a fetal position to the floor, with no chair, food or water. Most times they had urinated or defecated on themselves and had been left there for 18, 24 hours or more."

[---- tangent ----]

thinks it's all fun in the sun!
Check out his "Club Gitmo" page &
don't forget the Rush L. store where he makes a profit off their suffering with "Club Gitmo" gear.

[---end of tangent---]

Time magazine published an extended article last week on an official log of interrogations of one Guantánamo detainee over 50 days from November 2002 to January 2003. The detainee was Mohamed al-Kahtani, a Saudi who is suspected of being the planned 20th hijacker on Sept. 11, 2001, but who was unable to enter the United States.

Mr. Kahtani was interrogated for as long as 20 hours at a stretch, according to the detailed log. At one point he was put on an intravenous drip and given 3½ bags of fluid. When he asked to urinate, guards told him that he must first answer questions. He answered them. The interrogator, not satisfied with the answers, told him to urinate in his pants, which he did. Thirty minutes later, the log noted, Mr. Kahtani was "beginning to understand the futility of his situation."

-[---skip---]-

Over many years the United States has worked to persuade and compel governments around the world to abide by the rules. By spurning our own rules, we put that effort at risk. What Justice Louis Brandeis said about law at home applies internationally as well: "If the government becomes a law-breaker, it breeds contempt for law."

News : [Houston Chronicle] Cheney and Fox bring you the hard facts :

"I've never been able to understand his [Howard Dean] appeal. Maybe his mother loved him, but I've never met anybody who does. He's never won anything, as best I can tell," Cheney said in an interview on Fox News Channel's Hannity & Colmes.

In fact, Dean has won nine elections, including five for governor of Vermont."

News : [NyTimes] Bush team 'cooks the books'.

"A White House official who once led the oil industry's fight against limits on greenhouse gases has repeatedly edited government climate reports in ways that play down links between such emissions and global warming, according to internal documents."

News : [USA Today] Water shortages will leave world in dire straits.

More than half of humanity will be living with water shortages, depleted fisheries and polluted coastlines within 50 years because of a worldwide water crisis, warns a United Nations report out Monday.

For the past four years, scientists have accused the Bush White House of ignoring widely accepted scientific studies in favor of fringe theories that support the administration's political agenda. Meanwhile, government officials say scientists are exploiting research for political purposes.

News : [Alternet] 40 Acres and a Mule, Denied.

Leonard Cooper, a former USDA county agriculture director, recently echoed Davis's contention that, ultimately, its all about the land. "If you've got land, you've got wealth," says Cooper, a longtime farmer. "They (USDA) want to keep black farmers from thriving and owning land. This is their goal."

News : [BBC] Hemp is good for Afganistan.

It can be used to produce heating and cooking fuel, thereby ending the need for people to cut down and burn their remaining forests during severe winters.

At the moment many Afghan children are malnourished. Hemp produces a fruit boasting the nutritional qualities of soya, oily fish and wheat combined.

Hemp can produce quantities of wood equivalent to four times that of trees over a similar period of time. This biomass can be used in the production of clean, renewable energy, biodegradable plastics and building composites.

News : [Slate] Secret Laws, to be judged by but not aware of.

Former Rep. Helen Chenoweth-Hage, R-Idaho, experienced the existential horror of being governed by secret laws last month while attempting to board a United Airlines flight from Boise to Reno. When pulled aside by security guards from the Transportation Security Administration for additional screening, including a physical pat-down, Chenoweth-Hage requested a copy of the federal regulation authorizing such searches. Her request was denied.

"If I hadn't seen this contract I wouldn't have believed it could happen in America,"
Police Chief William McCarthy told the Des Moines Register.