*From the archives ...*

"Throughout the world ... its agents, client states and satellites are
on the defensive --- on the moral defensive, the intellectual defensive,
and the political and economic defensive. Freedom movements arise and
assert themselves. They're doing so on almost every continent populated
by man --- in the hills of Afghanistan, in Angola, in Kampuchea, in
Central America ... [They are] freedom fighters."

Is this a call to /jihad/ (holy war) taken from one of Islamic
fundamentalist Osama bin Laden's notorious /fatwas/? Or perhaps a
communique issued by the repressive Taliban regime in Kabul?

In fact, this glowing praise of the murderous exploits of today's
supporters of arch-terrorist bin Laden and his Taliban collaborators,
and their holy war against the "evil empire", was issued by US President
Ronald Reagan on March 8, 1985. The "evil empire" was the Soviet Union,
as well as Third World movements fighting US-backed colonialism,
apartheid and dictatorship.

How things change. In the aftermath of a series of terrorist atrocities
--- the most despicable being the mass murder of more than 6000 working
people in New York and Washington on September 11 --- bin Laden the
"freedom fighter" is now lambasted by US leaders and the Western mass
media as a "terrorist mastermind" and an "evil-doer".

Yet the US government refuses to admit its central role in creating the
vicious movement that spawned bin Laden, the Taliban and Islamic
fundamentalist terrorists that plague Algeria and Egypt --- and perhaps
the disaster that befell New York.

The mass media has also downplayed the origins of bin Laden and his
toxic brand of Islamic fundamentalism.

Full article at http://links.org.au/node/401


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

SAN FRANCISCO FIFTY YEARS AGO
(Kenneth Rexroth's columns for the San Francisco "Examiner")
http://www.bopsecrets.org/rexroth/sfe/

As many of you know, during the last fifteen months I've been posting
Rexroth's weekly "Examiner" columns from the 1960s, each on the 50th
anniversary of its original appearance. In May 1961 Rexroth began doing two
columns per week, so from now on you can expect to find a new column
uploaded each Saturday and each Tuesday.

Many people have told me they've been following the columns as they are
posted, imagining themselves being back in that period at the very
beginning of the legendary sixties, looking forward to finding out what will
be happening each new week and what (invariably provocative and
unpredictable) things Rexroth will say about it. Here is the remarkable
array of columns that have been posted so far:


1960

January
31. Here I Am

February
07. New Forms of Art and Culture?
14. New Forms of Politics?
21. A Night Out in the City
28. Merits and Faults of the San Francisco Ballet

March
06. Beckett and Ionesco
13. Ferlinghetti, Ginsberg, and the Modern Jazz Quartet
20. Drama and Community
27. In Praise of Amateur Shakespeare
       [including an unorthodox interpretation of "Hamlet"]

April
03. Two Questions About Modern Life
10. Signs of Change in the South [on the civil rights movement]
17. Conversations with Southerners [as KR travels in the South]
24. Flagstaff versus Phoenix

May
01. New Orleans versus Pittsburgh
08. Jean Genet and Ornette Coleman
15. The Execution of Caryl Chessman
22. The HUAC Riot
29. Signs of a New Youth Revolt

June
05. New American Poetry and Jazz
12. San Francisco Theater and Chicago Architecture
19. Pirandello's "Six Characters in Search of an Author"
26. Slum Clearance? [critique of "urban renewal"]

July
03. Three Poets in the News [Pasternak, Frost, Supervielle]
10. Kabuki Theater
17. Poetry and Ballet
24. Ballet and Jazz
31. The Royal Danish Ballet

August
07. The Tao of Fishing
14. Riding in the Mountains
21. Upheavals in Cuba and the Congo
28. More on the Third World

September
04. The Circus
11. Lack of Imagination and Common Sense
       [plus remarks on Brecht and African sculpture]
18. Japanese Art of Grace and Modesty
25. Why I Like Opera

October
02. Why I Don't Like Jazz Festivals
09. "Aida" and Ornette Coleman
16. Governmental Clowning
23. An Astonishing Painting Prodigy
       [in a show of Japanese children's paintings]
30. "La Traviata" and "La Bohème"

November
06. Style versus Pretension
13. Bruce Conner and the Royal Ballet
20. Matters of Taste
27. Mathematical Elegance and Classic Fiction

December
04. The Cost of Taking a Grant from the Ford Foundation
       [plus remarks on Ben Jonson's "The Alchemist"]
11. Robert Duncan
18. An Appeal for Kenneth Patchen
25. Christmas

1961

January
01. Man at the End of His Tether
08. Little Theater
15. Theater in San Francisco, Art in Chicago
22. Controversy About Cuba
29. The Attempted Assassination of Thomas Parkinson

February
05. Night Clubs and Jazz
12. Pacifica Radio KPFA [plus remarks on Pablo Casals]
19. The Assassination of Lumumba
26. The Chicago Opera Ballet

March
05. The Peace Corps
12. More on the Peace Corps
19. Journalism and Talk Shows
26. The Black Muslims

April
02. More on the Black Muslims
09. "King Lear"
16. A Few Days in New York
23. New York Jazz Clubs and Genet's "The Blacks"
30. Ionesco's "Rhinoceros"

May
03. The Bay of Pigs
.
.
.


Check for a new column each Saturday and each Tuesday at
http://www.bopsecrets.org/rexroth/sfe/

As a preview of things to come, you can also explore my earlier selection of
some of the more interesting columns: http://www.bopsecrets.org/rexroth/sf/


* * *

BUREAU OF PUBLIC SECRETS
P.O. Box 1044, Berkeley CA 94701
http://www.bopsecrets.org

"Making petrified conditions dance by singing them their own tune."

I think it is a bit presumptuous to say that the CIA created Osama, other than
in the sense that CIA activities with the Saudi and Pakistani intelligence
services armed the Mujahideen and encouraged enthusiastic Muslims to join the
anti-Soviet cause. The CIA did not create the Muslim Brotherhood to the best of
my knowledge and it was their theoreticians who gave Osama the ideology. Osama
already had engineering and managerial skills. It was the first Gulf War and the
US troops sent into Saudi Arabia that set Obama off in the first place. But
since he is dead, there will be no tortured confessions or political statements
from the court room from which he will be able to justify himself. There is only
another dead body.

--- In smygo@yahoogroups.com, glparramatta <glparramatta@...> wrote:
>
> *From the archives ...*
>
> "Throughout the world ... its agents, client states and satellites are
> on the defensive --- on the moral defensive, the intellectual defensive,
> and the political and economic defensive. Freedom movements arise and
> assert themselves. They're doing so on almost every continent populated
> by man --- in the hills of Afghanistan, in Angola, in Kampuchea, in
> Central America ... [They are] freedom fighters."
>
> Is this a call to /jihad/ (holy war) taken from one of Islamic
> fundamentalist Osama bin Laden's notorious /fatwas/? Or perhaps a
> communique issued by the repressive Taliban regime in Kabul?
>
> In fact, this glowing praise of the murderous exploits of today's
> supporters of arch-terrorist bin Laden and his Taliban collaborators,
> and their holy war against the "evil empire", was issued by US President
> Ronald Reagan on March 8, 1985. The "evil empire" was the Soviet Union,
> as well as Third World movements fighting US-backed colonialism,
> apartheid and dictatorship.
>
> How things change. In the aftermath of a series of terrorist atrocities
> --- the most despicable being the mass murder of more than 6000 working
> people in New York and Washington on September 11 --- bin Laden the
> "freedom fighter" is now lambasted by US leaders and the Western mass
> media as a "terrorist mastermind" and an "evil-doer".
>
> Yet the US government refuses to admit its central role in creating the
> vicious movement that spawned bin Laden, the Taliban and Islamic
> fundamentalist terrorists that plague Algeria and Egypt --- and perhaps
> the disaster that befell New York.
>
> The mass media has also downplayed the origins of bin Laden and his
> toxic brand of Islamic fundamentalism.
>
> Full article at http://links.org.au/node/401
>
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>

Qaddafi Son And Possibly Grandchildren Killed In NATO Airstrike
May 1st, 2011

I don't usually pick up news from the Times. It may be true or it may not. At
this time there is a question as to the veracity of the story. If true the NATO
assault on the Qaddafi family is reprehensible and barbaric. How is this
protecting civilian lives? By killing civilians they are going to save
civilians? It is the same twisted logic that allowed the victors in World War
Two drop atomic bombs on Japan and firebomb Dresden and Hamburg. This is
certainly not the way to protect the lives of civilians. It may be the way to
prosecute a war, but that is not what the mandate states from the UN. The
mandate allows bombing to protect civilians and there is no mandate to take
sides or to prosecute a war against Qaddafi.

What we are seeing is a clear violation of the UN mandate and a real move on the
part of the coalition to kill the leadership of the government of Libya. This is
regime change, plain and simple and it is being done under false pretenses. The
USA should withdraw all support for this war against Qaddafi. We have no real
interest in Libya and sticking our nose in other people's business is simply
asking for a bruising. If the Europeans want to get a better deal for Libyan oil
through regime change, that is their business. Although using the UN for cover
is illegitimate and should be condemned. Personally I think this whole mess
stinks of international gangsterism. At least when the Soviet Union was around
the west would think twice before attacking a third world country.

==========================

From New York Times

Qaddafi Is Said to Survive NATO Airstrike That Kills Son

Libyan government officials gave a tour of the house they said was hit by a NATO
airstrike in Tripoli late Saturday night.

By KAREEM FAHIM and DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK

Published: April 30, 2011

BENGHAZI, Libya — The government of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi said he survived an
airstrike in Tripoli late Saturday night that killed one of his sons and three
grandchildren, in the sharpest intensification yet of the NATO air campaign
intended to pressure the Libyan leader from power.

The son, Seif al-Arab Muammar el-Qaddafi, 29, and the grandchildren, all said to
be younger than 12, were possibly the first confirmed casualties in the
airstrikes on the Libyan capital. And while the deaths could not be
independently verified, the campaign against Libya's most densely populated
areas raised new questions about how broadly NATO is interpreting its United
Nations mandate to protect civilians.

It is the second airstrike in seven days to hit a location intimately close to
the Libyan leader, following a midnight attack last week that destroyed an
office building in his compound where he and his aides sometimes work.

In a news conference early Sunday morning in Tripoli, a Qaddafi government
spokesman called the strike an illegal attack. "This was a direct operation to
assassinate the leader of this country," said the spokesman, Moussa Ibrahim.
"This is not permitted by international law. It is not permitted by any moral
code or principle." He said that the colonel and his wife, who were staying at
the house along with "friends and family," were not hurt.

American and NATO officials have said they are not seeking to kill Colonel
Qaddafi, and some have suggested it might not be very easy. But frustrated by
the evasion and resilience of Colonel Qaddafi's military, NATO has pledged to
step up its strikes on the broader instruments of his power, including state
television facilities and command centers in the capital.

In a news release, the NATO mission's operational commander, Lt. Gen. Charles
Bouchard, said he was aware of the reports of Qaddafi family deaths but called
them unconfirmed. He added: "All NATO's targets are military in nature and have
been clearly linked to the Qaddafi regime's systematic attacks on the Libyan
population and populated areas. We do not target individuals."

A NATO official in Naples, Italy, reached by e-mail and responding on condition
of anonymity, said that allied planners had not known Qaddafi family members
were in the building that was attacked, which the official described as a
command and control center. The official would not specify the nationality of
the aircraft or pilots that carried out the strike.

In a video broadcast by the satellite channel Al Jazeera, Libyan officials
showed reporters what they said was the destroyed house, a large crater,
crumbled concrete and twisted metal, and someone dusting off what appeared to be
an unexploded bomb.

It is not the first time Colonel Qaddafi has survived such a close call. In
1986, the United States struck his compound in retaliation for a terrorist
attack on a German nightclub frequented by American service members. Colonel
Qaddafi has incorporated his survival into his cult of personality, preserving
the wreckage of the building as a "Museum of Resistance" and erecting a statue
of a giant fist grabbing an American warplane.

Although several of Colonel Qaddafi's seven sons and one daughter play major
roles in the Libyan economy and government (including an older brother with a
similar name, Seif al-Islam el-Qaddafi), the son reported killed had been
considered a black sheep, believed to spend much of his time in Munich. Many
Libyans said they had never seen his picture. In 2007, the German newspaper Der
Spiegel reported that he had been briefly detained by the Munich police after
getting into a fight with a nightclub bouncer; no charges were filed.

In Benghazi, the de facto rebel capital in eastern Libya, and in Misurata, a
western city that Colonel Qaddafi's forces have besieged for months, celebratory
gunfire rang out and explosions could be heard.

But even then, doubts lingered in Benghazi about whether the news was true: in
interviews, residents said they were happy but suspected a ploy by Colonel
Qaddafi to win sympathy. Ramadan el-Sheikhy, who said his brother was killed in
one of Colonel Qaddafi's prisons, said any sympathy was misplaced. "I was truly
happy at the news," he said. "Hopefully, he felt the pain of having a relative
killed."

Earlier Saturday, NATO officials had rejected an offer by Colonel Qaddafi to
call a cease-fire and negotiate as false. The proposal was delivered in a
rambling and often defiant speech, broadcast over Libyan state television, in
which Colonel Qaddafi insisted he would never leave Libya.

"Come France, Italy, U.K., America, come, we'll negotiate with you," Colonel
Qaddafi said. "You lie and say I'm killing my own people. Show us the bodies."

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/01/world/africa/01libya.html?nl=todaysheadlines&e\
mc=

=================================

From Al Arabiya News

Qaddafi's claims that NATO strike killed grandsons appears false, but son is
dead

Sunday, 01 May 2011

A crater, which the Libyan government said was caused by coalition air strikes
on the General Assembly, is seen at an area in Tripoli. (File Photo)

By MUSTAPHA AJBAILI
  Al Arabiya with Agencies

The claim that Muammar Qaddafi's three grandchildren were killed in an airstrike
conducted by NATO late Saturday is not true, an Al Arabiya source has revealed.
A source close to the Qaddafi family has confirmed the death of Colonel
Qaddafi's youngest son, Saif al-Arab, in the airstrike but has denied the story
that Mr. Qaddafi's three grandsons were killed.

Government spokesman, Moussa Ibrahim, said that NATO attacked the house of Seif
al-Arab Qaddafi, 29, with "full power".

Colonel Qaddafi and his wife were in the building that was bombed, but were not
harmed, Mr. Ibrahim said. He added that other people—whom he did not
identify—were killed or wounded in what he said was a direct operation to
assassinate the leader of this country.

Mr. Ibrahim later said intelligence on Colonel Qaddafi's whereabouts seemed to
be leaked to NATO.

"They knew about him being there, or expected him for some reason," the
spokesman said.

NATO, however, denied it was targeting Colonel Qaddafi or his family but said it
had carried out an airstrike on a military post in Tripoli.

NATO continued its precision strikes against regime military installations in
Tripoli overnight, including striking a known command and control building in
the Bab al-Aziziya neighborhood shortly after 18:00 GMT Saturday evening, the
alliance said in a statement.

Lieut. Gen. Charles Bouchard of Canada, NATO's commander of Libya operations,
said the target was part of a strategy to hit command centers that threaten
civilians.

"All NATO's targets are military in nature … We do not target individuals,"
General Bouchard said in a statement.

Prime Minister David Cameron of the United Kingdom, meanwhile, said NATO's
targeting policy in Libya was in line with a United Nations Security Council
resolution authorizing the campaign.

Mr. Cameron refused to comment on what he said was an unconfirmed report from
the Libyan regime that a NATO bombing raid overnight Saturday killed Mr.
Qaddafi's youngest son, Seif al-Arab, 29, and three of the colonel's
grandchildren.

Mr. Saif al-Arab is one of Colonel Qaddafi's less prominent sons, with a limited
role in the power structure. Mr. Ibrahim described him as a man who had studied
in Germany. Several news reports, however, characterized Saif as a black sheep
of the family who had been involved in scraps with the German police. In one
incident that was cited by the international press, he was reported to have had
an altercation with bouncers at a German nightclub.

The grandchildren killed were pre-teens, Mr. Ibrahim said.

Qaddafi has been known to sire a great many children, and no reliable count
exists. News sources have said that his personal life is very colorful. Female
foreign correspondents that have interviewed Mr. Qaddafi over the years have
reported that he would frequently offer them demonstrations of his sexual
prowess.

Mr. Qaddafi's announcements concerning the alleged deaths of family members at
the hands of foreign powers sometimes do not hold up to subsequent scrutiny.

For example, in 1986 it was claimed that his adopted daughter Hana died in 1986
by a US air strike launched in response to alleged Libyan involvement in the
bombing of a Berlin disco frequented by US military personnel. However, many
Libyans subsequently said that she had been spotted in Libya after the claim.
The truth about Hana's death remains a mystery.

Libyans generally do not trust this sort of information anymore, a source close
to the Qaddafi family said to Al Arabiya.

Revising history about his family members is something that has happened before
as far as Colonel Qaddafi is concerned.

After he took the power in the late 1960s, Mr. Qaddafi ordered the transfer of
his father's body to the Martyr's Cemetery in Tripoli from a private graveyard.
All official envoys to Libya are taken to visit his grave to pay their respects
to Colonel Qaddafi's father, as he is now a symbol of resistance against Italian
occupation.

Libyan unofficial historians say, however, that they don't have sufficient
information that could lead them to believe that Mr. Qaddafi's father, Hamid
Abouminiar, a nomad, was at all involved in the resistance.

The appearance of an assassination attempt against Mr. Qaddafi is likely to lead
to accusations that the British-and French-led strikes are overstepping the UN
mandate to protect civilians.

"I am aware of unconfirmed media reports that some of Mr. Qaddafi's family
members may have been killed," said General Bouchard. "We regret all loss of
life."

Left unsaid was the fact that journalists in Tripoli were not shown bodies of
the deceased. Some observers questioned the veracity of Mr. Ibrahim's
announcement, suggesting that it could have been a ploy to elicit sympathy for
the beleaguered Mr. Qaddafi.

The announcements about the alleged deaths of Mr. Qaddafi's family members came
on a day when pro-democracy rebels and NATO rejected yet another offer by the
Libyan leader for talks to end the crisis.

NATO and the Libyan Transitional Opposition Council dismissed the call and
insisted that Mr. Qaddafi cease attacks on civilians first.

In a televised speech on Saturday, Colonel Qaddafi said that NATO must abandon
all hope of the departure of Muammar Qaddafi.

"I have no official functions to give up: I will not leave my country and will
fight to the death," he said.

The speech was billed as one marking the centenary of a battle against Italian
occupation forces. Contemporary Italy is part of a NATO military campaign
against Colonel Qaddafi's forces.

"We are ready to talk with France and the United States, but with no
preconditions," Mr. Qaddafi said.

"We will not surrender, but I call on you to negotiate. If you want petrol, we
will sign contracts with your companies—it is not worth going to war over,"
Colonel Qaddafi said. "Between Libyans, we can solve our problems without being
attacked, so pull back your fleets and your planes."

"The regime has announced ceasefires several times before and continued
attacking cities and civilians … Any ceasefire must be credible and verifiable,"
a NATO official told Reuters.

Weeks of NATO air strikes have failed to dislodge the Libyan leader, but have
instead created a stalemate on a war Colonel Qaddafi initially looked to have
been winning. But the military situation is fluid now, with government forces
held at bay in the east and around the besieged city of Misrata, while fighting
rebels for control of the western mountains.

http://english.alarabiya.net/articles/2011/05/01/147366.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yw164xoOOmc

Ben Masel Dead At 56
April 30th, 2011

It looks like Ben is not going to make it to the Senate in 2012. He has died,
and people are posting tributes on his Facebook page. I didn't know Ben very
well, but he did change my life. He called me at work in Boulder, CO and asked
me if I wanted to go to New York City and run the Rock Against Racism Chapter
there. I still don't know how he found me. But I took him up on the offer, got
on a bus to New York and my life was changed. I finally met him at the Yippie
office there 9 Bleecker Street. He was a long haired hippie with a propensity
for getting busted on civil rights charges. He told me he was going for the
world record, I don't know if he made it. He also was a chess champion and made
a living playing back then. That was in 1979. Since then I have contacted him
from time to time, but we have never met again to my knowledge. It makes me feel
my mortality, he was 56, same age as I am.

Good luck on the astral plane Ben, you should have had plenty of experience
preparng for this trip.

==========================

From Alternative Medical Choices

Madison NORML's Ben Masel loses battle with lung cancer

By "Radical" Russ Belville on April 30, 2011

Madison NORML's Ben Masel with me at the 2009 Great Midwest Harvest Fest in
Madison.

It is with great sadness I report on the death of one of the most outstanding
activists in the NORML family – Ben Masel has passed away at age 56 following
his battle with lung cancer.

Friends are leaving tribute on Ben's Facebook page.

I met Ben at the 2009 Great Midwest Harvest Fest. He and Gary Storck flew me out
to speak to the crowd of thousands on the campus of University of Wisconsin and
the statehouse steps. I quickly found him to be exceptionally brilliant (he was
just shy of "grand master" in chess) and loaded with fabulous stories of his
past activism with the Yippies.

Ben had hoped to make it out to the NORML Conference last week, but obviously
his health had taken a turn for the worse. The NORML Board presented to him a
special award for his lifetime of work. My own tribute to Ben appears in the
August 2011 issue of HIGH TIMES Magazine where we named him "Freedom Fighter of
the Month"… unfortunately too late for him to read it. It will be one of my
bigger disappointments that Ben never received the recognition he deserved while
he was alive to enjoy it.

Following is the article for HIGH TIMES with my sincere condolences to family
and friends who had the privilege of knowing and loving him more than I.

If you watched the TV news coverage of the Wisconsin labor protests in Madison
last February, you may have seen this month's Freedom Fighter Ben Masel. A
longtime activist with Madison NORML, Ben was instrumental in creating the
vibrant cannabis community in the state, including organizing Weedstock and the
Great Midwest Harvest Fest that celebrates its fortieth anniversary this October
1-3 (see madisonhempfest.com). He's currently been fighting over the past few
legislative sessions to get Wisconsin to pass the Jacki Rickert Medical
Marijuana Act.

While Ben fights for the end of marijuana prohibition, his activism also extends
into mainstream politics as well. He's a passionate civil libertarian,
advocating equally for free speech and gun rights, personal privacy and a return
to stronger congressional control of war powers. Ben has run many times for
elective office, from a challenge to Governor Tommy Thompson in 1990 to his
current candidacy for the US Senate seat held by Herb Kohl. He first caught
attention for his radicalism when at age 17 he became the youngest person placed
on President Nixon's infamous "enemies list" and "the man" has kept his eye on
Ben ever since.

This March at the age of 56, Ben received the horrible news that he'd been
stricken by lung cancer. Speaking to the Wisconsin State Journal, Ben said, "I'm
feeling pretty upbeat about stuff. Not about having (cancer), but overall. I'm
definitely not in the `Oh, no, poor me, I've got cancer' mode." In reviewing our
records, we're stunned and embarrassed that Ben had not been listed among the
206 activists who've won the award since 1990. Everyone at NORML and HIGH TIMES
extends our highest hopes for Ben's good health.

Ben in action at this year's massive labor protests at the capitol in Madison:

Posted in 4:20 NEWS, Activism, Celebrity Tokers, NORML, Seniors | Tagged ben
masel, lung cancer, Madison, Madison NORML, Wisconsin, yippies

"Radical" Russ Belville

I am the host of the NORML SHOW LIVE and The NORML Stash Blog. I'm married, live
in Portland, Oregon, and I am a registered medical marijuana caregiver in this
state. I've worked days as an IT geek and nights as a professional musician.
Previously, I have been the host of my own political talk radio show on
satellite radio. I've been the High Times "Freedom Fighter of the Month" for my
work producing Oregon NORML's TV show, "A Cannabis Community Forum", and for
helping to institute Portland's wildly successful medical marijuana cardholders
meetings, where we help sick and disabled Oregonians acquire cannabis plant
starts, learn gardening, and understand the medical marijuana law. I've
dedicated my life to bringing an end to adult marijuana prohibition and
re-legalizing cannabis hemp, and I'm honored to be chosen by NORML to be our
daily voice.

http://stash.norml.org/madison-normls-ben-masel-loses-battle-with-lung-cancer

http://www.activistpost.com/2011/05/are-we-gonna-get-our-rights-back.html


Monday, May 2, 2011







Are we gonna get our rights back?







Dees Illustration
Janet C. Phelan, Contributing WriterActivist Post 



With this assassination of Osama bin
Laden under his belt, President Obama has fulfilled yet another of his
campaign promises. It was during the Presidential debates when then
Presidential-hopeful Obama solemnly declared: "We will track down Osama
bin Laden and kill him."



And it was at that precise moment that my decision was made--I would not be
casting my vote for Barrack Obama.



The issue of who initiated the attacks of 9/11 has deeply polarized the
U.S. and it is not the intent of this reporter to dive into that
briarpatch at this point in time. Rather, it is the implications of his
statement that merit revisiting-- that a man who would be President
expressed such disdain for our legal system, a system which vehemently
protects the accused until he is proven guilty in a court of law.  And
to add to my growing unease, this Presidential hopeful proudly declared
himself to be a Constitutional scholar.



By making that declaration during his bid for the Presidency, Obama was
clearly pandering to the deep psychic wound inflicted on the United
States by the events of September 11.  Obama played a psychological
card with his kill-call, a card which revealed an opportunistic mindset
which considers Constitutional protections to be irrelevant



And I remember wondering, who will he go after next?









It
didn't take long for that question to be answered. In 2010, Obama
ordered the targeted assassination of an American citizen, Anwar
al-Awlaki, a US-born Muslim cleric. As reported in the UK telegraph at
the time, "officials now argue privately that Americans who side
with the country's enemies are not ultimately "entitled to special
protections".....Dennis Blair, the director of US national
intelligence, confirmed that its security agencies had the authority,
having obtained specific permission, to kill American citizens if they
posed a direct threat to the United States."



While some argue that these two men, Osama and Al-Awlaki, are "enemy
combatants," it has become clear that the war on terror has redefined
the concept of a battlefield.   No longer restricted to a physical
location, defined by longitude and latitude, where men draw arms and
attempt to diminish, if not destroy, an enemy army, the "war on terror"
has broadened the concept of the battlefield to include the entire
world.  In this world wide war,  assassination is now an acceptable
weapon against a "terrorist"--who is a person who has not been so
determined by a bonafide legal proceeding but only through a dictum of
a head of State.



In other words, The Red Queen  had nothing on Obama.  The  nemesis of
Alice in Wonderland, the mad Red Queen, also cried "Off with her head!"



We can only expect that the "terrorist" designation will expand
outward. Indeed, in 2007 Jane Harman sponsored the Violent
Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act, which passed in
the House but failed in the Senate. Dennis Kucinich called the Act a
thought- crime bill, containing language which seemed to promote the
identification and detention of U.S. citizens who harbored animus
towards the stripping of rights which was the fallout from 9/11.



This fallout-- the destruction of our Constitutional protections--
should be a matter of gravest concern. In 2009, the Department of
Justice published a report concerning the surveillance programs
launched by Bush after the events of September 11. The report openly
admitted that there were two programs in effect, one targeting "the
terrorists."  The report declined to discuss "the other" surveillance
program, ostensibly targeting us. The unclassified report, in fact,
referred to  the "other" surveillance program as classified.



The destruction of our freedoms and our rights has been a heavy price
to pay. Many Americans are not aware that these Constitutional
protections, largely dismantled after September 11 by the passage of
the U.S. Patriot Act and concomitant legislation, were in place to
protect us NOT from "terrorists" or "Communists" or other bogey men-
of- the- moment, but from intrusion and attack by our own government.
  We are now more vulnerable, more at risk than any other time in U.S.
history to abuse of process and actual abuse by agents of the United
States itself.



So now that the big bad wolf  is dead, what becomes of this massive
surveillance and targeting machinery put into motion following 9/11?
Does it get dismantled? Now that the arch enemy has been hunted down
and slaughtered, are we gonna get our rights back?

Janet
Phelan is an investigative journalist whose articles have appeared in
the Los Angeles Times, The San Bernardino County Sentinel, The Santa
Monica Daily Press, The Long Beach Press Telegram, Oui Magazine and
other regional and national publications. Janet specializes in issues
pertaining to legal corruption and addresses the heated subject of
adult conservatorship, revealing shocking information about the
relationships between courts and shady financial consultants. She also
covers issues relating to international bioweapons treaties. Her poetry
has been published in Gambit, Libera, Applezaba Review, Nausea One and
other magazines. Her first book, The Hitler Poems, was published in
2005. She currently resides abroad.  You may browse through her
articles (and poetry) at janetphelan.com






[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Osama DNA Story
May 2nd, 2011

Somebody wrote an interesting thing today about DNA testing, doesn't it take
days to get results? All the sources I have read about on line say it takes 3
days expedited service to get DNA results. But that is for commercially
available results and knowing how most businesses operate, there is some fudge
time included for processing paperwork and generally screwing around.

These results were available in hours. So we have to assume the government has
access to better technology, or they are lying, either about when this happened,
or who they killed. According to this article there is technology available that
will give you test results in a couple of hours. I don't know what kind of a
machine that requires, I assume they would have to have one on base in
Afghanistan or on the ship when the Navy Seals returned from their mission with
what they presumed to be Osama's body.

Perhaps that is what the President was waiting for last night when his speech
was delayed for a couple of hours after the news was announced on CNN. I don't
have twitter, so I was not among the earliest of the early birds with the info.
But conspiracy buffs do have a point, when they say hey, what about the DNA. I
don't know if this takes care of their questions, but it is interesting to note
that there still are technologies that the government has access to that we mere
mortals still hold to be in the realm of fantasy.

=============================================

From Fast Company

CSI Islamabad: The DNA Identity Test Of Osama Bin Laden
  BY Kit EatonToday

Osama Bin Laden has been proclaimed dead from a gunshot wound to the head. But
in today's photoshopping era, the world demands more proof–a DNA test to
identify the body is actually him.

Back in late 2001, when the allied offensive against Al Qaeda in Afghanistan was
still in its early days and attention was concentrated on the Tora Bora region
where Bin Laden and his associates were reported to be hiding, the U.S. and
other forces dropped tons of high explosives into the area–including the BLU-82
Daisy Cutter bomb (a high-explosives giant that's also known as "the poor man's
nuclear bomb"). When ground forces penetrated into the zones after the air
assaults, they found plenty of bodies…but faced a difficult task: How to tell if
one of them was Osama? Soldiers collected and tagged body fragments, then sent
them off to be analyzed back in the U.S. The FBI's labs compared the evidence to
DNA samples acquired as "swabs" from Bin Laden's family members. Today,
something very similar is going on to prove the body dumped at sea really was
Bin Laden.

DNA matching (also known as genetic fingerprinting) is different to full DNA
sequencing–a long drawn out process that takes time, technology, and money to
work out the absolute list of hundreds of millions of nucleotides, the famous G,
T, C, A pattern that make up your genetic identity. Over 99.9% of everyone's DNA
sequence is the same, but that still leaves millions of bits of code that are
unique to you. You share some of this unique code with your parents and siblings
(and actually all of it if you're an identical twin), but most of it is yours
and yours alone–and this is where DNA matching works. It involves breaking your
DNA down in a number of different ways and looking for a short list of what's
called loci–tell-tale markers that reveal where specific genes are located. The
list from a test sample (from, say, a crime scene) is compared against the list
from a reference sample obtained from your person–if the lists match, there's an
incredibly high statistical probability that the two DNA samples come from the
same person.

In Osama's case, the DNA tests don't necessarily involve a reference sample from
the man himself (presumably because it's hard to find), but reportedly from his
sister who died in Boston recently. Tissue from her body was used to create an
extensive reference DNA fingerprint. Because your parents give you some of their
DNA, they also give your siblings some of the same genetic code–which is why
sibling DNA tests work. They sometimes concentrate on ares of the genome called
"junk DNA" which serves no biological function but still gets passed along to
offspring. By testing for repeat strands of DNA code in these areas, it's
possible to work out if two individuals are related as siblings.

Typical lab-based DNA matching tests like this can take up to 14 days; they're
painstaking and need to be repeated several times to ensure the sample's not
contaminated from any other DNA sources. But that's not necessarily the only way
to do these tests: Late in 2010, a University of Arizona team presented research
on a machine that can do the analysis in just two hours in a largely automated
way. It's possible that knowing they were engaged on a mission to capture Bin
Laden, U.S. Forces arranged for access to a machine like this to be on quick
alert–probably for flying blood, cheek cells, and other samples taken from the
body to the lab for expedited analysis.

But here's the thing: DNA matching isn't an exact science, and sibling matching
is slightly more inexact. It all comes down to a probability, with a statement
like "there's a one in one quadrillion chance this isn't the same person in both
DNA samples." In other words: conspiracy theorists still have something to talk
about.

http://www.fastcompany.com/1751030/how-a-dna-identity-test-on-osama-bin-laden-wo\
rks

======================================

From The Star.com

DNA fingerprinting helped identify Osama bin Laden

2011/05/02 18:44:00

Debra BlackStaff Reporter

DNA fingerprinting helped confirm Osama bin Laden was killed by American forces
in Pakistan.

Officials in Washington are saying that the DNA evidence provides a match with
99.9 per cent confidence.

According to reports on FastCompany.com soldiers collected and tagged body
fragments then shipped them off to be tested in the U.S to FBI labs. There the
DNA samples were tested against "swabs" from bin Laden's family members. A
similar test is also being conducted to prove the body dumped at sea is bin
Laden.

Officials did not immediately say where or how the testing was done but the test
explains why U.S. President Barack Obama was confident in announcing the death
to the world Sunday night, according to Canadian Press. Obama provided no
details on the identification process.

The U.S. is believed to have collected DNA samples from bin Laden family members
in the years since the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks that triggered the U.S.-led
invasion of Afghanistan.

However, it was unclear whether the U.S. also had fingerprints or some other
means to identify the body on site, the wire service reports.

CNN reports that a national security official said there were multiple
confirmations of bin Laden's identity. The official said they also used "facial
recognition work, amongst other things, to confirm the identity."

According to ABC News the DNA samples came from bin Laden's sister's body after
she died in Boston from brain cancer several years ago. The FBI subpoenaed her
body so it could be used to identify him.

The brain of bin Laden's sister, who has not been identified, was then preserved
and the tissue and blood samples taken from it were used to compile a DNA
profile. That was matched to the DNA of the man shot dead by U.S. troops.

Typical lab testing can take up to 14 days, but a new machine being developed by
a team at the University of Arizona can do it in just two hours. It's unclear
whether U.S. intelligence forces had access to such technology.

But Frederic Zenhausern, head of the project at the University of Arizona's
College of Medicine, told the Star it is possible to do the genetic work
required in a couple of hours given the high priority of identifying bin Laden
even without such technology.

When genetic fingerprinting first started it could take as long as four to six
weeks of lab work to complete and compare the samples.

DNA matching or fingerprinting is very different from doing a complete DNA
sequencing — which is a lot longer process and takes time, technology and money
to puzzle out the hundreds of millions of nucleotides that make up an
individual's genetic identity.

How does genetic fingerprinting work? Most human beings share 99.9 per cent of
DNA sequencing. But there are millions of bits of code that are unique to each
individual. You share some with your parents and siblings, but most is yours.

With DNA matching your DNA is broken down into a short list called loci —
tell-tale markers that show where specific genes are located. American standards
call for the use of 13 fragments of DNA to be used to compare, explained
Zenhausern. In Europe scientists use 16 fragments of DNA to compare.

A test sample is done and it's compared to a reference sample from the
individual. If the lists match that means there is a high statistical
probability that the two samples come from the same person.

But with bin Laden the DNA test didn't involve a reference sample from him, but
rather from his sister. The sample from his sister works because parents give
siblings some of their DNA and they share the same genetic code.

When testing against a relative's DNA, scientists often look to parts of the
genome described as junk DNA which are passed on to all offspring. By testing
these strands of DNA, it's possible to work out if two individuals are related
as siblings.

But Zenhausern, who is professor and director of the Centre of Applied
Nanobioscience and Medicine at the College of Medicine in Phoenix at the
University of Arizona, said comparing DNA samples to a sibling means that the
likelihood of error would be relatively low.

"In the case of direct siblings, the error rate would be relatively low…maybe
you loose a half or one per cent," Zenhausern said. "You would be in the 99.9
per cent accuracy range. If you go to a half-sibling you can have an error rate
that goes up to 10 per cent. The further away you go in the family tree, the
higher the error rate."

So in this case matching samples from the body that U.S. officials believe is
bin Laden against his sister's DNA samples would provide "a good match for an
identification," said Zenhausern.

Zenhausern is hoping that once the Rapid DNA Testing machine he and his team
have come up with is approved for use, it will become the standard in the
international forensic community.

It is currently being tested by police forces in the United Kingdom, Australia,
Germany and the Netherlands and soon will be tested by the FBI, he said.
"Typically DNA matching is becoming the standard in biometrics," he said.
Biometrics uses biology and biological technology to identify people.

He added that it is likely scientists are now conducting further tests on the
samples obtained from the body before it was buried at sea, doing a full profile
analysis and doing DNA sequencing looking at everything possible to get a comple
DNA picture.

But DNA matching or genetic fingerprinting isn't perfect. It's far from an exact
science and comes down to probabilities.

http://www.thestar.com/news/world/article/984153–dna-fingerprinting-helped-ident\
ify-osama-bin-laden

====================

Link to BBC story with pictures of compound and layout.
  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-13261064

News & Views for Anarchists & Activists:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smygo

http://www.nhmagazine.com/people/917599-113/free-leader--carla-gericke.html
Free Leader – Carla Gericke
Interview by Rick Broussard.
Sunday, May 1, 2011

She traveled the world as the daughter of diplomats and went on to
practice law in South Africa and California, but Carla Gericke's life
changed when she heard the call of the Free State Movement for
like-minded people to flock to N.H. and promote greater liberty and less
government. She helped organize two recent Porcupine Festivals - the
Free State equivalent of an Old Home Day - even earning the title "The
Quill Queen" (note quill crown, left), and was just chosen as the
movement's new leader. In this exclusive interview, we found her not to
be at all prickly.

How does one become the leader of the Free State Movement? Are
fisticuffs involved? Duel at dawn, actually. I'm afraid the truth is
rather more mundane: the Free State Project's board votes on candidates
and someone wins.

What do you think is your primary qualification for the post? My royal
lineage, replete with quill crown. The porcupine is our mascot -
porcupines are peaceful creatures you want to leave alone - and after I
organized the last two Porcupine Freedom Festivals in Lancaster, I
received the moniker of "Queen Quill." As the first queen of the
movement, I was the perfect candidate to take over. More seriously, in a
decentralized organization like ours, you have to be able to balance
folks' differing viewpoints and strong personalities, fondly referred to
as "herding cats." Iz good catz herder.

Since the Free State movement is not political, does that mean you
always get to give straight answers? Er, em, uh, yes.

So give it to me straight. How's the movement going? This is an exciting
time for us. We have crossed the halfway mark to recruiting 20,000
liberty lovers to pledge to move to New Hampshire to create a more free
society. I appreciate this sounds scary to some, but think of us as
localization on steroids, as wanting to create an even more prosperous
state than New Hampshire already is--a Yankee Hong Kong, if you will.
More than 800 activists have already moved, and we are hard at work in
our communities to create a society based on voluntary exchange, free
from state coercion. As government grows and becomes more intrusive, I
believe we will continue to gain momentum. We also have strong local
support, with Friends of the Free State signing up all the time.

Any particular high and low points over the past few years? As an
organization, the Free State Project does not take positions on what
participants do once they get here. It's more the vehicle, the "bus" to
convince liberty-leaning individuals to move. Once in New Hampshire,
people exercise individual activism in different ways. They run for
office--twelve participants are now state reps--they do localized
outreach like volunteering at fire departments, they form non-profits
like the New Hampshire Liberty Alliance that rates representatives
according to their voting records, they manage successful businesses,
and they practice civil disobedience in the spirit of Gandhi and Martin
Luther King. The media tends to focus on the latter because it is by its
very nature more controversial, but rest assured Free Staters are good
neighbors who like ice-cream too.

Any second thoughts about choosing New Hampshire as the Free State?
Absolutely not. I have lived all over the world, and I love it here. New
Hampshire has so much to offer: a ready-built individualist
culture--Live Free or Die, Baby!--and it is consistently named one of
the best places in America to live. With its low crime rate, favorable
gun laws, healthy living, buoyant economy, low taxes and no personal
state income tax (which I view as a form of slavery), it is the perfect
place for productive people to settle

Seems like the Free State Movement could use an anthem. Is there a song
that you always play at rallies? We've played the Super Secret Project's
"Granite State of Mind" at functions and it always goes over well. How
can you not love lyrics like: "I'm the new Salinger/Cuz I could live
anywhere/But I choose to live here." This really resonates with me.

You have a literary bent. Who are your favorite liberty-minded authors?
I admire many - Kurt Vonnegut, Robert A. Heinlein, Joseph Heller, P.J.
O'Rourke - but from a purely dystopian standpoint, it's a toss up
between George Orwell and Aldous Huxley. With the amount of government
intrusion people have to tolerate these days, someone should write a
Facebook app where you can tag news stories according to whether you
think it is more "1984," or more "Brave New World." Perhaps this will
help Jane Six-Pack realize it is not a left/right paradigm, but rather a
case of us vs. them.

At this stage, would the movement be more suitable for a film treatment
or for a reality TV show? We already have a movie, a documentary called
"Libertopia" which follows three participants on their "modern day
pilgrimage" to "reclaim a voice against a government they believe shares
neither their priorities nor interests," so I'd have to say a reality TV
show. Can we get Darren Aronofsky to direct?

If you could lure one A-list celebrity to the cause, who would you pick?
Folks like Clint Eastwood, Dave Barry, Denis Leary, Penn & Teller, Trey
Parker of South Park, Kurt Russell, Drew Carey, and "Buffy" creator Joss
Whedon are already libertarians, and we'd welcome them all... but hold
the Charlie Sheen!

--
Dan Clore

New book: _Weird Words: A Lovecraftian Lexicon_:
http://tinyurl.com/yd3bxkw
My collected fiction: _The Unspeakable and Others_
http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/the-unspeakable-and-others/6124911
Lord Weÿrdgliffe & Necronomicon Page:
http://tinyurl.com/292yz9
News & Views for Anarchists & Activists:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smygo

Skipper: Professor, will you tell these people who is
in charge on this island?
Professor: Why, no one.
Skipper: No one?
Thurston Howell III: No one? Good heavens, this is anarchy!
-- _Gilligan's Island_, episode #6, "President Gilligan"

good point you are making.  they lie they lie they lie

that's how i knew 911 was spun. there is no way that the fbi could have done
their investigation,  intel met with the prez, the press contacted and all that
within....a coupla hours?

and i sat there in front of the TV set, saying okay, the press is gonna be all
over this

and that was the second wake up call. the press went with the party line.

and that is when it hit me   we are in sooooo much trouble....

--- On Mon, 5/2/11, Gary <garyrumor2@...> wrote:

From: Gary <garyrumor2@...>
Subject: [smygo] Osama DNA Story
To: smygo@yahoogroups.com
Date: Monday, May 2, 2011, 10:35 PM







 









       Osama DNA Story

May 2nd, 2011



Somebody wrote an interesting thing today about DNA testing, doesn't it take
days to get results? All the sources I have read about on line say it takes 3
days expedited service to get DNA results. But that is for commercially
available results and knowing how most businesses operate, there is some fudge
time included for processing paperwork and generally screwing around.



These results were available in hours. So we have to assume the government has
access to better technology, or they are lying, either about when this happened,
or who they killed. According to this article there is technology available that
will give you test results in a couple of hours. I don't know what kind of a
machine that requires, I assume they would have to have one on base in
Afghanistan or on the ship when the Navy Seals returned from their mission with
what they presumed to be Osama's body.



Perhaps that is what the President was waiting for last night when his speech
was delayed for a couple of hours after the news was announced on CNN. I don't
have twitter, so I was not among the earliest of the early birds with the info.
But conspiracy buffs do have a point, when they say hey, what about the DNA. I
don't know if this takes care of their questions, but it is interesting to note
that there still are technologies that the government has access to that we mere
mortals still hold to be in the realm of fantasy.



=============================================



From Fast Company



CSI Islamabad: The DNA Identity Test Of Osama Bin Laden

  BY Kit EatonToday



Osama Bin Laden has been proclaimed dead from a gunshot wound to the head. But
in today's photoshopping era, the world demands more proof–a DNA test to
identify the body is actually him.



Back in late 2001, when the allied offensive against Al Qaeda in Afghanistan was
still in its early days and attention was concentrated on the Tora Bora region
where Bin Laden and his associates were reported to be hiding, the U.S. and
other forces dropped tons of high explosives into the area–including the
BLU-82 Daisy Cutter bomb (a high-explosives giant that's also known as "the poor
man's nuclear bomb"). When ground forces penetrated into the zones after the air
assaults, they found plenty of bodies…but faced a difficult task: How to tell
if one of them was Osama? Soldiers collected and tagged body fragments, then
sent them off to be analyzed back in the U.S. The FBI's labs compared the
evidence to DNA samples acquired as "swabs" from Bin Laden's family members.
Today, something very similar is going on to prove the body dumped at sea really
was Bin Laden.



DNA matching (also known as genetic fingerprinting) is different to full DNA
sequencing–a long drawn out process that takes time, technology, and money to
work out the absolute list of hundreds of millions of nucleotides, the famous G,
T, C, A pattern that make up your genetic identity. Over 99.9% of everyone's DNA
sequence is the same, but that still leaves millions of bits of code that are
unique to you. You share some of this unique code with your parents and siblings
(and actually all of it if you're an identical twin), but most of it is yours
and yours alone–and this is where DNA matching works. It involves breaking
your DNA down in a number of different ways and looking for a short list of
what's called loci–tell-tale markers that reveal where specific genes are
located. The list from a test sample (from, say, a crime scene) is compared
against the list from a reference sample obtained from your person–if the
lists match, there's an
  incredibly high statistical probability that the two DNA samples come from the
same person.



In Osama's case, the DNA tests don't necessarily involve a reference sample from
the man himself (presumably because it's hard to find), but reportedly from his
sister who died in Boston recently. Tissue from her body was used to create an
extensive reference DNA fingerprint. Because your parents give you some of their
DNA, they also give your siblings some of the same genetic code–which is why
sibling DNA tests work. They sometimes concentrate on ares of the genome called
"junk DNA" which serves no biological function but still gets passed along to
offspring. By testing for repeat strands of DNA code in these areas, it's
possible to work out if two individuals are related as siblings.



Typical lab-based DNA matching tests like this can take up to 14 days; they're
painstaking and need to be repeated several times to ensure the sample's not
contaminated from any other DNA sources. But that's not necessarily the only way
to do these tests: Late in 2010, a University of Arizona team presented research
on a machine that can do the analysis in just two hours in a largely automated
way. It's possible that knowing they were engaged on a mission to capture Bin
Laden, U.S. Forces arranged for access to a machine like this to be on quick
alert–probably for flying blood, cheek cells, and other samples taken from the
body to the lab for expedited analysis.



But here's the thing: DNA matching isn't an exact science, and sibling matching
is slightly more inexact. It all comes down to a probability, with a statement
like "there's a one in one quadrillion chance this isn't the same person in both
DNA samples." In other words: conspiracy theorists still have something to talk
about.



http://www.fastcompany.com/1751030/how-a-dna-identity-test-on-osama-bin-laden-wo\
rks



======================================



From The Star.com



DNA fingerprinting helped identify Osama bin Laden



2011/05/02 18:44:00



Debra BlackStaff Reporter



DNA fingerprinting helped confirm Osama bin Laden was killed by American forces
in Pakistan.



Officials in Washington are saying that the DNA evidence provides a match with
99.9 per cent confidence.



According to reports on FastCompany.com soldiers collected and tagged body
fragments then shipped them off to be tested in the U.S to FBI labs. There the
DNA samples were tested against "swabs" from bin Laden's family members. A
similar test is also being conducted to prove the body dumped at sea is bin
Laden.



Officials did not immediately say where or how the testing was done but the test
explains why U.S. President Barack Obama was confident in announcing the death
to the world Sunday night, according to Canadian Press. Obama provided no
details on the identification process.



The U.S. is believed to have collected DNA samples from bin Laden family members
in the years since the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks that triggered the U.S.-led
invasion of Afghanistan.



However, it was unclear whether the U.S. also had fingerprints or some other
means to identify the body on site, the wire service reports.



CNN reports that a national security official said there were multiple
confirmations of bin Laden's identity. The official said they also used "facial
recognition work, amongst other things, to confirm the identity."



According to ABC News the DNA samples came from bin Laden's sister's body after
she died in Boston from brain cancer several years ago. The FBI subpoenaed her
body so it could be used to identify him.



The brain of bin Laden's sister, who has not been identified, was then preserved
and the tissue and blood samples taken from it were used to compile a DNA
profile. That was matched to the DNA of the man shot dead by U.S. troops.



Typical lab testing can take up to 14 days, but a new machine being developed by
a team at the University of Arizona can do it in just two hours. It's unclear
whether U.S. intelligence forces had access to such technology.



But Frederic Zenhausern, head of the project at the University of Arizona's
College of Medicine, told the Star it is possible to do the genetic work
required in a couple of hours given the high priority of identifying bin Laden
even without such technology.



When genetic fingerprinting first started it could take as long as four to six
weeks of lab work to complete and compare the samples.



DNA matching or fingerprinting is very different from doing a complete DNA
sequencing — which is a lot longer process and takes time, technology and
money to puzzle out the hundreds of millions of nucleotides that make up an
individual's genetic identity.



How does genetic fingerprinting work? Most human beings share 99.9 per cent of
DNA sequencing. But there are millions of bits of code that are unique to each
individual. You share some with your parents and siblings, but most is yours.



With DNA matching your DNA is broken down into a short list called loci —
tell-tale markers that show where specific genes are located. American standards
call for the use of 13 fragments of DNA to be used to compare, explained
Zenhausern. In Europe scientists use 16 fragments of DNA to compare.



A test sample is done and it's compared to a reference sample from the
individual. If the lists match that means there is a high statistical
probability that the two samples come from the same person.



But with bin Laden the DNA test didn't involve a reference sample from him, but
rather from his sister. The sample from his sister works because parents give
siblings some of their DNA and they share the same genetic code.



When testing against a relative's DNA, scientists often look to parts of the
genome described as junk DNA which are passed on to all offspring. By testing
these strands of DNA, it's possible to work out if two individuals are related
as siblings.



But Zenhausern, who is professor and director of the Centre of Applied
Nanobioscience and Medicine at the College of Medicine in Phoenix at the
University of Arizona, said comparing DNA samples to a sibling means that the
likelihood of error would be relatively low.



"In the case of direct siblings, the error rate would be relatively low…maybe
you loose a half or one per cent," Zenhausern said. "You would be in the 99.9
per cent accuracy range. If you go to a half-sibling you can have an error rate
that goes up to 10 per cent. The further away you go in the family tree, the
higher the error rate."



So in this case matching samples from the body that U.S. officials believe is
bin Laden against his sister's DNA samples would provide "a good match for an
identification," said Zenhausern.



Zenhausern is hoping that once the Rapid DNA Testing machine he and his team
have come up with is approved for use, it will become the standard in the
international forensic community.



It is currently being tested by police forces in the United Kingdom, Australia,
Germany and the Netherlands and soon will be tested by the FBI, he said.
"Typically DNA matching is becoming the standard in biometrics," he said.
Biometrics uses biology and biological technology to identify people.



He added that it is likely scientists are now conducting further tests on the
samples obtained from the body before it was buried at sea, doing a full profile
analysis and doing DNA sequencing looking at everything possible to get a comple
DNA picture.



But DNA matching or genetic fingerprinting isn't perfect. It's far from an exact
science and comes down to probabilities.



http://www.thestar.com/news/world/article/984153–dna-fingerprinting-helped-ide\
ntify-osama-bin-laden



====================



Link to BBC story with pictures of compound and layout.

  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-13261064






















[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

enjoy! osama is dead & obama is your president! big deal?

--- On Tue, 5/3/11, Gary <garyrumor2@...> wrote:


From: Gary <garyrumor2@...>
Subject: [smygo] Osama DNA Story
To: smygo@yahoogroups.com
Date: Tuesday, May 3, 2011, 6:35 AM


 



Osama DNA Story
May 2nd, 2011

Somebody wrote an interesting thing today about DNA testing, doesn't it take
days to get results? All the sources I have read about on line say it takes 3
days expedited service to get DNA results. But that is for commercially
available results and knowing how most businesses operate, there is some fudge
time included for processing paperwork and generally screwing around.

These results were available in hours. So we have to assume the government has
access to better technology, or they are lying, either about when this happened,
or who they killed. According to this article there is technology available that
will give you test results in a couple of hours. I don't know what kind of a
machine that requires, I assume they would have to have one on base in
Afghanistan or on the ship when the Navy Seals returned from their mission with
what they presumed to be Osama's body.

Perhaps that is what the President was waiting for last night when his speech
was delayed for a couple of hours after the news was announced on CNN. I don't
have twitter, so I was not among the earliest of the early birds with the info.
But conspiracy buffs do have a point, when they say hey, what about the DNA. I
don't know if this takes care of their questions, but it is interesting to note
that there still are technologies that the government has access to that we mere
mortals still hold to be in the realm of fantasy.

=============================================

From Fast Company

CSI Islamabad: The DNA Identity Test Of Osama Bin Laden
BY Kit EatonToday

Osama Bin Laden has been proclaimed dead from a gunshot wound to the head. But
in today's photoshopping era, the world demands more proof–a DNA test to
identify the body is actually him.

Back in late 2001, when the allied offensive against Al Qaeda in Afghanistan was
still in its early days and attention was concentrated on the Tora Bora region
where Bin Laden and his associates were reported to be hiding, the U.S. and
other forces dropped tons of high explosives into the area–including the
BLU-82 Daisy Cutter bomb (a high-explosives giant that's also known as "the poor
man's nuclear bomb"). When ground forces penetrated into the zones after the air
assaults, they found plenty of bodies…but faced a difficult task: How to tell
if one of them was Osama? Soldiers collected and tagged body fragments, then
sent them off to be analyzed back in the U.S. The FBI's labs compared the
evidence to DNA samples acquired as "swabs" from Bin Laden's family members.
Today, something very similar is going on to prove the body dumped at sea really
was Bin Laden.

DNA matching (also known as genetic fingerprinting) is different to full DNA
sequencing–a long drawn out process that takes time, technology, and money to
work out the absolute list of hundreds of millions of nucleotides, the famous G,
T, C, A pattern that make up your genetic identity. Over 99.9% of everyone's DNA
sequence is the same, but that still leaves millions of bits of code that are
unique to you. You share some of this unique code with your parents and siblings
(and actually all of it if you're an identical twin), but most of it is yours
and yours alone–and this is where DNA matching works. It involves breaking
your DNA down in a number of different ways and looking for a short list of
what's called loci–tell-tale markers that reveal where specific genes are
located. The list from a test sample (from, say, a crime scene) is compared
against the list from a reference sample obtained from your person–if the
lists match, there's an
  incredibly high statistical probability that the two DNA samples come from the
same person.

In Osama's case, the DNA tests don't necessarily involve a reference sample from
the man himself (presumably because it's hard to find), but reportedly from his
sister who died in Boston recently. Tissue from her body was used to create an
extensive reference DNA fingerprint. Because your parents give you some of their
DNA, they also give your siblings some of the same genetic code–which is why
sibling DNA tests work. They sometimes concentrate on ares of the genome called
"junk DNA" which serves no biological function but still gets passed along to
offspring. By testing for repeat strands of DNA code in these areas, it's
possible to work out if two individuals are related as siblings.

Typical lab-based DNA matching tests like this can take up to 14 days; they're
painstaking and need to be repeated several times to ensure the sample's not
contaminated from any other DNA sources. But that's not necessarily the only way
to do these tests: Late in 2010, a University of Arizona team presented research
on a machine that can do the analysis in just two hours in a largely automated
way. It's possible that knowing they were engaged on a mission to capture Bin
Laden, U.S. Forces arranged for access to a machine like this to be on quick
alert–probably for flying blood, cheek cells, and other samples taken from the
body to the lab for expedited analysis.

But here's the thing: DNA matching isn't an exact science, and sibling matching
is slightly more inexact. It all comes down to a probability, with a statement
like "there's a one in one quadrillion chance this isn't the same person in both
DNA samples." In other words: conspiracy theorists still have something to talk
about.

http://www.fastcompany.com/1751030/how-a-dna-identity-test-on-osama-bin-laden-wo\
rks

======================================

From The Star.com

DNA fingerprinting helped identify Osama bin Laden

2011/05/02 18:44:00

Debra BlackStaff Reporter

DNA fingerprinting helped confirm Osama bin Laden was killed by American forces
in Pakistan.

Officials in Washington are saying that the DNA evidence provides a match with
99.9 per cent confidence.

According to reports on FastCompany.com soldiers collected and tagged body
fragments then shipped them off to be tested in the U.S to FBI labs. There the
DNA samples were tested against "swabs" from bin Laden's family members. A
similar test is also being conducted to prove the body dumped at sea is bin
Laden.

Officials did not immediately say where or how the testing was done but the test
explains why U.S. President Barack Obama was confident in announcing the death
to the world Sunday night, according to Canadian Press. Obama provided no
details on the identification process.

The U.S. is believed to have collected DNA samples from bin Laden family members
in the years since the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks that triggered the U.S.-led
invasion of Afghanistan.

However, it was unclear whether the U.S. also had fingerprints or some other
means to identify the body on site, the wire service reports.

CNN reports that a national security official said there were multiple
confirmations of bin Laden's identity. The official said they also used "facial
recognition work, amongst other things, to confirm the identity."

According to ABC News the DNA samples came from bin Laden's sister's body after
she died in Boston from brain cancer several years ago. The FBI subpoenaed her
body so it could be used to identify him.

The brain of bin Laden's sister, who has not been identified, was then preserved
and the tissue and blood samples taken from it were used to compile a DNA
profile. That was matched to the DNA of the man shot dead by U.S. troops.

Typical lab testing can take up to 14 days, but a new machine being developed by
a team at the University of Arizona can do it in just two hours. It's unclear
whether U.S. intelligence forces had access to such technology.

But Frederic Zenhausern, head of the project at the University of Arizona's
College of Medicine, told the Star it is possible to do the genetic work
required in a couple of hours given the high priority of identifying bin Laden
even without such technology.

When genetic fingerprinting first started it could take as long as four to six
weeks of lab work to complete and compare the samples.

DNA matching or fingerprinting is very different from doing a complete DNA
sequencing — which is a lot longer process and takes time, technology and
money to puzzle out the hundreds of millions of nucleotides that make up an
individual's genetic identity.

How does genetic fingerprinting work? Most human beings share 99.9 per cent of
DNA sequencing. But there are millions of bits of code that are unique to each
individual. You share some with your parents and siblings, but most is yours.

With DNA matching your DNA is broken down into a short list called loci —
tell-tale markers that show where specific genes are located. American standards
call for the use of 13 fragments of DNA to be used to compare, explained
Zenhausern. In Europe scientists use 16 fragments of DNA to compare.

A test sample is done and it's compared to a reference sample from the
individual. If the lists match that means there is a high statistical
probability that the two samples come from the same person.

But with bin Laden the DNA test didn't involve a reference sample from him, but
rather from his sister. The sample from his sister works because parents give
siblings some of their DNA and they share the same genetic code.

When testing against a relative's DNA, scientists often look to parts of the
genome described as junk DNA which are passed on to all offspring. By testing
these strands of DNA, it's possible to work out if two individuals are related
as siblings.

But Zenhausern, who is professor and director of the Centre of Applied
Nanobioscience and Medicine at the College of Medicine in Phoenix at the
University of Arizona, said comparing DNA samples to a sibling means that the
likelihood of error would be relatively low.

"In the case of direct siblings, the error rate would be relatively low…maybe
you loose a half or one per cent," Zenhausern said. "You would be in the 99.9
per cent accuracy range. If you go to a half-sibling you can have an error rate
that goes up to 10 per cent. The further away you go in the family tree, the
higher the error rate."

So in this case matching samples from the body that U.S. officials believe is
bin Laden against his sister's DNA samples would provide "a good match for an
identification," said Zenhausern.

Zenhausern is hoping that once the Rapid DNA Testing machine he and his team
have come up with is approved for use, it will become the standard in the
international forensic community.

It is currently being tested by police forces in the United Kingdom, Australia,
Germany and the Netherlands and soon will be tested by the FBI, he said.
"Typically DNA matching is becoming the standard in biometrics," he said.
Biometrics uses biology and biological technology to identify people.

He added that it is likely scientists are now conducting further tests on the
samples obtained from the body before it was buried at sea, doing a full profile
analysis and doing DNA sequencing looking at everything possible to get a comple
DNA picture.

But DNA matching or genetic fingerprinting isn't perfect. It's far from an exact
science and comes down to probabilities.

http://www.thestar.com/news/world/article/984153–dna-fingerprinting-helped-ide\
ntify-osama-bin-laden

====================

Link to BBC story with pictures of compound and layout.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-13261064








[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

On 5/3/2011 2:13 AM, kO nOrderisk wrote:

> enjoy! osama is dead&  obama is your president! big deal?

Now I suppose Donald Trump will demand to see Osama's death certificate--

--
Dan Clore

New book: _Weird Words: A Lovecraftian Lexicon_:
http://tinyurl.com/yd3bxkw
My collected fiction, _The Unspeakable and Others_:
http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/the-unspeakable-and-others/6124911
Lord Weÿrdgliffe & Necronomicon Page:
http://tinyurl.com/292yz9
News & Views for Anarchists & Activists:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smygo

Strange pleasures are known to him who flaunts the
immarcescible purple of poetry before the color-blind.
-- Clark Ashton Smith, "Epigrams and Apothegms"

There's a shooped pic of Obama saying, "Sorry I took so long producing my birth
certificate. I was busy killing bin Laden!" Ok...

What is 'truth'? It's lost somewhere. Disinfo is like an onion, with always
another
layer to peel back, and in the center, nothing. Did the al-Qaeda OBL ever even
exist, or was he a CIA construct? Did OBL die (not so) long ago, and when and
how?
Did OBL use body doubles whilst he's holed-up in NYC? ?Quien sabe? Who knows?

Disinfo is also distraction. Now that we're paying attention to this, what else
is
happening that we're not supposed to notice? Fraudulent election in Canada,
elsewhere? Some stealthy invasion? Analysts variously say this is or isn't a big
political boost for Obama. ?Quien sabe? Who knows?
_________________________
A penny saved is a penny.

On Tue 03/05/11 02:44 , Dan Clore clore@... sent:
>  
>
> On 5/3/2011 2:13 AM, kO nOrderisk wrote:
>
> > enjoy! osama is dead& obama is your president! big deal?
>
> Now I suppose Donald Trump will demand to see Osama's death certificate--
>
> --
> Dan Clore
>
> New book: _Weird Words: A Lovecraftian Lexicon_:
> http://tinyurl.com/yd3bxkw [1]
> My collected fiction, _The Unspeakable and Others_:
> http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/the-unspeakable-and-others/6124911
> [2]
> Lord Weÿrdgliffe & Necronomicon Page:
> http://tinyurl.com/292yz9 [3]
> News & Views for Anarchists height: 0;">
>
> Links:
> ------
> [1] http://tinyurl.com/yd3bxkw
> [2]
> http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/the-unspeakable-and-others/6124911
> [3] http://tinyurl.com/292yz9
> [4]
> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smygo/post;_ylc=X3oDMTJxbTdsamRrBF9TAzk3MzU5N
> zE0BGdycElkAzE5MDg5MTkEZ3Jwc3BJZAMxNzA1MDYwMDg2BG1zZ0lkAzE0MjU3BHNlYwNmdHIE
> c2xrA3JwbHkEc3RpbWUDMTMwNDQxNTkxMg--?act=reply[5]
> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smygo/post;_ylc=X3oDMTJlMjgya21jBF9TAzk3MzU5N
> zE0BGdycElkAzE5MDg5MTkEZ3Jwc3BJZAMxNzA1MDYwMDg2BHNlYwNmdHIEc2xrA250cGMEc3Rp
> bWUDMTMwNDQxNTkxMg--[6]
> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smygo/message/14253;_ylc=X3oDMTM2NmprcmloBF9T
> Azk3MzU5NzE0BGdycElkAzE5MDg5MTkEZ3Jwc3BJZAMxNzA1MDYwMDg2BG1zZ0lkAzE0MjU3BHN
> lYwNmdHIEc2xrA3Z0cGMEc3RpbWUDMTMwNDQxNTkxMgR0cGNJZAMxNDI1Mw--[7]
> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smygo/members;_ylc=X3oDMTJma2kzdjlmBF9TAzk3Mz
> U5NzE0BGdycElkAzE5MDg5MTkEZ3Jwc3BJZAMxNzA1MDYwMDg2BHNlYwN2dGwEc2xrA3ZtYnJzB
> HN0aW1lAzEzMDQ0MTU5MTI-?o=6[8]
> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smygo/links;_ylc=X3oDMTJnN2tocTEzBF9TAzk3MzU5
> NzE0BGdycElkAzE5MDg5MTkEZ3Jwc3BJZAMxNzA1MDYwMDg2BHNlYwN2dGwEc2xrA3ZsaW5rcwR
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> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smygo;_ylc=X3oDMTJlZ3JnbzgyBF9TAzk3MzU5NzE0BG
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> TMwNDQxNTkxMg--[10]
> http://global.ard.yahoo.com/SIG=15oe5u7g3/M=493064.14543979.14365478.132984
> 30/D=groups/S=1705060086:MKP1/Y=YAHOO/EXP=1304423113/L=0b266d54-756a-11e0-b
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> /A=6060255/R=0/SIG=1194m4keh/*http://us.toolbar.yahoo.com/?.cpdl=grpj[11]
> http://groups.yahoo.com/;_ylc=X3oDMTJkMXQwcmYzBF9TAzk3MzU5NzE0BGdycElkAzE5M
>
Dg5MTkEZ3Jwc3BJZAMxNzA1MDYwMDg2BHNlYwNmdHIEc2xrA2dmcARzdGltZQMxMzA0NDE1OTEy[12]
http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
>
>

I'vmee seen reports that Qaddafi's family is NEVER together during situations
like
the current attacks, and that these 'martyrdoms' are lies. How much do we trust
the
word of Qaddafi's (or any) government? Which layer of the disinfo onion has been
peeled back? What's under the next layer?

And, addressing another point, who is an "innocent civilian"? Are close members
of
bloatedly wealthy families of 'leaders' fair game? I'd suggest that if one
benefits
from a close relationship to a kleptocrat-dictator-etc, one can either ride-out
the
storm, or change identity and try to disappear.

This is about power. Among humans, the quest for power and wealth has apparently
always been a blood sport. The players, and those close to them, and their
pawns,
are all obvious (if not 'legitimate', whatever that means) targets. Want to live
long and prosper? Avoid power-play games.
_________________________
A penny saved is a penny.

On Sun 01/05/11 13:32 , "Gary" garyrumor2@... sent:
>  
>
> Qaddafi Son And Possibly Grandchildren Killed In NATO Airstrike
> May 1st, 2011
>
> I don't usually pick up news from the Times. It may be true or it may not.
> At this time there is a question as to the veracity of the story. If true
> the NATO assault on the Qaddafi family is reprehensible and barbaric. How
> is this protecting civilian lives? By killing civilians they are going to
> save civilians? It is the same twisted logic that allowed the victors in
> World War Two drop atomic bombs on Japan and firebomb Dresden and Hamburg.
> This is certainly not the way to protect the lives of civilians. It may be
> the way to prosecute a war, but that is not what the mandate states from
> the UN. The mandate allows bombing to protect civilians and there is no
> mandate to take sides or to prosecute a war against Qaddafi.
>
> What we are seeing is a clear violation of the UN mandate and a real move
> on the part of the coalition to kill the leadership of the government of
> Libya. This is regime change, plain and simple and it is being done under
> false pretenses. The USA should withdraw all support for this war against
> Qaddafi. We have no real interest in Libya and sticking our nose in other
> people's business is simply asking for a bruising. If the Europeans want to
> get a better deal for Libyan oil through regime change, that is their
> business. Although using the UN for cover is illegitimate and should be
> condemned. Personally I think this whole mess stinks of international
> gangsterism. At least when the Soviet Union was around the west would think
> twice before attacking a third world country.
>
> ==========================
>
> From New York Times
>
> Qaddafi Is Said to Survive NATO Airstrike That Kills Son
>
> Libyan government officials gave a tour of the house they said was hit by
> a NATO airstrike in Tripoli late Saturday night.
>
> By KAREEM FAHIM and DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK
>
> Published: April 30, 2011
>
> BENGHAZI, Libya — The government of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi said he
> survived an airstrike in Tripoli late Saturday night that killed one of his
> sons and three grandchildren, in the sharpest intensification yet of the
> NATO air campaign intended to pressure the Libyan leader from power.
>
> The son, Seif al-Arab Muammar el-Qaddafi, 29, and the grandchildren, all
> said to be younger than 12, were possibly the first confirmed casualties in
> the airstrikes on the Libyan capital. And while the deaths could not be
> independently verified, the campaign against Libya's most densely populated
> areas raised new questions about how broadly NATO is interpreting its
> United Nations mandate to protect civilians.
>
> It is the second airstrike in seven days to hit a location intimately
> close to the Libyan leader, following a midnight attack last week that
> destroyed an office building in his compound where he and his aides
> sometimes work.
>
> In a news conference early Sunday morning in Tripoli, a Qaddafi government
> spokesman called the strike an illegal attack. "This was a direct operation
> to assassinate the leader of this country," said the spokesman, Moussa
> Ibrahim. "This is not permitted by international law. It is not permitted
> by any moral code or principle." He said that the colonel and his wife, who
> were staying at the house along with "friends and family," were not hurt.
>
> American and NATO officials have said they are not seeking to kill Colonel
> Qaddafi, and some have suggested it might not be very easy. But frustrated
> by the evasion and resilience of Colonel Qaddafi's military, NATO has
> pledged to step up its strikes on the broader instruments of his power,
> including state television facilities and command centers in the capital.
>
> In a news release, the NATO mission's operational commander, Lt. Gen.
> Charles Bouchard, said he was aware of the reports of Qaddafi family deaths
> but called them unconfirmed. He added: "All NATO's targets are military in
> nature and have been clearly linked to the Qaddafi regime's systematic
> attacks on the Libyan population and populated areas. We do not target
> individuals."
>
> A NATO official in Naples, Italy, reached by e-mail and responding on
> condition of anonymity, said that allied planners had not known Qaddafi
> family members were in the building that was attacked, which the official
> described as a command and control center. The official would not specify
> the nationality of the aircraft or pilots that carried out the strike.
>
> In a video broadcast by the satellite channel Al Jazeera, Libyan officials
> showed reporters what they said was the destroyed house, a large crater,
> crumbled concrete and twisted metal, and someone dusting off what appeared
> to be an unexploded bomb.
>
> It is not the first time Colonel Qaddafi has survived such a close call.
> In 1986, the United States struck his compound in retaliation for a
> terrorist attack on a German nightclub frequented by American service
> members. Colonel Qaddafi has incorporated his survival into his cult of
> personality, preserving the wreckage of the building as a "Museum of
> Resistance" and erecting a statue of a giant fist grabbing an American
> warplane.
>
> Although several of Colonel Qaddafi's seven sons and one daughter play
> major roles in the Libyan economy and government (including an older
> brother with a similar name, Seif al-Islam el-Qaddafi), the son reported
> killed had been considered a black sheep, believed to spend much of his
> time in Munich. Many Libyans said they had never seen his picture. In 2007,
> the German newspaper Der Spiegel reported that he had been briefly detained
> by the Munich police after getting into a fight with a nightclub bouncer;
> no charges were filed.
>
> In Benghazi, the de facto rebel capital in eastern Libya, and in Misurata,
> a western city that Colonel Qaddafi's forces have besieged for months,
> celebratory gunfire rang out and explosions could be heard.
>
> But even then, doubts lingered in Benghazi about whether the news was
> true: in interviews, residents said they were happy but suspected a ploy by
> Colonel Qaddafi to win sympathy. Ramadan el-Sheikhy, who said his brother
> was killed in one of Colonel Qaddafi's prisons, said any sympathy was
> misplaced. "I was truly happy at the news," he said. "Hopefully, he felt
> the pain of having a relative killed."
>
> Earlier Saturday, NATO officials had rejected an offer by Colonel Qaddafi
> to call a cease-fire and negotiate as false. The proposal was delivered in
> a rambling and often defiant speech, broadcast over Libyan state
> television, in which Colonel Qaddafi insisted he would never leave Libya.
>
> "Come France, Italy, U.K., America, come, we'll negotiate with you,"
> Colonel Qaddafi said. "You lie and say I'm killing my own people. Show us
> the bodies."
>
> http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/01/world/africa/01libya.html?nl=todaysheadli
> nesheight: 0;">
>
> Links:
> ------
> [1]
> http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/01/world/africa/01libya.html?nl=todaysheadli
> nes&emc=[2]
> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smygo/post;_ylc=X3oDMTJxZHR0cjIxBF9TAzk3MzU5N
> zE0BGdycElkAzE5MDg5MTkEZ3Jwc3BJZAMxNzA1MDYwMDg2BG1zZ0lkAzE0MjQ5BHNlYwNmdHIE
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> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smygo/post;_ylc=X3oDMTJlaG45aDloBF9TAzk3MzU5N
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> bWUDMTMwNDM3MzI2Mw--[4]
> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smygo/message/14249;_ylc=X3oDMTM2ZTRvcjEzBF9T
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> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smygo/links;_ylc=X3oDMTJnNW12NWViBF9TAzk3MzU5
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http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
>
>

Support the Cuban 5!! THIS MOTHER'S DAY, SUPPORT THE WIVES OF GERARDO HERNANDEZ
AND RENE GONZALEZ!
 
Due to the U.S. government’s denial to approve visas, Gerardo Hernandez
Nordelo
and Rene Gonzalez Sehwerert have not seen their wives since their
incarceration!! Others in the Cuban 5 have not seen their parents, wives and
children with regularity. The U.S. government has taken prolonged periods of
time to issue them visas.

 
The U.S. government’s denial of visitation rights is a cruel and horrible form
of psychological torture. Their rationale for denial is ridiculous and baseless;
none of these family members are a threat to national security.

 
We are asking people to fax or mail out this letter to Ms. Navanetham Pillay,
The NEW High Commissioner of Human Rights of the Office for Human Rights-United
Nations Office at Geneva. We are asking her to intercede on behalf of the Cuban
5’s mothers/wives to pressure the U.S. government to grant them VISAs to visit
their husbands/sons!!
 
 
Letter for the Visa Campaign!
 
The Popular Education Project toFree the Cuban 5
www.freethecuban5.com

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

http://consumerist.com/2011/05/pop-up-bookstore-to-temporarily-take-over-empty-b\
orders-store.html

Like a hermit crab taking up residence in the shell of a deceased snail, a
former Borders store in Pittsburgh will soon see its shelves lined with books —
if only temporarily — when it briefly becomes the home of an independent
bookseller.

Starting May 7, all 24,000 sq. ft. of the former Borders in Pittsburgh's East
Liberty section will be home to a pop-up store operated by a project called
Fleeting Pages, which intends to use the space to sell independently published
books, host writing workshops, readings and other events.

"We felt that it was long enough to test some theories, and to make it worth
giving up the rest of our lives for eleven weeks," says Fleeting Pages' Jodi
Morrison in a statement to Consumerist. "I have always had a fascination with
space, art, culture and economics."

The Fleeting Pages have calculated that, in order to not take a complete bath on
the venture, they will need to send around 6,000 books before the pop-up store
goes poof! on June 3.

If you're in the Pittsburgh area and feel like checking it out, there is plenty
of info on the Fleeting Pages site.

Last week, we wrote about the author in New York City who had opened his own
bookstore to sell one, and only one, book... his own.

Bahrain Prosecutes Doctors
May 3rd, 2011

This is not going to help make the Bahraini rulers popular among the people who
care about such things. Prosecuting doctors for helping victims of government
repression is about on par with drowning puppies and kittens, probably worse.
There might be a rationale for killing the pets. There is no reasoning behind
prosecuting doctors, unless it is for malpractice and this clearly is not the
case. Bahrain wants to isolate the protesters and anyone who would dare to
support them. Does this extend to NGO workers? Will they decide to starve the
protesters? Using their logic, they could take any action that would tend to
stop the protesters from protesting. It appears that bringing in Saudi thugs was
not enough to quell the protests. Question is, with the presence of the US Navy
in Bahrain, what does the USA do? Not acting is condoning the activities of the
Bahraini government. It is time we bring that fleet home, or at least find a
friendly port in a democracy.

=================

From AP via Yahoo

Bahrain doctors to be tried for helping protesters

Tue May 3, 10:57 am ET

MANAMA, Bahrain – Several doctors and nurses who treated injured anti-government
protesters during the months of unrest in Bahrain will be tried in a military
court on charges of acting against the state, the justice minister said Tuesday.

Khaled bin Ali Al Khalifa said the charges against 23 doctors and 24 nurses
include participating in attempts to topple the island's Sunni monarchy and
taking part in illegal rallies.

The announcement is the latest in the Sunni rulers' relentless pursuit of Shiite
opposition supporters after weeks of street marches demanding greater freedoms,
equal rights and an elected government in Bahrain.

During the unrest, medical staff repeatedly said they were under professional
duty to treat all and strongly rejected claims by authorities that helping
anti-government protesters was akin to supporting their cause.

Separately, two former parliament members of the country's main Shiite party Al
Wefaq were arrested, according to a senior party leader, Abdul-Jalil Khalil.

Al Wefaq has been the leading political backer of Bahrain's uprising, which was
inspired by revolts in Tunisia and Egypt earlier this year.

Bahrain's Sunni rulers declared martial law on March 15 to crush Shiites
demonstrating for greater rights and freedoms. Hundreds of protesters,
opposition leaders, human rights activists and lawyers have been detained since
emergency rule was imposed. Dozens of doctors, nurses and other medical staff
have also been arrested.

At a press conference on Tuesday, the justice minister read the charges against
the 23 doctors and the 24 nurses, which also include "promoting efforts to bring
down the government" and "harming the public by spreading false news."

International rights groups say Bahrain is targeting medical professionals who
treated injured demonstrators at the Salmaniya medical center, which was later
overrun by the military.

At least 30 people have died since the protests in Bahrain began in mid
February. Among the dead are also four opposition supporters who died in
custody, including a blogger.

On Thursday, four anti-government protesters were convicted of killing two
policemen during the protests and sentenced to death by a military court. Three
other demonstrators got life sentences.

The military took over the state-run Salmaniya hospital in March, and doctors
and patients said soldiers and police had conducted interrogations and
detentions inside the complex.

Physicians for Human Rights said in a report last month that at least 32 health
care professionals have been detained since Bahrain declared martial law. The
report by the U.S.-based group detailed attacks on physicians, medical staff and
patients "with weapons, beatings and tear gas."

Khalil, the Al Wefaq leader, said Tuesday two of its former lawmakers — Matar
Matar and Jawad Fairoz — were taken into custody on Monday night. Khalil said he
does not know the details of their arrest.

Last month, the tiny island nation's Sunni rulers also ordered Al Wefaq
dismantled.

Authorities also accused Bahrain's main opposition newspaper, Al Wasat, of
threatening national security. The paper will be forced to shut down next week
and three of its former top editors will go on trial May 19.

Bahrain is the home of the U.S. Navy's 5th Fleet, Washington's main
counterweight against Iran's expanding military influence in the oil-rich Gulf.

Al Wefaq is the most influential party in Bahrain's seven-member Shiite
opposition. Eighteen members of the party have been elected to the nation's
40-member parliament last year although the legislators resigned from the body
in March to protest the government crackdown.

The parliament is Bahrain's only elected body. It holds limited authority since
all the country's decisions — including the appointment of government ministers
— rest with the king.

The Al Khalifa family has ruled Bahrain for more than 200 years

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110503/ap_on_re_mi_ea/ml_bahrain;
  _ylt=AssYLlgaZvw5dMJobkAPVg4LewgF;
  _ylu=X3oDMTJndDJ2cDRpBGFzc2V0A2FwLzIwMTEwNTAz
  L21sX2JhaHJhaW4EcG9zAzEEc2VjA3luX3BhZ2luYXRlX3N
  1bW1hcnlfbGlzdARzbGsDYmFocmFpbmRvY3Rv

We have not yet seen the evidence...
What Is (the) Evidence Against Bin Laden?
By Jessica Reaves
Oct. 03, 2001
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,177983,00.html

Within hours of the World Trade Center collapsing, the U.S. began pointing
fingers at Osama bin Laden. And within days of those accusations, the Bush
administration began talking of the "evidence" against bin Laden. Colin
Powell has talked about it. Donald Rumsfeld has talked about it. President
Bush has talked about it. The past two weeks have been dotted with press
conferences, international committee meetings, lengthy legal discussions,
all focused on one question: Where is the evidence of bin Laden's guilt?

To date, very little evidence has been made public, for obvious security
reasons, so any discussion has been necessarily relegated to the realm of
speculation. We do know that this is not a "normal" evidentiary search:
Colin Powell has been candid in saying that the evidence is not of the type
that would stand up in an American court of law.

Since the first demands for "evidence," the U.S. government has busied
itself preparing a laundry list of suitable accusations and diplomatically
correct labels to hurl at bin Laden and his terrorist cells. The mysterious
"proof" of his guilt has been shared, we're told with Allied leaders in
Europe, as well as with various Pakistani and Afghan (rebel) authorities.
NATO Secretary General Lord Robertson later characterized a secret U.S.
briefing as offering "clear and compelling evidence," while Canadian Prime
Minister Jean Chretien announced he was "quite satisfied" the information
"proves" bin Laden's involvement.

So what is this evidence everyone's talking about? It's hard to say for
sure, since it's off-limits to all but the highest-level government
officials, but according to Jordan Paust, professor of law and director of
the International Law Institute at the University of Houston, "There could
be various types of evidence. We could have super-sensitive satellite
pictures, statements from people within the Taliban, intercepted
intelligence reports."

Whatever it is, it probably involves two basic components. Legally important
evidence and politically important evidence.

The legal case

"The first purpose of the evidence will be to build a legal case against bin
Laden," he says, "paving the way for possible extradition hearings."
Extradition generally requires the requesting state (in this case, the U.S.)
to provide evidence that gives "probable cause" to believe the accused was
involved in a crime.

This is an unusual situation, adds Paust, because the U.S. does not
recognize the Taliban as the legitimate government of Afghanistan - and so
the generally accepted rules of state-to-state engagement don't apply. If
this were a "normal" case, he says, prosecution of bin Laden and others
acting outside the United States in connection with the September 11th
terrorist attack is possible, Paust says, under the Antiterrorism Act of
1990. It's also possible under U.S. legislation implementing the Montreal
Convention for the Suppression of Unlawful Acts Against the Safety of Civil
Aviation.

"If, for some reason, there were to be a legitimate exchange between the
Taliban and the U.S. government," says Paust, "the U.S. would have to
present sufficient evidence linking bin Laden to the terrorist attacks. I
assume that we will have a new indictment after the latest attack, above and
beyond pre-existing indictments we have pending against bin Laden for
previous crimes."

The political case

The second line of evidentiary attack is political - which is just as, if
not more critical, to the future of the case against bin Laden. Here, the
argument has to be made in the court of world opinion. "We want to establish
a system of intelligence exchange, possibly setting up an international
criminal tribunal. There's a lot at stake here, both immediately and for the
future in terms of international military, diplomatic and judicial
partnerships."

One thing's for sure, says Paust. This is not a time for the U.S. to clench
a secretive fist around "proprietary" information. "In terms of smart
long-term political planning, it'll benefit the U.S. in to disclose more
evidence about the accused than we have in the past."
------------------------------------------
Copyright © 2011 Time Inc.
========================

Osama Bin Laden not wanted for 9-11, not enough evidence to bring charges or
indictment?
http://www.fbi.gov/wanted/topten/usama-bin-laden/view

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indictment

The best way to support our troops
http://img145.imageshack.us/img145/5821/supporttroopspk6.gif

All the reasons given by Bush for the war on Iraq have proven false or
illegal.
Pre-emptive war is illegal under international law, as is war for regime
change. Iraq war was illegal and breached UN charter, (and violated
Article VI of the Constitution) says Kofi Annan, Secretary-General of
the United Nations
September 16, 2004
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1305709,00.html

Article Six establishes the United States Constitution and the laws and
treaties of the United States made in accordance with it as the supreme law
of the land <snip>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_Six_of_the_United_States_Constitution
2. This constitution, and the laws of the United States which shall be made
in pursuance thereof; and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under
the authority of the United States shall be the supreme law of the land; and
the judges in every state shall be bound thereby, any thing in the
constitution or laws of any state to the contrary notwithstanding.

According to U.S. law treaties are those international agreements that
receive the advice and consent of the Senate. (Article II, section 2, clause
2 of the Constitution). A treaty to which United States is a party is given
status equal to that of a federal legislation and therefore forms a part of
the Supreme law of the land.
http://definitions.uslegal.com/s/supremacy-clause/
This means all treaties made, such as the Geneva Conventions and the UN
Charter, are the Supreme Law of the United States, so violations of those
international laws and treaties are violations of Article VI of the
Constitution, the Supremacy Clause.

Bush response to 9-11: two illegal immoral unnecessary wars.
Before the invasion of Iraq, what were the facts on the ground? We knew
that there were no WMD, stockpiles or active weapons programs. The UN
Inspectors had free access to all parts of Iraq for four months, using
all the intelligence furnished by the USA, and reported nothing was to
be found. The inspectors were pulled out so Bush could start his "shock
and awe" bombing campaign. Those who read the classified version of the
National Intelligence Estimate concluded that it did not support the
unclassified version, and that Iraq was no imminent threat. There was NO
evidence that Iraq had any connection to 9-11 or to Al Quaeda in spite
of a massive campaign of lies by the Bush administration which made
those claims. The USA was not authorized to use military force by the
UN, and doing so was a violation of the UN Charter and article VI of the
US Constitution. Pre-emptive war is a war crime and a violation of
international law. The attack on Iraq did not meet the historical
standards of a "just war" and was clearly immoral. The war may end up
costing 3 trillion dollars, all for no valid purpose. A massive waste of
human life, property and loss of world respect. (Documentation is in my
four part research linked below.) Documentation of hundreds of Bush
lies. And more details about the illegal Afghanistan invasion.
http://www.hamiltongirls.com/BushWar.htm
--C Hamilton

On his recent book tour, Bush continues to rewrite history with lies about
his war of choice in Iraq, a pre-emptive war which is a war crime by
definition.

=======================

Killing Osama bin Laden
The legal justification, explained.
by James Downie
May 3, 2011
http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/87802/osama-bin-laden-kill-legal-justificati\
on-executive-order

Both Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have long criticized the
Bush and Obama administrations' prosecution of the "War on Terror." The two
human rights groups have consistently pointed out sovereignty and human
rights violations by the United States on issues ranging from black sites to
drone strikes. But today, in the wake of American special forces' raid on
Osama bin Laden's compound in Pakistan, both organizations merely noted that
bin Laden had been responsible for the deaths of thousands of civilians. But
what about questions of national sovereignty and civilian casualties? And,
more to the point, was it legal to kill bin Laden in the first place?

"There are targeted killing issues where the legal background is
complicated," says Brookings fellow (and New Republic contributor) Benjamin
Wittes. But, as it turns out, "[t]his isn't one of them." One week after the
September 11 attacks, Wittes explains, President George W. Bush signed
Public Law 107-40, in which Congress authorized the president "to use all
necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or
persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist
attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001." No one fit this description
more closely than Osama bin Laden. (By contrast, the NATO missile strike in
Tripoli that allegedly killed Muammar Qaddafi's son Seif Al Arab and three
of his young grandchildren this past weekend has elicited greater
controversy, because the U.N. resolution authorizing a no-fly zone over
Libya, among many other differences from 107-40, did not include an
authorization of force against Qaddafi or his family.)

Still, some legal scholars have pointed to the thorny interpretational
issues surrounding Executive Order 12333, signed by Ronald Reagan in 1981,
which prohibited the U.S. from "engag[ing] in, or conspiring to engage in,
assassination." But Reagan's advisers at the time, and the majority of
scholars since, have interpreted E.O. 12333 as only applying in peacetime
and not after a force authorization such as the one signed by Bush in 2001.
The question of whether the United States violated Pakistan's sovereignty,
on the other hand, is somewhat more nebulous, Wittes admits. This is due in
part to the fact that the public doesn't have a clear idea about what kind
of understanding the two countries share. Because of the lack of settled
international law on the subject, Pakistan could decide, once it was
informed, whether or not to retroactively consent. Fortunately, Pakistan did
not object.
----------------------------------------
James Downie is a reporter-researcher at The New Republic.

============================

Osama Bin Laden Dead: A Mindful Response
by Elisha Goldstein, Ph.D.
05/ 2/11
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/elisha-goldstein-phd/osama-bin-laden-dead_b_856706\
.html

In his or her wisdom, one unknown person once said:

   I mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in
the death of one, not even an enemy. Returning hate for hate multiplies
hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness
cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out
hate: only love can do that.

Osama Bin Laden is dead. But what does that mean exactly? Vindication? A
cause for celebration? Justice served? Revenge?

When I heard the news, I was surprised. The thought that came into my head
was, "Wow, I can't believe it really happened." Then I clicked on a video
showing the crowds of lively people screaming and jumping around in
jubilation over the death of a man, screaming, "U.S.A.! U.S.A.! U.S.A.!" as
though we had just won the World Cup. I had this gut feeling that the
reaction seemed sort of strange. This wasn't like we had just kicked in the
winning goal; we had just killed somebody, and it seemed like I was watching
some kind of dark comedy. I thought, "What is the difference between what I
am seeing on the video and a crowd standing by and cheering while some enemy
is getting stoned to death in front of us?"

You see, my reaction wasn't to Osama Bin Laden dying. He was a man who
caused so many people much lifelong pain, and I'm glad we don't have to
worry about him anymore. (That doesn't mean we don't have to worry about
others who want to cause us harm.) But something just seemed off, as if we
weren't processing our emotions around this properly. It was a good moment
for America, yes, but was it a moment for cheering, laughing and jubilation?

I decided to sleep on it.

When I woke up this morning, I saw a post from Susan Piver, who seemed to
have had the same reaction as me. She said something that made a lot of
sense:

Look at your own reaction this morning.

Was there even a hint of vengefulness or gladness at Osama bin Laden's
death? If so, that is a real problem. Whatever suffering he may have
experienced cannot reverse even one moment of the suffering he caused. If
you believe his death is a form of compensation, you are deluded.

There has been an outpouring of misdirected jubilation, as if a contest
had been won. Nothing has been won. Unlike winning a sporting event, this
doesn't mean that our team has triumphed. Far from it. There is only one
team, and it is us.
How long will it take -- or maybe a better question is what will it take --
for us to recognize that we are all connected to one another? Causing pain
to another group of people is a strange place to derive happiness from. It
seems to be a false happiness; at the root it's really anger or fear.

Thich Nhat Hanh has a wonderful saying: "Peace in ourselves, peace in the
world."

This isn't a Pollyanna notion that we should all just hold hands and pretend
that there's no war, pain or trauma; this is a very real and practical path
toward creating a better world. We need to learn how to take a good look at
the wars we have raging inside each and every one of us in response to our
own personal traumas in life -- whether that's the death of a loved one,
harm inflicted on us, or some form of emotional trauma -- and learn ways to
create peace within ourselves. It's a very simple path, but it's not at all
easy. In my opinion, that's why we default to being reactive and causing
more war.

So goodbye, Osama Bin Laden. May the families and friends who have suffered
at your hands feel more at peace without you around. And may you be at peace
with the wars that raged within you to the point that you held the misguided
delusion that killing thousands of people was somehow a path in the right
direction.

And may we all be free from our misguided reactions to the wars within and
help guide all people into a direction of greater empathy, compassion and
peace within ourselves and the world.
---------------------------------------
Follow Elisha Goldstein, Ph.D. on Twitter: www.twitter.com/Mindful_Living

============================

The Psychology of Revenge:
Why We Should Stop Celebrating Osama Bin Laden's Death
by by Pamela Gerloff
05/ 2/11
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/pamela-gerloff/the-psychology-of-revenge_b_856184.\
html?

While the killing of Osama bin Laden is being enthusiastically celebrated
throughout America and parts of the world, to say that such merriment is out
of order will surely be considered heresy. Nonetheless, I'm saying it --
because it needs to be said. What I am tempted to say is this: Get a grip,
celebrators. Have you so little decency?

I do understand how those who have suffered from the events of 9/11 may feel
relieved, even happy, to have "closure" after 10 years of waiting for
"justice to be done" -- and I don't quarrel with such feelings. Closure is a
natural yearning and can certainly help people move on from serious trauma.
And feelings are feelings. If you feel joyful, you feel joyful.

But celebration is not in order, no matter what your feelings of elation.
Here's why.

"Celebrating" the killing of any member of our species -- for example, by
chanting "USA! USA!" and singing "The Star Spangled Banner" outside the
White House or jubilantly demonstrating in the streets -- is a violation of
human dignity. Regardless of the perceived degree of "good" or "evil" in any
of us, we are all, each of us, human. To celebrate the killing of a life,
any life, is a failure to honor life's inherent sanctity.

Plenty of people will argue that Osama bin Laden did not respect the
sanctity of others' lives. But I say, "So what?" One aspect of being human
is our ability to choose our own behavior; more specifically, our capacity
to return good for evil, love for hate, dignity for indignity. While some
consider Osama bin Laden to have been the personification of evil, he was
nonetheless a human being. A more appropriate response to his killing would
be to mourn the many tragedies that led up to his violent death, as well as
the violent deaths of thousands in the attempt to eliminate him from the
face of the Earth; to feel compassion for anyone who, because of their role
in the military or government, American or otherwise, has had to play any
role in killing another.

We are not a peaceful species. Nor are we a peaceful nation. The
celebrations of this killing throughout the country draw attention to these
facts.
The death of Osama bin Laden gives us an opportunity to ask ourselves: What
kind of nation and what kind of species do we want to be? Do we want to
become a species that honors life? Do we want to become a species that
embodies peace? If that is what we want, then we need to start now to
examine our own hearts and actions, and begin to consciously evolve in that
direction. We could start by not celebrating the killing of another.

It is hard not to think that some of the impulse to celebrate "justice being
done" may also contain a certain pleasure in revenge -- not just "closure"
but "getting even." The world is not safer with Osama bin Laden's violent
demise (threat levels are going up, not down), so no cause for celebration
there; evil has not been finally removed from the Earth, so no reason for
jubilation on that count. The War on Terror goes on, so there is no closure
in that regard. The truth is that "celebrating justice" when one person is
killed -- as happens regularly in the gang wars of American cities -- only
incites further desire for revenge, which, from "the other side's"
viewpoint, is usually called "justice."

Think of it. If a leader in our country were killed by another government in
the manner in which Osama bin Laden was killed, as "justice" for his acts of
aggression in the War on Terror -- and people from that other country were
shown proudly chanting the country's name, singing their national anthem,
and demonstrating in the streets -- Americans would likely feel more
sickened than joyful, don't you think? The impulse to celebrate a death
depends on what side you're on.
We will only have peace when we stop the cycle of jubilation over acts of
violence.
Who will stop the cycle? If not us, who? If not you and I, who will it be?

Do not ask for whom the bell tolls.
It tolls for thee.
--John Donne
--------------------------
© 2011 by Pamela Gerloff

===========================

Chris Hedges Speaks on Osama bin Laden's Death
May 1, 2011
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/chris_hedges_speaks_on_osama_bin_ladens_deat\
h_20110502/

Chris Hedges made these remarks about Osama bin Laden's death at a Truthdig
fundraising event in Los Angeles on Sunday evening.

I know that because of this announcement, that reportedly Osama bin Laden
was killed, Bob wanted me to say a few words about it . about al-Qaida. I
spent a year of my life covering al-Qaida for The New York Times. It was the
work in which I, and other investigative reporters, won the Pulitzer Prize.
And I spent seven years of my life in the Middle East. I was the Middle East
bureau chief for The New York Times. I'm an Arabic speaker. And when someone
came over and told Jean and me the news, my stomach sank. I'm not in any way
naïve about what al-Qaida is. It's an organization that terrifies me. I know
it intimately.

But I'm also intimately familiar with the collective humiliation that we
have imposed on the Muslim world. The expansion of military occupation that
took place throughout, in particular the Arab world, following 9/11-and that
this presence of American imperial bases, dotted, not just in Iraq and
Afghanistan, but in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Doha-is one that has done more to
engender hatred and acts of terror than anything ever orchestrated by Osama
bin Laden.

And the killing of bin Laden, who has absolutely no operational role in
al-Qaida-that's clear-he's kind of a spiritual mentor, a kind of guide . he
functions in many of the ways that Hitler functioned for the Nazi Party. We
were just talking with Warren about Kershaw's great biography of Hitler,
which I read a few months ago, where you hold up a particular ideological
ideal and strive for it. That was bin Laden's role. But all actual acts of
terror, which he may have signed off on, he no way planned.

I think that one of the most interesting aspects of the whole rise of
al-Qaida is that when Saddam Hussein . I covered the first Gulf War, went
into Kuwait with the 1st Battalion, 1st Marines, was in Basra during the
Shiite uprising until I was captured and taken prisoner by the Iraqi
Republican Guard. I like to say I was embedded with the Iraqi Republican
Guard. Within that initial assault and occupation of Kuwait, bin Laden
appealed to the Saudi government to come back and help organize the defense
of his country. And he was turned down. And American troops came in and
implanted themselves on Muslim soil.

When I was in New York, as some of you were, on 9/11, I was in Times Square
when the second plane hit. I walked into The New York Times, I stuffed
notebooks in my pocket and walked down the West Side Highway and was at
Ground Zero four hours later. I was there when Building 7 collapsed. And I
watched as a nation drank deep from that very dark elixir of American
nationalism . the flip side of nationalism is always racism, it's about
self-exaltation and the denigration of the other.

And it's about forgetting that terrorism is a tactic. You can't make war on
terror. Terrorism has been with us since Sallust wrote about it in the
Jugurthine wars. And the only way to successfully fight terrorist groups is
to isolate [them], isolate those groups, within their own societies. And I
was in the immediate days after 9/11 assigned to go out to Jersey City and
the places where the hijackers had lived and begin to piece together their
lives. I was then very soon transferred to Paris, where I covered all of
al-Qaida's operations in the Middle East and Europe.

So I was in the Middle East in the days after 9/11. And we had garnered the
empathy of not only most of the world, but the Muslim world who were
appalled at what had been done in the name of their religion. And we had
major religious figures like Sheikh Tantawi, the head of al-Azhar-who died
recently-who after the attacks of 9/11 not only denounced them as a crime
against humanity, which they were, but denounced Osama bin Laden as a
fraud . someone who had no right to issue fatwas or religious edicts, no
religious legitimacy, no religious training. And the tragedy was that if we
had the courage to be vulnerable, if we had built on that empathy, we would
be far safer and more secure today than we are.

We responded exactly as these terrorist organizations wanted us to respond.
They wanted us to speak the language of violence. What were the explosions
that hit the World Trade Center, huge explosions and death above a city
skyline? It was straight out of Hollywood. When Robert McNamara in 1965
began the massive bombing campaign of North Vietnam, he did it because he
said he wanted to "send a message" to the North Vietnamese-a message that
left hundreds of thousands of civilians dead.

These groups learned to speak the language we taught them. And our response
was to speak in kind. The language of violence, the language of
occupation-the occupation of the Middle East, the wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan-has been the best recruiting tool al-Qaida has been handed. If
it is correct that Osama bin Laden is dead, then it will spiral upwards with
acts of suicidal vengeance. And I expect most probably on American soil. The
tragedy of the Middle East is one where we proved incapable of communicating
in any other language than the brute and brutal force of empire.

And empire finally, as Thucydides understood, is a disease. As Thucydides
wrote, the tyranny that the Athenian empire imposed on others it finally
imposed on itself. The disease of empire, according to Thucydides, would
finally kill Athenian democracy. And the disease of empire, the disease of
nationalism . these of course are mirrored in the anarchic violence of these
groups, but one that locks us in a kind of frightening death spiral. So
while I certainly fear al-Qaida, I know its intentions. I know how it works.
I spent months of my life reconstructing every step Mohamed Atta took. While
I don't in any way minimize their danger, I despair. I despair that we as a
country, as Nietzsche understood, have become the monster that we are
attempting to fight.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

comment By cripes, May 2
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/chris_hedges_speaks_on_osama_bin_ladens_deat\
h_20110502/#399692

Aside from the debate whether Bin Laden was responsible for 9/11, Al-Queda
or domestic violence seems to me an angels-on-the-head-of-a-pin debate.
Interesting, but useless.
He was a single man, probably isolated and sick, and the consensus is that
he was operationally ineffectual. If he was even alive the past ten years,
after all; the peasants are told what their rulers want them to hear.

Bin Laden was never indicted for 9/11, and his FBI poster only mentions him
as a suspect in the embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania.

So we assassinated a symbol. And three of Qaddafi's grandchildren and a son.
And how many thousands more in the middle east and around the world? What
exactly did Qaddafi do against the US to merit assassination by fiat from
the American king? No one seems to know, or care.

We must remember Bin Laden as a product of the anti-soviet, CIA intelligence
asset factory. This duplicitous operation straddles the planet with a
netherworld of spooks, spies, drug dealers and rogues. It hasn't reformed,
it has metastasized.

Mortal damage is inflicted to the remains of our democratic state every time
the US exercises its extrajudicial assassination program, expanded by Obama
from the Bush years. We are lawless.

240 years ago our forefathers revolted against the tyrannical power of Kings
to mete out life or death against all without recourse to law. They were
right to do so.

Now we throw this heritage away in a foolish orgy of cheerleading to murder
and assassination. Openly proclaiming "justice" as long as the crime is
heinous enough to justify hanging before a trial.

Obama is morphing into the "war president" PR brand that now is a
prerequisite for incumbent presidents seeking reelection.

Saddam, Qaddafi, Bin Laden. Blood lust theater for the rubes. Do you feel
manipulated? You should.

The whole thing is disgusting.

Copyright © 2011 Truthdig, L.L.C.

======================

"I should like to see these profound words inscribed on the threshold of all
the temples of science:
'The greatest derangement of the mind is to believe in
something because one wishes it to be so.'"
--Louis Pasteur
http://wisdom.mondocolorado.org/topics/reason.htm

Most of the greatest evils that man has inflicted upon man
have come through people feeling quite certain about
something which, in fact, was false.
--Bertrand Russell

The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious.
It is the source of all true art and science.
--  Albert Einstein

Parents and schools do not teach critical thinking,
which leaves the majority of people in the USA living in the world of myth,
superstition and unreason. Children have to be carefully taught.
http://img514.imageshack.us/img514/5561/ifriendsk8.gif

I would prefer that my elected leaders not believe in imaginary supernatural
beings as a condition of their running for office.  Agnostics and atheists
need not apply for public office in the USA.

George W. Bush believed he was doing the will of god, but which god is not
specified. There are more than 2,500 gods in human history, and no evidence
that they exist other than in myth and superstition.

One of my favorite gods: Lord Ganesh
http://img179.imageshack.us/img179/1073/ganeshyb5.jpg
Ganesha, the elephant-headed son of Shiva and Parvati, is widely worshipped
as the supreme god of wisdom, prosperity and good fortune.
http://www.india-forums.com/forum_posts.asp?TID=1238097

The worst President in American history: George W. Bush
Olbermann | 8 Bush Years in 8 Minutes
16 January 2009
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztyznEKg7Dw

http://current.com/news/politics/89729112_t-r-u-t-h-o-u-t-olbermann-bush-years-8\
-in-8-minutes.htm

C Hamilton
a moderator of
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/new-continuum/
adult humor/opinion/pictures

If you want to change what your government is doing,
contact those who are acting in your name:
http://www.visi.com/juan/congress/
http://www.visi.com/juan/congress/misc.html

Bush Refusal of 2001 Taliban Offer Gave bin Laden a Free Pass
By Gareth Porter
May 03, 2011
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article28015.htm

When George W. Bush rejected a Taliban offer to have Osama bin Laden tried
by a moderate group of Islamic states in mid- October 2001, he gave up the
only opportunity the United States would have to end bin Laden's terrorist
career for the next nine years.

The al Qaeda leader was able to escape into Pakistan a few weeks later,
because the Bush administration had no military plan to capture him.

The last Taliban foreign minister, Wakil Ahmed Muttawakil, offered at a
secret meeting in Islamabad Oct. 15, 2001 to put bin Laden in the custody of
the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), to be tried for the 9/11
terror attacks on the United States, Muttawakil told IPS in an interview in
Kabul last year.

The OIC is a moderate, Saudi-based organisation representing all Islamic
countries. A trial of bin Laden by judges from OIC member countries might
have dealt a more serious blow to al Qaeda's Islamic credentials than
anything the United States would have done with bin Laden.

Muttawakil also dropped a condition that the United States provide evidence
of bin Laden's guilt in the 9/11 attacks, which had been raised in late
September and reiterated by Taliban Ambassador to Pakistan Abdul Salam Zaeef
on Oct. 5 - two days before the U.S. bombing of Taliban targets began.

There had been sketchy press reports at the time that the Taliban foreign
minister had made a new offer in Islamabad to have bin Laden tried by one or
more foreign countries. No Taliban or former Taliban official, however, had
provided details of what had actually been proposed until Muttawakil's
revelation.

Muttawakil, who was detained at Bagram airbase for 18 months after the
ouster of the Taliban regime and now lives in Kabul with the approval of the
Hamid Karzai government, told IPS he had also offered a second alternative -
a "special court" to try bin Laden that Afghanistan and two other Islamic
governments would establish.

Muttawakil was believed by U.S. officials to have had the trust of Taliban
leader Mullah Omar. A December 1998 cable from the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad
said he was "considered Omar's closest adviser on political issues" and that
he had become Omar's "point man" on foreign affairs in 1997.

The new Taliban negotiating offer came almost immediately after the U.S.
began bombing Taliban targets on Oct. 7, 2001. The fear of the bombing - and
what was likely to follow - evidently spurred the Taliban leadership to be
more forthcoming on bin Laden.

But Bush brusquely rejected any talks on the Taliban proposal, declaring,
"They must have not heard. There's no negotiations."

Bush rejected the Taliban offer despite the fact that U.S. intelligence had
picked up reports in the previous months of deep divisions within the
Taliban regime over bin Laden. It was because of those reports that Bush had
authorised secret meetings by a CIA officer with a high-ranking Taliban
official in late September.

Former CIA director George Tenet recalled in his memoirs that the CIA
station chief in Pakistan, Robert Grenier, met with Mullah Osmani, the
second ranking Taliban official, in Baluchistan province of Pakistan.

But Grenier was only authorised to offer Osmani three options: turning bin
Laden over to the United States; letting the Americans find him on their
own; or a third option, as Tenet described it, to "administer justice
themselves, in a way that clearly took him off the table".

Osmani rejected those three options, as well as a subsequent proposal by
Grenier on Oct. 2 that he oust Mullah Omar from power and publicly announce
on the radio that bin Laden would be handed over to the United States
immediately.

On Oct. 3, Bush publicly ruled out negotiations with the Taliban. They had
to "turn over the al Qaeda organisation living in Afghanistan and must
destroy the terrorist camps," he said, adding "There are no negotiations."

Milton Bearden, the former CIA station chief in Pakistan during the
Mujahideen war against the Soviets, observed to the Washington Post two
weeks after Bush had rejected Muttawakil's new offer that the Taliban needed
a face-saving way of resolving the issue consistent with its Islamic values.

"We never heard what they were trying to say," Bearden said.

The Bush refusal to negotiate with the Taliban was in effect a free pass for
bin Laden and his lieutenants, because the Bush administration had no plan
of its own for apprehending bin Laden in Afghanistan. It did not even know
what level of military effort would have been required for the United States
to be able to block bin Laden's exit routes from Afghanistan into Pakistan.

The absence of any military planning to catch bin Laden was a function of
Bush's national security team, led by Vice-President Dick Cheney and
Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld, which had firmly opposed any military
operation in Afghanistan that would have had any possibility of catching bin
Laden and his lieutenants.

Rumsfeld and the second-ranking official at the Pentagon, Paul Wolfowitz,
had dismissed CIA warnings of an al Qaeda terrorist attack against the
United States in the summer of 2001, and even after 9/11 had continued to
question the CIA's conclusion that bin Laden and al Qaeda were behind the
attacks.

Cheney and Rumsfeld were determined not to allow a focus on bin Laden to
interfere with their plan for a U.S. invasion of Iraq to overthrow the
Saddam Hussein regime.

Even after Bush decided in favour of an Afghan campaign, CENTCOM commander
Tommy Franks, who was responsible for the war in Afghanistan, was not
directed to have a plan for bin Laden's capture or to block his escape to
Pakistan.

When the CIA received intelligence on Nov. 12, 2001 that bin Laden had left
Kandahar and was headed for a cave complex in the Tora Bora Mountains close
to the Pakistani border, Franks had no assets in place to do anything about
it. He asked Lt. Gen. Paul T. Mikolashek, commander of Army Central Command
(ARCENT), if he could provide a blocking force between al Qaeda and the
Pakistani border, according to Col. David W. Lamm, who was then commander of
ARCENT Kuwait.

But that was impossible, because ARCENT had neither the troops nor the
strategic lift in Kuwait required to put such a force in place.

Franks then had to ask for Pakistani military help in blocking bin Laden's
exit into Pakistan, as Rumsfeld told a National Security Council meeting,
according to the meeting transcript in Bob Woodward's book "Bush at War".

But Rumsfeld and other key advisers knew it would a charade, because bin
Laden was a long-time ally of the Pakistani intelligence service, the ISI,
and the Pakistani military was not about to help capture him.

Franks asked President Pervez Musharraf to deploy troops along the
Afghan-Pakistan border near Tora Bora, and Musharraf agreed to redeploy
60,000 troops to the area from the border with India, according to U.S.
Ambassador Wendy Chamberlin, who was present at the meeting.

But the Pakistani president said his army would need airlift assistance from
the United States to carry out the redeployment. That would have required an
entire aviation brigade, including hundreds of helicopters, and hundreds of
support troops to deliver that many combat troops to the border region,
according to Lamm.

Those were assets the U.S. military did not have in the theatre.

Osama bin Laden had been effectively guaranteed an exit to Pakistan by a
Bush policy that had rejected either diplomatic or military means to do
anything about him.

In an implicit acknowledgement that the administration had not been
seriously concerned with apprehending bin Laden, Bush declared in a Mar. 13,
2002 press conference that bin Laden was "a person who's now been
marginalised", and added, "You know, I just don't spend that much time on
him."
-------------------------------------------
*Gareth Porter is an investigative historian and journalist specialising in
U.S. national security policy. The paperback edition of his latest book,
"Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam",
was published in 2006

=======================

We have not yet seen the evidence...
What Is This Evidence Against Bin Laden?
By Jessica Reaves
Oct. 03, 2001
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,177983,00.html

Within hours of the World Trade Center collapsing, the U.S. began pointing
fingers at Osama bin Laden. And within days of those accusations, the Bush
administration began talking of the "evidence" against bin Laden. Colin
Powell has talked about it. Donald Rumsfeld has talked about it. President
Bush has talked about it. The past two weeks have been dotted with press
conferences, international committee meetings, lengthy legal discussions,
all focused on one question: Where is the evidence of bin Laden's guilt?

To date, very little evidence has been made public, for obvious security
reasons, so any discussion has been necessarily relegated to the realm of
speculation. We do know that this is not a "normal" evidentiary search:
Colin Powell has been candid in saying that the evidence is not of the type
that would stand up in an American court of law.

Since the first demands for "evidence," the U.S. government has busied
itself preparing a laundry list of suitable accusations and diplomatically
correct labels to hurl at bin Laden and his terrorist cells. The mysterious
"proof" of his guilt has been shared, we're told with Allied leaders in
Europe, as well as with various Pakistani and Afghan (rebel) authorities.
NATO Secretary General Lord Robertson later characterized a secret U.S.
briefing as offering "clear and compelling evidence," while Canadian Prime
Minister Jean Chretien announced he was "quite satisfied" the information
"proves" bin Laden's involvement.

So what is this evidence everyone's talking about? It's hard to say for
sure, since it's off-limits to all but the highest-level government
officials, but according to Jordan Paust, professor of law and director of
the International Law Institute at the University of Houston, "There could
be various types of evidence. We could have super-sensitive satellite
pictures, statements from people within the Taliban, intercepted
intelligence reports."

Whatever it is, it probably involves two basic components. Legally important
evidence and politically important evidence.

The legal case

"The first purpose of the evidence will be to build a legal case against bin
Laden," he says, "paving the way for possible extradition hearings."
Extradition generally requires the requesting state (in this case, the U.S.)
to provide evidence that gives "probable cause" to believe the accused was
involved in a crime.

This is an unusual situation, adds Paust, because the U.S. does not
recognize the Taliban as the legitimate government of Afghanistan - and so
the generally accepted rules of state-to-state engagement don't apply. If
this were a "normal" case, he says, prosecution of bin Laden and others
acting outside the United States in connection with the September 11th
terrorist attack is possible, Paust says, under the Antiterrorism Act of
1990. It's also possible under U.S. legislation implementing the Montreal
Convention for the Suppression of Unlawful Acts Against the Safety of Civil
Aviation.

"If, for some reason, there were to be a legitimate exchange between the
Taliban and the U.S. government," says Paust, "the U.S. would have to
present sufficient evidence linking bin Laden to the terrorist attacks. I
assume that we will have a new indictment after the latest attack, above and
beyond pre-existing indictments we have pending against bin Laden for
previous crimes."

The political case

The second line of evidentiary attack is political - which is just as, if
not more critical, to the future of the case against bin Laden. Here, the
argument has to be made in the court of world opinion. "We want to establish
a system of intelligence exchange, possibly setting up an international
criminal tribunal. There's a lot at stake here, both immediately and for the
future in terms of international military, diplomatic and judicial
partnerships."

One thing's for sure, says Paust. This is not a time for the U.S. to clench
a secretive fist around "proprietary" information. "In terms of smart
long-term political planning, it'll benefit the U.S. in to disclose more
evidence about the accused than we have in the past."
------------------------------------------
Copyright © 2011 Time Inc.

=======================

America has turned into a moral swamp
By Mike Whitney
May 03, 2011 "Information Clearing House"
What does the assassination of Osama Bin Laden have in common with
Guantanamo Bay?
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article28014.htm

They're both intended to send a message that the United States has sunk
deeper into savagery and abandoned any commitment to conventional norms of
behavior. That's the message, and we hear it "loud and clear".

We don't need our Harvard-educated president to crow about his latest
gangland "hit" to know that America has turned into a moral swamp. That's
obvious in every area of policy, foreign and domestic. It's just that
certain incidents draw more attention than others, like when a drone
incinerates a home full of women and children in the Pakistani outback or
when F-16s reduce a city of 300,000 (Falluja) to rubble leaving behind a
legacy of birth defects, cancer and grinding poverty. These are the real
"headline grabbers", like shrugging off the sovereign rights of an ally,
invading their airspace, and deploying special ops to conduct a Rambo-style
massacre in a civilian section of town. <snip>

Everyone knows the rules don't apply to America. How could they not know? In
Libya, the US is supporting a gaggle of fundamentalist crackpots invoking
the thinnest rationale of all time, that the leader of the nation (Gaddafi)
does not have the right to put down an armed rebellion against the state.
What kind of nonsense is that?

But it doesn't matter, because the US creates the rules on-the-fly; just
makes it up as they go along. So, when Bin Laden gets whacked in the latest
bloody incident of military gangsterism, no one utters a peep of protest,
because everyone knows that the US owns the world and the rest of us are
just guests.

So, now that Bin Laden is dead can we withdraw the troops from Afghanistan
and allow the Afghans decide their own future? Can we make our apologies to
the families of the 1 million Iraqis who were killed in the
invasion-occupation of Iraq and move on? Can we stop poking our nose in the
internal affairs of every state, on every continent, in every corner of the
planet?

Of course not. It's our planet, isn't it?

The world deserves a breather from the United States, just a pause in the
action. It's not that everyone hates us; they don't. They don't even think
about us. They have their own problems to deal with. But the US has become a
first class nuisance, like a wasp at the company picnic, constantly buzzing
around the potato salad just when people want to sit down to eat. That's
America, one big honking wasp making everyone's life miserable.

The rest of the world doesn't share our "enlightened" views about justice.
They're still stuck in the past believing in archaic ideas about due
process, habeas corpus, and civil liberties. They don't see the virtue of
kidnapping, beating, and waterboarding. They don't cheer when people are
butchered and dumped in the sea. They don't build Stalinesque gulags and
torture chambers to show how forbearing and merciful they are. They're
leaders don't go through the ritual chest-thumping exercise on national TV
when someone's been assassinated. They don't understand what a wonderful
country the US is. All they just want a little breather from all the
violence. Is that too much to ask? <snip>

=====================

Osama bin Laden: US responds to questions about killing's legality, which
has
"...the appearance of an "extrajudicial killing without due process of the
law".
by Owen Bowcott
3 May 2011
Doubts remain over manner in which al-Qaida figurehead died but US officials
defend Barack Obama's action
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article28020.htm

The chorus of official applause from international leaders over the death of
Osama bin Laden has failed to silence doubts about the killing's legality.

Despite widespread backing for the raid, there is a growing demand for the
precise legal basis of the US operation to be explained, particularly given
the absence of prior debate in the UN security council.

Prof Nick Grief, an international lawyer at Kent University, said the attack
had the appearance of an "extrajudicial killing without due process of the
law".

Cautioning that not all the circumstances were known, he added: "It may not
have been possible to take him alive ... but no one should be outside the
protection of the law." Even after the end of the second world war, Nazi war
criminals had been given a "fair trial".

The prominent defence lawyer Michael Mansfield QC expressed similar doubts
about whether sufficient efforts had been made to capture Bin Laden. "The
serious risk is that in the absence of an authoritative narrative of events
played out in Abbottabad, vengeance will become synonymised with justice,
and that revenge will supplant 'due process'.

"Assuming the mission was . intended to detain and not to assassinate, it is
therefore imperative that a properly documented and verifiable narrative of
exactly what happened is made public. Whatever feelings of elation and
relief may dominate the airwaves," he said, "they must not be allowed to
submerge core questions about the legality of the exercise, nor to permit
vengeance or summary execution to become substitutes for justice."

The human rights lawyer Geoffrey Robertson QC argued that the killing risked
undermining the rule of law. "The security council could have set up an ad
hoc tribunal in The Hague, with international judges (including Muslim
jurists), to provide a fair trial and a reasoned verdict," he wrote in the
Independent. "This would have been the best way of demystifying this man,
debunking his cause and de-brainwashing his followers."

The immediate justification for the killing was that the head of al-Qaida
had long ago declared war on the US and other nations. "In war you are
allowed to attack your enemy," a US embassy spokesman in London said.

Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, echoed Barack Obama's assertion,
stating: "Osama bin Laden is dead and justice has been done."

A more thorough explanation of the legal basis was given last year by Harold
Hongju Koh, legal adviser at the US state department. He told a meeting of
the American Society of International Law: "Some have argued that the use of
lethal force against specific individuals fails to provide adequate process
and thus constitutes unlawful extrajudicial killing. But a state that is
engaged in an armed conflict or in legitimate self-defence is not required
to provide targets with legal process before the state may use lethal force.

"The principles of distinction and proportionality that the US applies
are .implemented rigorously throughout the planning and execution of lethal
operations to ensure that such operations are conducted in accordance with
all applicable law."

He added: "Some have argued that our targeting practices violate domestic
law, in particular, the longstanding domestic ban on assassinations. But
under domestic law, the use of lawful weapons systems - consistent with the
applicable laws of war - for precision targeting of specific high-level
belligerent leaders when acting in self-defence or during an armed conflict
is not unlawful, and hence does not constitute 'assassination'."

John Bellinger III, who served as the state department's senior lawyer
during George Bush's second term as president, also insisted the strike was
legitimate.

"The killing is not prohibited by the long-standing assassination
prohibition in executive order 12333 [signed in 1981] because the action was
a military action in the ongoing US armed conflict with al-Qaida and it is
not prohibited to kill specific leaders of an opposing force," he wrote.

"The assassination prohibition also does not apply to killings in
self-defence. The executive branch will also argue that the action was
permissible under international law both as a permissible use of force in
the US armed conflict with al-Qaida and as a legitimate action in
self-defence, given that Bin Laden was clearly planning additional attacks."

Many human rights groups have reacted with caution. "Osama bin Laden took
credit for and supported acts around the world which amounted to crimes
against humanity," said Claudio Cordone, senior director at Amnesty
International.

"He also inspired others to commit grave human rights abuses. His death will
put an end to his role in organising or inspiring such criminal acts. We do
not know the full circumstances of his killing and the others with him and
we are looking into that." Amnesty is writing to the US and Pakistani
governments for "greater clarification about the events that led to the
death of Osama bin Laden".

One area of anxiety is the suggestion that the intelligence needed to locate
Bin Laden's refuge might have been obtained through torture of suspects
detained at Guantánamo Bay or other secret holding centres.

Whether or not the Pakistan government authorised the assault on its
territory might technically affect the legality of the operation under
international law. But the enthusiastic support of the UN secretary general,
Ban Ki-moon, for the killing is likely to silence any critical voices in the
security council.

"The death of Osama bin Laden . is a watershed moment in our common global
fight against terrorism," Ban said. "Personally, I am very much relieved by
the news that justice has been done."
© Guardian News and Media Limited 2011

======================

A Targeted Killing
By Kevin Gosztola
May 2, 2011
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Targeted-Killing-of-Bin-La-by-Kevin-Gosztola-11\
0502-8.html

Nearly a decade after the Bush Administration announced a "war on terrorism"
after the attacks on US soil on September 11, 2001, the US mounted a covert
military operation that killed Al Qaeda figurehead and leader Osama Bin
Laden. The operation was an extrajudicial assassination exercise that
involved a firefight, which killed at least twenty people in Abbotabad,
Pakistan.

This was how President Barack Obama described the operation  in a late-night
announcement on a "national security issue" on Sunday, May 1,
2011. After putting the launching of this operation in the context of 9/11
and how the US has "tirelessly" and "heroically" fought al Qaeda and other
terrorists over the past ten years <snip>

Bin Laden died from a "targeted killing" operation, an operation that,
according to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is part of a regimen
for "killing terror suspects--including US citizens--located far away from
zones of actual armed conflict." In this case, Bin Laden happened to be in
Pakistan, a country where ongoing US military operations have been taking
place without proper Congressional authorization and notification .

President Obama used the killing operation to justify the war in Pakistan
<snip>

What must be said is that there is a risk to celebrating the death of Bin
Laden patriotically and proudly. There is nothing wrong with privately
enjoying the fact that somebody responsible for the deaths of many people is
no longer alive, however, if one really wants to keep the country safe and
not do things that might provoke terrorism, bragging about an operation that
killed someone who may now be regarded as a martyr is probably not the best
reaction. <snip>

The celebration foreshadows a continuation, reaffirming and, perhaps,
expansion of US operations in a "war on terror" that President Obama has
worked to rebrand. The speech tonight suggests that, in a country that may
be losing interest in waging wars abroad, America will not waver in its
commitment to keep hunting terrorists down.

President Obama's announcement built on his May 2009 speech  on national
security, where he did not discard the premise for national security that
the Bush Administration had used to formulate domestic and international
policy but rather embraced that premise. Just like President Bush said while
in office, "We're fighting the terrorists over there so we don't have to
fight them here," Obama said during that 2009 speech, "For the first time
since 2002, we're providing the necessary resources and strategic direction
to take the fight to the extremists who attacked us on 9/11 in Afghanistan
and Pakistan. We're investing in the 21st century military and intelligence
capabilities that will allow us to stay one step ahead of a nimble enemy."

The tactic of "taking the fight to the extremists" sets up theaters for war
and ensures entire regions of the world are devastated. For what does this
devastation occur and why do Americans allow this tactic born out of fear to
be the way the US works to "secure" the world from extremism?

Over nearly ten years, the fight against extremism has produced a "new
normal" for Americans . A climate now exists where there is beefed-up
airport security that violates rights to privacy, individuals are shielded
from accountability for engaging in warrantless wiretapping, torture, or
rendition; state secrets are invoked to prevent transparency; detainees are
denied habeas corpus; prisons like Guantanamo and Bagram (along with black
prison sites that still exist) continue to hold detainees perhaps
indefinitely; the right to target and kill U.S. civilians and bypass due
process is asserted; and military commissions or "kangaroo courts" force
detainees into Kafkaesque proceedings that make it nearly impossible to not
be found guilty.

The trampling of civil liberties has been permitted by America largely
because many have bought into the idea that there are networks of fanatical
enemies out there tirelessly plotting the death and destruction of America,
who hate America for its freedom. Americans have allowed terrorism to be
personified and now increasingly associate terrorism with Muslims even
though all humans could potentially pose a terrorist threat to mankind. The
arousal of primal fear from conjured perception and the fact that those who
have been imprisoned, abused, tortured, and denied rights don't look like
"real Americans" has pushed America closer and closer to the world one reads
about on the pages of George Orwell's 1984.

The killing of Osama Bin Laden will renew this psyche in Americans' minds.
And, President Barack Obama will be able to re-brand US wars that each and
every day more and more Americans reject.
---------------------------------------------
Author's Bio: Kevin Gosztola is a multimedia editor for OpEdNews.com and a
writer for WLCentral.org.

====================

Keith Olbermann | On the Death of Osama bin Laden
http://www.truthout.org/special-comment-death-osama-bin-laden/1304450641

================================

"Sort of like Murder, Inc.": Behind the Forces Who Took Down bin Laden
3 May 2011
Jeremy Scahill, The Nation
http://www.thenation.com/blog/160332/jsoc-black-ops-force-took-down-bin-laden

=========================

Will we overestimate the importance of Osama bin Laden's death?
To be sure...
by Lawrence F. Kaplan
May 3, 2011
http://www.tnr.com/article/crossings/87786/osama-bin-laden-barack-obama-war-terr\
orism

Always listen for the "to be sure" line, the caveat that reveals we may be
getting things backward, or at least getting ahead of the curve. In
announcing the death of Osama bin Laden, President Obama wisely put the
to-be-sure front and center: "The death of bin Laden marks the most
significant achievement to date in our nation's effort to defeat Al Qaeda.
But his death does not mark the end of our effort." Good. "We must and we
will remain vigilant at home and abroad." Also good. But the point, so
obvious as to be redundant the first time around, needs to be made to
Americans in particular. More than others, after all, we have a unique
tendency to personalize foreign threats.

From Kaiser Wilhelm on, and for reasons that respond to needs unrelated to
national security as such, we've always pinned the blame (and credit) for
mass movements on their most visible spokesmen. Tojo, Milosevic, Saddam,
and, on the flipside, Yeltsin or Aristide-George Kennan was right to lament
the power of the bogeyman in American foreign policy. The persistence of
nasty and divisive political impulses runs counter to our progress
narrative, and also tends to be more difficult to explain. Rather, in
accounting for the obduracy of certain countries and ideologies, presidents
have advanced the proposition that, were it not for a handful of men like
Saddam Hussein, the late Mohamed Farah Aideed, and Osama bin Laden, their
supporters would eagerly sign on to the American program. "You think the
Germans would have perpetrated the Holocaust on their own without Hitler?"
President Clinton asked in reference to the bestial conduct of the Serbs in
Kosovo. "Political leaders do this kind of thing."

Now, on the face of it, this sort of personalization of contemporary history
may seem to be in sharp contradiction to the belief that the world has
improved in recent decades. But there is an escape clause: for, while these
villains are blamed for the world's current troubles, it is also insisted
that they are essentially anachronisms, a residue from a rapidly vanishing
past. Indeed, their very existence offers proof that hitherto intractable
dilemmas of politics and ideology have been solved.

The war on terror has provided the clearest illustration of this thinking.
From the first shot, President Bush declared the American campaigns as
battles against lone evil men: Saddam in Iraq, Bin Laden in Afghanistan.
That their ideologies were soon revealed to have energized a seemingly
infinite supply of suicide bombers in Iraq and Afghanistan seemed impolite
to point out. "Islam is peace," President Bush famously insisted. But what
the West ran up against in Al Qaeda was, finally, not a man but a creed. To
judge by the foreign policy priorities of both President Bush and President
Obama, there are in the world today only two sources of political
legitimacy-democracy and capitalism. But there is a third, one often
declared to be passé but to which modern states and ideologies repair with
ever greater frequency: that is fanaticism. Those who discount this ideology
as the preserve of anachronistic cave-dwellers do so at the cost of
discounting the true essence of our enemy. For, whether in the Middle East
or Central Asia, fanaticism has been sustained an exacerbated not by what
President Clinton has dismissed as "fourteenth-century values," but by the
same progress he and his successors routinely champion-the very dislocations
that have characterized the modern era and that have only intensified in an
era of globalization.

The danger here is obvious. Unlike President Obama, President Bush all but
declared the war in Iraq over when U.S. forces captured Saddam (having
already declared it all but over the previous year). "In the history of
Iraq," he exulted, "a dark and painful era is over." But, in 2003, the worst
was still to come. Saddam, it turned out, was not the only problem in Iraq.
So, too, in the broader Middle East today. "Terrorism before Bin Laden was
often state-sponsored," The New York Times pointed out, "but he was a
terrorist who had sponsored a state. a multinational enterprise to export
terror around the globe." Bin Laden was a sick bastard. But he also created
a generation of sick bastards. They're still here.
-----------------------------------------------
Lawrence F. Kaplan is a contributing editor for The New Republic.

==============================

C Hamilton
a moderator of
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/new-continuum/
adult humor/opinion/pictures

If you want to change what your government is doing,
contact those who are acting in your name:
http://www.visi.com/juan/congress/
http://www.visi.com/juan/congress/misc.html

I am very sorry to find out about Ben Masel's passing. I hope he is doing well
on the astral plane. Is that where we all are going after we pass away too?


 



________________________________
From: Gary <garyrumor2@...>
To: smygo@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Sat, April 30, 2011 12:56:02 PM
Subject: [smygo] Ben Masel One With The Ages

 
Ben Masel Dead At 56
April 30th, 2011

It looks like Ben is not going to make it to the Senate in 2012. He has died,
and people are posting tributes on his Facebook page. I didn't know Ben very
well, but he did change my life. He called me at work in Boulder, CO and asked
me if I wanted to go to New York City and run the Rock Against Racism Chapter
there. I still don't know how he found me. But I took him up on the offer, got
on a bus to New York and my life was changed. I finally met him at the Yippie
office there 9 Bleecker Street. He was a long haired hippie with a propensity
for getting busted on civil rights charges. He told me he was going for the
world record, I don't know if he made it. He also was a chess champion and made
a living playing back then. That was in 1979. Since then I have contacted him
from time to time, but we have never met again to my knowledge. It makes me feel
my mortality, he was 56, same age as I am.


Good luck on the astral plane Ben, you should have had plenty of experience
preparng for this trip.

==========================

From Alternative Medical Choices

Madison NORML's Ben Masel loses battle with lung cancer

By "Radical" Russ Belville on April 30, 2011

Madison NORML's Ben Masel with me at the 2009 Great Midwest Harvest Fest in
Madison.

It is with great sadness I report on the death of one of the most outstanding
activists in the NORML family – Ben Masel has passed away at age 56 following
his battle with lung cancer.

Friends are leaving tribute on Ben's Facebook page.

I met Ben at the 2009 Great Midwest Harvest Fest. He and Gary Storck flew me out
to speak to the crowd of thousands on the campus of University of Wisconsin and
the statehouse steps. I quickly found him to be exceptionally brilliant (he was
just shy of "grand master" in chess) and loaded with fabulous stories of his
past activism with the Yippies.

Ben had hoped to make it out to the NORML Conference last week, but obviously
his health had taken a turn for the worse. The NORML Board presented to him a
special award for his lifetime of work. My own tribute to Ben appears in the
August 2011 issue of HIGH TIMES Magazine where we named him "Freedom Fighter of
the Month"… unfortunately too late for him to read it. It will be one of my
bigger disappointments that Ben never received the recognition he deserved while
he was alive to enjoy it.

Following is the article for HIGH TIMES with my sincere condolences to family
and friends who had the privilege of knowing and loving him more than I.

If you watched the TV news coverage of the Wisconsin labor protests in Madison
last February, you may have seen this month's Freedom Fighter Ben Masel. A
longtime activist with Madison NORML, Ben was instrumental in creating the
vibrant cannabis community in the state, including organizing Weedstock and the
Great Midwest Harvest Fest that celebrates its fortieth anniversary this October
1-3 (see madisonhempfest.com). He's currently been fighting over the past few
legislative sessions to get Wisconsin to pass the Jacki Rickert Medical
Marijuana Act.

While Ben fights for the end of marijuana prohibition, his activism also extends
into mainstream politics as well. He's a passionate civil libertarian,
advocating equally for free speech and gun rights, personal privacy and a return
to stronger congressional control of war powers. Ben has run many times for
elective office, from a challenge to Governor Tommy Thompson in 1990 to his
current candidacy for the US Senate seat held by Herb Kohl. He first caught
attention for his radicalism when at age 17 he became the youngest person placed
on President Nixon's infamous "enemies list" and "the man" has kept his eye on
Ben ever since.

This March at the age of 56, Ben received the horrible news that he'd been
stricken by lung cancer. Speaking to the Wisconsin State Journal, Ben said, "I'm
feeling pretty upbeat about stuff. Not about having (cancer), but overall. I'm
definitely not in the `Oh, no, poor me, I've got cancer' mode." In reviewing our
records, we're stunned and embarrassed that Ben had not been listed among the
206 activists who've won the award since 1990. Everyone at NORML and HIGH TIMES
extends our highest hopes for Ben's good health.

Ben in action at this year's massive labor protests at the capitol in Madison:

Posted in 4:20 NEWS, Activism, Celebrity Tokers, NORML, Seniors | Tagged ben
masel, lung cancer, Madison, Madison NORML, Wisconsin, yippies

"Radical" Russ Belville

I am the host of the NORML SHOW LIVE and The NORML Stash Blog. I'm married, live
in Portland, Oregon, and I am a registered medical marijuana caregiver in this
state. I've worked days as an IT geek and nights as a professional musician.
Previously, I have been the host of my own political talk radio show on
satellite radio. I've been the High Times "Freedom Fighter of the Month" for my
work producing Oregon NORML's TV show, "A Cannabis Community Forum", and for
helping to institute Portland's wildly successful medical marijuana cardholders
meetings, where we help sick and disabled Oregonians acquire cannabis plant
starts, learn gardening, and understand the medical marijuana law. I've
dedicated my life to bringing an end to adult marijuana prohibition and
re-legalizing cannabis hemp, and I'm honored to be chosen by NORML to be our
daily voice.

http://stash.norml.org/madison-normls-ben-masel-loses-battle-with-lung-cancer




[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

http://www.brooklynrail.org/2011/05/books/radical-day-care-the-2011-nyc-anarchis\
t-book-fair

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

http://www.times.spb.ru/index.php?action_id=2&story_id=33924

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

1st problem: Locate an astral plane.
2nd problem: Describe it accurately.
3rd problem: Discover who is there.
4th problem: Decide if you want to go.
5th problem: Figure out why.
Et cetera.

_____________________
A penny saved is a penny.


On Wed 04/05/11 02:33 , Jason Wade <faithunited4@...> wrote:
 
>
> I am very sorry to find out about Ben Masel's passing. I hope he is doing
> well on the astral plane. Is that where we all are going after we pass away
> too?
>

Attn: Scott Harrigan
Thanks for your response, but it seems you have missed the major point in
question.

George W. Bush had the opportunity to take custody of Osama bin Laden in
October 2001.  The Afghanistan government offered to turn over OBL for
evidence or proof OBL was responsible for the 9-11 attack.  Note that bin
Laden has never been charged or indicted for 9-11, apparently not enough
evidence to make a legal case.
http://www.fbi.gov/wanted/topten/usama-bin-laden/view

The major point in question is what proof or evidence did Bush have
regarding OBL being responsible for 9-11 at the time he needed to furnish
the evidence to the  government of Afghanistan to avoid an unnecessary war?
That was October 2001.

You referenced a video from 2004 without any source link so that it could
not be verified or authenticated.  He supposedly admitted responsibility for
9-11.  I am not sure that would be admissible in a court of law, and it does
not deal with the time period of October 2001.  What proof or evidence did
Bush have then which he was unable or unwilling to furnish to Afghanistan to
get custody of OBL and his group.  Bush chose war over negotiation, possibly
due to lack of any evidence against OBL?
We have not yet seen the evidence.  If you know of such evidence, please
furnish the same with your source links, for the time period of October
2001.

I did find some discussion about the 2004 video, with article at end of this
message.

Regards from Carter Hamilton

================

Message: 1
Date: Wed, 04 May 2011 00:46:34 -0400
From: Scott Harrigan
Subject: Re: [Nontheists] Osama bin Laden is dead, but we have not yet
seen the evidence
To: Discussions of interest to UU nontheists
<nontheists@...>
Message-ID: <A82E99F3-2E16-42F9-87C3-E8ADA9EA92AC@...>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1

This is a bit old. I think confession is sufficient. Free and uncoerced, Bin
Laden took credit for planning and executing the attack on the Towers. He
was proud of it.

So, I wonder what additional evidence we would need.

Here is the translated transcript of OBL in a 2004 video:

[...]

But I am amazed at you. Even though we are in the fourth year after the
events of September 11th, Bush is still engaged in distortion, deception and
hiding from you the real causes. And thus, the reasons are still there for a
repeat of what occurred.

So I shall talk to you about the story behind those events and shall tell
you truthfully about the moments in which the decision was taken, for you to
consider.
I say to you, Allah knows that it had never occurred to us to strike the
towers. But after it became unbearable and we witnessed the oppression and
tyranny of the
American/Israeli coalition against our people in Palestine and Lebanon, it
came to my mind.

The events that affected my soul in a direct way started in 1982 when
America permitted the Israelis to invade Lebanon and the American Sixth
Fleet helped them in that. This bombardment began and many were killed and
injured and others were terrorised and displaced.

I couldn't forget those moving scenes, blood and severed limbs, women and
children sprawled everywhere. Houses destroyed along with their occupants
and high rises demolished over their residents, rockets raining down on our
home without mercy.

The situation was like a crocodile meeting a helpless child, powerless
except for his screams. Does the crocodile understand a conversation that
doesn't include a weapon? And the whole world saw and heard but it didn't
respond.

In those difficult moments many hard-to-describe ideas bubbled in my soul,
but in the end they produced an intense feeling of rejection of tyranny, and
gave birth to a strong resolve to punish the oppressors.

And as I looked at those demolished towers in Lebanon, it entered my mind
that we should punish the oppressor in kind and that we should destroy
towers in America in order that they taste some of what we tasted and so
that they be deterred from killing our women and children.

And that day, it was confirmed to me that oppression and the intentional
killing of innocent women and children is a deliberate American policy.
Destruction is freedom and democracy, while resistance is terrorism and
intolerance.

This means the oppressing and embargoing to death of millions as Bush Sr did
in Iraq in the greatest mass slaughter of children mankind has ever known,
and it means the throwing of millions of pounds of bombs and explosives at
millions of children - also in Iraq - as Bush Jr did, in order to remove an
old agent and replace him with a new puppet to assist in the pilfering of
Iraq's oil and other outrages.

So with these images and their like as their background, the events of
September 11th came as a reply to those great wrongs, should a man be blamed
for defending his sanctuary?

Is defending oneself and punishing the aggressor in kind, objectionable
terrorism? If it is such, then it is unavoidable for us.
This is the message which I sought to communicate to you in word and deed,
repeatedly, for years before September 11th.

[...]

On May 3, 2011, at 11:24 PM, C Hamilton wrote:

>
> We have not yet seen the evidence...
> What Is (the) Evidence Against Bin Laden?
> By Jessica Reaves
> Oct. 03, 2001
> http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,177983,00.html
  >

Bush Refusal of 2001 Taliban Offer Gave bin Laden a Free Pass
By Gareth Porter
May 03, 2011
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article28015.htm
When George W. Bush rejected a Taliban offer to have Osama bin Laden tried
by a moderate group of Islamic states in mid- October 2001, he gave up the
only opportunity the United States would have to end bin Laden's terrorist
career for the next nine years. <snip>

> Osama Bin Laden not wanted for 9-11, not enough evidence to bring charges
> or
> indictment?
> http://www.fbi.gov/wanted/topten/usama-bin-laden/view
  >
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indictment
  >
> The best way to support our troops
> http://img145.imageshack.us/img145/5821/supporttroopspk6.gif
>
> All the reasons given by Bush for the war on Iraq have proven false or
> illegal.
> Pre-emptive war is illegal under international law, as is war for regime
> change. Iraq war was illegal and breached UN charter, (and violated
> Article VI of the Constitution) says Kofi Annan, Secretary-General of
> the United Nations
> September 16, 2004
> http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1305709,00.html

=========================

Osama Bin Laden Is Dead -Again!

Americans are at their most vulnerable
They are vulnerable because they are gullible
They are gullible because they are ignorant
They are ignorant because they are deliberately misinformed.

By Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich
May 04, 2011
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article28027.htm

When Obama announced OBL dead, it was established as a fact - the
truth. Where truth is concerned, it clearly matters where you were born - or
else the truth does not matter.

In a 2007 interview, a former Pakistani born president (twice) and a leading
opposition candidate favored to win the 2008 general Pakistani elections,
Benazir Bhutto, claimed that Omar Sheikh had murdered OBL in an
extraordinary interview ,  she did not get [re] elected -- she was
assassinated. Her allegations were buried by the mainstream media along with
her. Without a doubt, the American-born US President's announcement of OBL's
death will extend Barak Obama's occupancy of the White House for another
four years. Neither Bhutto nor Obama produced a corpse to back their claim,
yet it appears that nationality has its privileges -- that of establishing
the truth.

A pertinent question arises:  Why would the U.S. put an expiration stamp on
the Osama card when it had served the empire so well?

Inarguably, OBL had proven his value.   Even in his 'death', he continues to
serve the American Empire. We have been duly warned that "U.S. intelligence
officials believe Osama bin Laden made a propaganda recording shortly before
his death and expect that tape to surface soon." The possibility of a future
tape, puts the Obama administration in the comfortable fall-back position
and enable false flag operations when necessary. What dedication. Is it any
wonder that OBL was granted his dearest wish --  to die in battle (and not
murdered by a fellow Moslem, or sickness, or ..)?

Although OBL was with our consciousness well before 2001,  the events of
September 11 gave him a new prominence - and for years thereon,  he knew
when to be silent and when to speak out (apparently the trend will continue
after his death). Admittedly, this inordinate ability to speak or be silent
took some training - or persuasion.

For three years after 9/11, OBL denied being behind the attacks stating:
"Following the latest explosions in the United States, some Americans are
pointing the finger at me, but I deny that because I have not done it. The
United States has always accused me of these incidents, which have been
caused by its enemies. Reiterating once again, I say that I have not done
it, and the perpetrators have carried this out because of their own
interest," (CIA FBIS: Usama bin Laden Statements 1994-2004, Wikileaks,
September 14, 2008).    Perhaps the pounding of Afghanistan and Iraq
deafened him into submission - or substitution.

In October 2004, a videotape of OBL is broadcast in which he assumes
responsibility for 9/11.   (The still photo from the 2004 video is worthy of
scrutiny.  It closely resembles the still image presented alongside Obama on
today's C-Span.   Although the hair coloring varies, there are two
consistencies:  the same wide and uncharacteristic nose and the same exact
outfit see link - minute 5:25). After three years of only audio messages, in
2007 (after his first publicly announced death), a new videotape of OBL
emerged -with a dyed and trimmed beard to please his global audience (see
link). This picture is an exact duplicate of the two above mentioned
pictures. It was this incredible image of OBL that prompted me to write my
first article about the man. I could not fathom a man devoted to a vigorous
practice of fundamental Islam defying the Islamic ideology pertaining to
vanity - especially while living in his snug cave.   His black trimmed beard
was unorthodox. Although he sported a shorter beard, he had set his sight
far -- he was analyzing and criticizing the US Democratic Party's moves.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_Osama_bin_Laden_video

On January 6, 2008, I wrote a second and brief article questioning OBL's
absence in the face of Israel's massacre in Gaza. I should have been more
patient. Eight days after my article was posted on various sites, a
recording accompanied by a still photo of Bin Laden superimposed over the
al-Aqsa mosque was delivered. It was heartwarming to know that Gaza had not
been forgotten. OBL's audiotapes continued to surface. The man truly kept
abreast of current events.  In 2010, OBL even asked for the boycott of
American goods for not addressing climate change. Way to go OBL!

Contrary to the latest revelations about OBL's living conditions in luxury
and probably with the knowledge of Pakistanis, it had always been thought
that OBL sent audio messages because he was in a cave or on the run.   Now
at least, with his demise, we are shown pictures of his corpse.

Regrettably, it has been brought to light by The Guardian that the picture
of the corpse presented as proof of his demise seems to be old, recycled
pictures. Notwithstanding this shortsightedness, we have been deprived of
further photo opportunities in an attempt to respect Islamic rituals. US
intelligence tell us that OBL's body was dumped into sea in accordance with
Islamic burial demands of a 24 hour burial time frame. It is always
refreshing to hear that Islam is respected after the many wars against
Islamic countries.

So back to the main question:  Why did the United States decide to expire
Osama bin Laden at this juncture?

It would be naive to think that the logic behind the expiration stamp is
restricted to promoting the incumbent president and uniting a dissatisfied
nation (two thirds dissatisfied or angry with the government see link) and
rally the people around the flag. It is equally naive to think that the
world needed to be distracted from the reality that an attempted
assassination of a foreign leader which led to the murder of his family
members was a factor. Nor can one attribute this event to the justification
of the illegal and immoral CIA-drone killings in Pakistan. There must be
more than meets the eye!

Perhaps for the time being, America is so confident in its latest lethal
weapon - the pro-democracy cyber dissidents, that it decided to trade the
'war on terror'' with humanitarian imperialism brought about with the help
of its cyber dissidents. Such grand gestures of 'humanitarian intervention'
to promote democracy require the public consensus. Write OBL's death
certificate  and the 'good' against evil fight is back on - confident that
'good' will prevail.

Cyber warriors and the call for 'humanitarian intervention imperialism':

The World Movement for Democracy was initiated by George W. Bush in  which
he told CIA front National Endowment for Democracy (NED) that his
administration's democratization initiative [America must approve the
outcome of elections] would focus first on the Middle East - starting with
Iraq.  This movement has been zealously followed by Obama. Lest we should be
inclined to hold Bush to account for all the changes, we  ought to be
reminded that in 1999,  the 'dovish' Jimmy Carter and neocon Paul Wolfowitz
penned an article  ("Don't Take Democracy for Granted", WSJ, July 21, 1999)
praising Ronal Reagan's establishment of NED to spearhead America's
''nongovernmental" (covert psyops) efforts to 'assist' democratic movements
around the word.

More importantly, we must revisit the historical aspects of "democracy" and
what it means to America.

President Theodore Roosevelt claimed: "Democracy has justified itself by
keeping for the white race the best portion's of the earth's surface."   The
need to justify 'democracy' further, led to capture of more of earth's
surface,  which no doubt explains the remarks by General Arthur MacArthur,
(father of Douglas) when he said:  "America's wonderful thrust into Asia was
the destiny of the magnificent Aryan people." After the brutal takeover of
the Philippines, Senator Beveridge claimed: " [J]ust beyond the Philippines
are China's illimitable markets. God has not been preparing the
English-speaking and Teutonic peoples for a thousand years for nothing but
vain and idle self-admiration. No, he has made us the master organizers of
the world...that we may administer government among savages and senile
peoples...the Philippines are ours forever...and just beyond the Philippines
lie China's illimitable markets...We will not renounce our part in the
mission of our race, trustee under God, of the civilization of the
world...China is our natural customer. The Philippines give us a base at the
door of the East.. it has been  charged that our conduct of the war has been
cruel. Senators, it has been the reverse. Senators, remember that we are not
dealing with Americans or Europeans. We are dealing with Orientals."
(source:
http://www.globalpolicy.org/component/content/article/155/25996.html).

No doubt the renewed thrust of the empire into the Middle East to justify
democracy, assassinate, and plunder is not new; but the method is novel -
democracy's cyber warriors.
------------------------------
Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich has a Master's degree in Public Diplomacy from USC
Annenberg for Communication and USC School of International Relations.  She
is an independent researcher and writer with a focus on U.S. foreign policy
and the role of lobby groups in influencing US foreign policy.  She is a
peace activist, essayist and public speaker.

==============================

C Hamilton
a moderator of
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/new-continuum/
adult humor/opinion/pictures

Xenu
May 5th, 2011

This is one of the biggest secrets in Scientology. I saw a musical about this a
few years ago. It was called ¡°A Very Merry Unauthorized Children¡¯s Scientology
Pagent.¡± It was great, all kids performing. That was where I heard about Xenu.

==========================

From Wikipedia

Xenu ( /ˈzi¢°nu¢°/ ZEE-noo),[1][2][3] also spelled Xemu, was, according to
the founder of Scientology and science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard, the
dictator of the ¡°Galactic Confederacy¡± who, 75 million years ago, brought
billions of his people to Earth in a DC-8-like spacecraft, stacked them around
volcanoes and killed them using hydrogen bombs. Official Scientology dogma holds
that the essences of these many people remained, and that they form around
people in modern times, causing them spiritual harm.

These events are known within Scientology as ¡°Incident II¡±, and the traumatic
memories associated with them as The Wall of Fire or the R6 implant. The
narrative of Xenu is part of Scientologist teachings about extraterrestrial
civilizations and alien interventions in earthly events, collectively described
as space opera by Hubbard. Hubbard detailed the story in Operating Thetan level
III (OT III) in 1967, warning that the R6 ¡°implant¡± (past trauma)was
¡°calculated to kill (by pneumonia etc) [sic] anyone who attempts to solve it¡±.

Within the Church of Scientology, the Xenu story is part of the church¡¯s secret
¡°Advanced Technology¡±, considered a sacred and esoteric teaching, and normally
only revealed to members who have already contributed large amounts of money.
The church avoids mention of Xenu in public statements and has gone to
considerable effort to maintain the story¡¯s confidentiality, including legal
action on the grounds of both copyright and trade secrecy. Officials of the
Church of Scientology widely deny or try to hide the Xenu story. Despite this,
much material on Xenu has leaked to the public via court documents, copies of
Hubbard¡¯s notes, and the Internet. In commentary on the impact of the Xenu
text, academic scholars have discussed and analyzed the writings by Hubbard and
their place within Scientology within the contexts of science fiction, UFO
religions, gnosticism and creation myth.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenu

You are writing yourself
into history
turning over truth
as if it were a currency exchange kiosk
in a temple
 
turning day into night
 
and turning our heads
as you whip your bottle blonde hair
into a sedate frenzy
of polemical incongruity
 
Your doublespeak ricochets
through the caverns of our deepest hunger
as you trash
hotel rooms on the talk show circuit
every Good Samaritan
trashing, along the way,
our last shining hope for reconstitution
 
Driven by your passion
for self-exaltation
you lead us into battle
against ill-conceived phantoms
beating your tinny old oil drum
the Pied Piper of Decoy Drama
leading us iinto ambush
 
and as the cry for revolution
surges in our breasts
you stand in the "Bread not Bail-outs" serving line
pouring out cups of red
white and blue koolaid
 

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Egypt: Independent Player Or American Trojan Horse?
May 5th, 2011

Egypt seems to be making moves to reassert its position as the dominant force it
once was in the politics of the Middle East. There are signs of rapprochement
with the Palestinians and Iran. All of this which possibly bodes well for Middle
East, but not so much for the USA and its dependent state Israel. It is hard to
tell if this is a Trojan horse for US policy or a real Egyptian initiative. What
is not clear is how much the Egyptians are now in control of their own country.

There are other signs, crackdowns on democracy protesters; that do not seem to
be fitting in with the Democratic vision for Egypt that Obama and the American
Neo-cons have strategized. Or perhaps this is exactly what they have envisioned.
Perhaps we have a CIA and State Department rep standing in the shadows, advising
the generals to act with alacrity in their treatment of the protesters, as they
seek to root out any sign of Muslim fundamentalism. Is the USA willing to accept
a more pan-Muslim political policy on the part of Egypt in exchange for a
muzzling of the domestic dissidents? Or has Egypt spun out of the hands of its
handlers? Such things happen. When they do, things become interesting again.

Certainly with the Palestinians making a move of unity, this is a smart
political move that forces Israel into a defensive posture of looking like the
bad guy for withholding the Palestinian funds and claiming that any government
that includes Hamas is unacceptable. Wasn't Hamas once upon a time an Israeli
asset in their war against Fatah?

==================================

From UPI

Analysis: Hamas history tied to Israel

Published: June 18, 2002 at 8:13 PM
  By RICHARD SALE, UPI Terrorism Correspondent

In the wake of a suicide bomb attack Tuesday on a crowded Jerusalem city bus
that killed 19 people and wounded at least 70 more, the Islamic Resistance
Movement, Hamas, took credit for the blast.

Israeli officials called it the deadliest attack in Jerusalem in six years.

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon immediately vowed to fight "Palestinian
terror" and summoned his cabinet to decide on a military response to the
organization that Sharon had once described as "the deadliest terrorist group
that we have ever had to face."

Active in Gaza and the West Bank, Hamas wants to liberate all of Palestine and
establish a radical Islamic state in place of Israel. It is has gained notoriety
with its assassinations, car bombs and other acts of terrorism.

But Sharon left something out.

Israel and Hamas may currently be locked in deadly combat, but, according to
several current and former U.S. intelligence officials, beginning in the late
1970s, Tel Aviv gave direct and indirect financial aid to Hamas over a period of
years.

Israel "aided Hamas directly — the Israelis wanted to use it as a counterbalance
to the PLO (Palestinian Liberation Organization)," said Tony Cordesman, Middle
East analyst for the Center for Strategic Studies.

Israel's support for Hamas "was a direct attempt to divide and dilute support
for a strong, secular PLO by using a competing religious alternative," said a
former senior CIA official.

According to documents United Press International obtained from the Israel-based
Institute for Counter Terrorism, Hamas evolved from cells of the Muslim
Brotherhood, founded in Egypt in 1928. Islamic movements in Israel and Palestine
were "weak and dormant" until after the 1967 Six Day War in which Israel scored
a stunning victory over its Arab enemies.

After 1967, a great part of the success of the Hamas/Muslim Brotherhood was due
to their activities among the refugees of the Gaza Strip. The cornerstone of the
Islamic movements success was an impressive social, religious, educational and
cultural infrastructure, called Da'wah, that worked to ease the hardship of
large numbers of Palestinian refugees, confined to camps, and many who were
living on the edge.

"Social influence grew into political influence," first in the Gaza Strip, then
on the West Bank, said an administration official who spoke on condition of
anonymity.

According to ICT papers, Hamas was legally registered in Israel in 1978 by
Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the movement's spiritual leader, as an Islamic Association
by the name Al-Mujamma al Islami, which widened its base of supporters and
sympathizers by religious propaganda and social work.

According to U.S. administration officials, funds for the movement came from the
oil-producing states and directly and indirectly from Israel. The PLO was
secular and leftist and promoted Palestinian nationalism. Hamas wanted to set up
a transnational state under the rule of Islam, much like Khomeini's Iran.

What took Israeli leaders by surprise was the way the Islamic movements began to
surge after the Iranian revolution, after armed resistance to Israel sprang up
in southern Lebanon vis-à-vis the Hezbollah, backed by Iran, these sources said.

"Nothing provides the energy for imitation as much as success," commented one
administration expert.

A further factor of Hamas' growth was the fact the PLO moved its base of
operations to Beirut in the '80s, leaving the Islamic organization to grow in
influence in the Occupied Territories "as the court of last resort," he said.

When the intifada began, Israeli leadership was surprised when Islamic groups
began to surge in membership and strength. Hamas immediately grew in numbers and
violence. The group had always embraced the doctrine of armed struggle, but the
doctrine had not been practiced and Islamic groups had not been subjected to
suppression the way groups like Fatah had been, according to U.S. government
officials.

But with the triumph of the Khomeini revolution in Iran, with the birth of
Iranian-backed Hezbollah terrorism in Lebanon, Hamas began to gain in strength
in Gaza and then in the West Bank, relying on terror to resist the Israeli
occupation.

Israel was certainly funding the group at that time. One U.S. intelligence
source who asked not to be named said that not only was Hamas being funded as a
"counterweight" to the PLO, Israeli aid had another purpose: "To help identify
and channel towards Israeli agents Hamas members who were dangerous terrorists."

In addition, by infiltrating Hamas, Israeli informers could only listen to
debates on policy and identify Hamas members who "were dangerous hard-liners,"
the official said.

In the end, as Hamas set up a very comprehensive counterintelligence system,
many collaborators with Israel were weeded out and shot. Violent acts of
terrorism became the central tenet, and Hamas, unlike the PLO, was unwilling to
compromise in any way with Israel, refusing to acquiesce in its very existence.

But even then, some in Israel saw some benefits to be had in trying to continue
to give Hamas support: "The thinking on the part of some of the right-wing
Israeli establishment was that Hamas and the others, if they gained control,
would refuse to have any part of the peace process and would torpedo any
agreements put in place," said a U.S. government official who asked not to be
named.

"Israel would still be the only democracy in the region for the United States to
deal with," he said.

All of which disgusts some former U.S. intelligence officials.

"The thing wrong with so many Israeli operations is that they try to be too
sexy," said former CIA official Vincent Cannestraro.

According to former State Department counter-terrorism official Larry Johnson,
"the Israelis are their own worst enemies when it comes to fighting terrorism."

"The Israelis are like a guy who sets fire to his hair and then tries to put it
out by hitting it with a hammer."

"They do more to incite and sustain terrorism than curb it," he said.

Aid to Hamas may have looked clever, "but it was hardly designed to help smooth
the waters," he said. "An operation like that gives weight to President George
Bush's remark about there being a crisis in education."

Cordesman said that a similar attempt by Egyptian intelligence to fund Egypt's
fundamentalists had also come to grief because of "misreading of the
complexities."

An Israeli defense official was asked if Israel had given aid to Hamas said, "I
am not able to answer that question. I was in Lebanon commanding a unit at the
time, besides it is not my field of interest."

Asked to confirm a report by U.S. officials that Brig. Gen. Yithaq Segev, the
military governor of Gaza, had told U.S. officials he had helped fund "Islamic
movements as a counterweight to the PLO and communists," the official said he
could confirm only that he believed Segev had served back in 1986.

The Israeli Embassy press office referred UPI to its Web site when asked to
comment.

http://www.upi.com/Business_News/Security-Industry/2002/06/18/Analysis-Hamas-his\
tory-tied-to-Israel/UPI-82721024445587/

=============================================

From IPS

Egypt's Moves Raising Anxiety in Washington
  By Jim Lobe*

WASHINGTON, May 4, 2011 (IPS) - With U.S. lawmakers threatening this week to cut
aid to Pakistan over its alleged harbouring of the late Osama bin Laden, concern
is growing steadily here over the future of ties with another key predominantly
Muslim ally heavily dependent on U.S. aid: Egypt.

Washington has supplied an average of two billion dollars a year – about
two-thirds of which have gone to the Egyptian military – since Cairo signed the
Camp David Accords with Israel in 1979.

It has also encouraged other countries and international financial institutions
to be generous in dealing with Egypt, whose de facto - if often sour -
acquiescence under former President Hosni Mubarak in Israel's more controversial
actions against its other neighbours and the Palestinians was considered
indispensable to maintaining an acceptable status quo.

But the foreign policy independence displayed by the new regime since Mubarak
was swept from power nearly three months ago has elicited nervous reactions from
key sectors here, particularly in Congress, where the influence of the so-called
"Israel lobby" is especially strong.

The most recent action was Egypt's mediation of the reconciliation agreement
signed Wednesday in Cairo by the leaders of Hamas and Fatah, an agreement that
has been strongly denounced by leading lawmakers, as well as by the
administration of President Barack Obama itself.

House Foreign Affairs Committee chairwoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, and the
Committee's ranking Democrat, Howard Berman, have already said that all U.S. aid
will be cut off to any government that includes Hamas unless it agrees to
renounce violence, recognise Israel's right to exist, and uphold all previous
agreements signed by the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO).

And while Congressional leaders have not yet rallied behind such a far-reaching
sanction against Egypt itself, the idea of threatening to slash aid to Egypt's
powerful military as leverage to rein in Cairo's newfound independence has been
quickly gaining currency in recent weeks on Capitol Hill.

"If Cairo's desire for a more `independent' foreign policy translates into
warmer ties with terrorists, America's own long-standing support for the
Egyptian military may eventually need to be reconsidered," wrote the
neo-conservative Wall Street Journal Tuesday in an editorial that called Egypt's
latest moves "an unsettling preview of what could emerge" from the so-called
"Arab Spring".

The growing unease began shortly after Mubarak's ouster when Egypt permitted
Iranian warships to sail through the Suez Canal into the Mediterranean, an
action which Israel and its supporters here insisted was unprecedented since the
1979 Islamic Revolution when ties between the two Middle Eastern giants were
effectively frozen.

But under new foreign minister Nabil Elaraby, Egypt's assertion of independence
from both Israel and the United States has gained speed, even as he has
repeatedly insisted that Cairo has no intention of renouncing the Camp David
Accords.

Early last month, Elaraby announced after a rare meeting with a high- ranking
Iranian diplomat that the two countries had "opened a new page".

Since then, Cairo has made clear that it intends to normalise relations with
Tehran, a development that would mark a serious setback to U.S. and Israeli
efforts to both isolate the Islamic Republic and forge a de facto alliance
between Israel, Egypt and the Sunni-led monarchies of Jordan and the Gulf
against Iran.

"All the world has diplomatic relations with Iran with the exception of the
United States and Israel," Elaraby's spokesperson, Menha Bakhoum, told the New
York Times last week. "We look at Iran as a neighbour in the region that we
should have normal relations with."

At the same time, the foreign minister confirmed in an interview with al-Jazeera
what had been rumoured for weeks - that Egypt would within days open the Rafah
border crossing to Gaza, which is controlled by Hamas, a development that will
effectively end a five-year Israeli blockade that Mubarak helped enforce.

Under the new regime, Cairo has also embraced the drive by the Palestinian
Authority (PA) to gain recognition of a unified Palestinian state by the U.N.
General Assembly in September and has reportedly urged Washington to do the
same.

The Obama administration, however, has indicated that it strongly opposes the
effort, insisting that such a move will undermine the "peace process", which, in
any event, was effectively suspended last September. With Western European
powers reportedly leaning in favour of the initiative, it appears unlikely that
Washington can stop it.

All of the steps taken by the new regime appear designed to bring Egyptian
foreign policy more in line with popular opinion which, according to public
opinion polls, particularly since the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, have shown
significant opposition to U.S. policies in the region and hostility toward
Israel, in particular.

In the latest poll released last week by the Pew Research Center, 54 percent of
respondents said they favoured annulling the Camp David treaty with Israel,
although 36 percent said they thought it should be retained.

A plurality of 43 percent said they would prefer a more distant relationship
with the U.S. than that in recent years. The same survey showed strong support
for the former Arab League chairman and likely presidential candidate, Amr
Moussa, who has favoured greater independence from U.S. foreign policy.

With Congress already in a penny-pinching mood on foreign aid, many observers
believe cuts in future assistance are inevitable if Egypt's current trajectory
continues.

Even before the negotiation of the controversial Palestinian reconciliation
accord, lawmakers showed little interest in granting urgent requests by Egypt's
new government for 3.3 billion dollars in debt relief that would save the
country about 350 million dollars in annual debt payments or even for a proposed
50-million-dollar enterprise fund to attract foreign investment.

"We have to have as full a picture as we possibly can get before we do this,
knowing we're in a transition period," the Republican chairwoman of the powerful
House Foreign Operations Subcommittee, Texas Rep. Kay Granger, told the
Congressional Quarterly.

The publication suggested that it was unlikely that Cairo would even get its
usual annual allotment of 250 million dollars in economic aid this year despite
a struggling economy - due in part to a drastic decline in tourism - and the
risk that economic hardship could radicalise a newly-empowered electorate.

At least one astute observer predicted much will depend on Israel's attitude.

"The reason Egypt has gotten money is because the Israelis and AIPAC (American
Israel Public Affairs Committee) lobbied for it," said Dov Zakheim, a former
senior Pentagon official in the George W. Bush administration, at a conference
Tuesday at the Center for the National Interest. "If the Israelis are not
enthusiastic, that will just reinforce Congress' reluctance …then you're not
going to see much (aid)."

*Jim Lobe's blog on U.S. foreign policy can be read at http://www.lobelog.com.

(END)

http://ipsnews.net/newsTVE.asp?idnews=55499

==================================

From IPS

EGYPT: After Mubarak, the Military Fist
  By Cam McGrath

CAIRO, May 5, 2011 (IPS) - Thousands of Egyptian civilians, including protesters
who helped topple the authoritarian regime of president Hosni Mubarak, have been
tried in military courts without due process. "The use of military trials on
this scale is without precedent," says Adel Ramadan, a rights lawyer at the
Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR).

Court records indicate Egyptian military courts have handed down more than 7,000
sentences since the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) removed Mubarak
on Feb. 11 and assumed control of the country. Most of the trials have involved
defendants accused of looting, arson and "thuggery" under tougher criminal laws
passed after Mubarak's ouster. The courts have also sentenced hundreds of
protesters critical of the military council's governance and decisions.

"Each case involves anywhere from one to 35 defendants… so we estimate that over
50,000 civilians have been sentenced in the last three months," Ramadan told
IPS. "We've never seen anything like this. Even under Mubarak's rule there were
only two or three military trials a year. "

International rights groups have condemned the practice of trying civilians
before military courts, arguing that such trials are inherently unfair.
Defendants are denied access to legal counsel; sentencing is swift and severe.

Ramadan says defence lawyers appointed from a pool of SCAF-approved attorneys
may be given as little as five minutes to meet with the accused, review the
charges, and present the case before a military judge.

"It's very clear that the lawyers are there just for show," he says. "Some
lawyers have insisted they needed more time to read the charges and present a
case, but the judge simply removed them and brought in another."

Sentences handed down by military courts – which have included at least three
death sentences since February – cannot be appealed. Ramadan finds this
particularly worrying given the widening accusations that army officers used
torture and intimidation to extract confessions, and may have fabricated
evidence against political agitators.

One protester arrested during the military's Mar. 9 clampdown on an
anti-government rally in Cairo's Tahrir Square claimed he was tortured and taken
along with other detainees to an army camp "where a camera crew filmed us at a
table with sticks, knives and Molotov cocktails placed before us, saying we were
thugs."

Many Egyptians cheered when the army deployed during mass demonstrations against
the Mubarak regime, chanting "The army and the people are one." Yet some now
accuse the ruling military council of borrowing chapters from the former
dictator's playbook.

"If you protest, they beat you and can accuse you of any crime," says Mohamed
Farrag, showing stitches on his forearm he claims he was given after a soldier
struck him with a baton.

International rights watchdogs have demanded that the SCAF release all political
prisoners and investigate allegations of army torture and abuse. They have also
called for the retrial in a civilian court of any person charged with a criminal
offence, noting a glaring double standard in treatment.

"Egypt's military leadership has not explained why young protesters are being
tried before unfair military courts while former Mubarak officials are being
tried for corruption and killing protesters before regular criminal courts," Joe
Stork, deputy Middle East director of Human Rights Watch said in a statement.

Journalist Rasha Azab, a former military detainee, has filed a lawsuit
challenging the SCAF's administrative decision to try civilians before military
courts. The SCAF's defence team described the case as "an attempt by inciters to
ruin the relationship between the people and the army." It denied all torture
allegations, and asserted that Egyptian military law authorises the trial of
civilians in front of military courts.

The law would appear to conflict with international conventions that restrict
the jurisdiction of military tribunals to military offences committed by
military personnel.

One grassroots campaign aiming to raise awareness of this discrepancy is the "No
to Military Tribunals" initiative. Activist Mona Seif says she helped launch the
campaign after witnessing the army's brutal crackdown on a peaceful
demonstration in Tahrir Square in the early hours of Feb. 26.

Seif and her mother tried to intervene when they saw soldiers drag off and beat
a protester, 33-year- old Amr El-Behery. The man was released only to be beaten
and arrested again. They later learned that he was put before a military
tribunal along with other protesters, and sentenced to five years in prison.

"It was basically a series of injustices," Seif told IPS. "They falsely charged
him with assaulting an army officer and breaking curfew, then lied to his
lawyers and gave them a wrong date for the trial, so when they came they found
he'd already been sentenced. The trial had lasted just a matter of minutes."

Seif views the media's role as paramount to generating public awareness of the
military's alleged transgressions and abuses, as well as putting pressure on the
SCAF to address them.

"Unfortunately, the only cases in which the army released detainees or promised
a retrial are those with media pressure," she says.

The SCAF promised to review the sentencing of four protesters after stories of
their trials were made public. It also pledged to investigate whether some
female protesters detained by soldiers on Mar. 9 were tortured and subjected to
"virginity tests" – but only after the story was picked up by the international
press.

Seif says rights groups and media outlets have highlighted the cases of a few
high-profile political activists while largely ignoring those of many others –
including minors – sentenced without due process. Many of the cases involve
crimes allegedly committed during the security vacuum that preceded Mubarak's
ouster.

"Part of what we are trying to do in our campaign is to channel people's
interest in the few hundred protesters arrested during the army's crackdown into
the tens of thousands of regular citizens arrested for other issues," she says.

http://ipsnews.net/newsTVE.asp?idnews=55500

http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2011/05/478838.html

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

May-05-2011 16:27 					 California Attorney Confesses Crime in Open
Court--Judge Fails to Take Notice

								 Tim King & Michael Hjelmstad Salem-News.com
				 The Probate Code strictly forbids specific commingling of funds.






									 Image: turnbacktogod.com



  (RIVERSIDE,
Calif.) - In a hearing this week in Riverside Superior Court, a local
attorney, Toni Eggebraaten, cited a criminal act committed by her in
conjunction with her client, The Riverside Public Guardian's office, as
a reason for not having to abide by the law mandating she reveal
accountings to a beneficiary of a Trust. In a statement worthy of Franz
Kafka's absurdist classic novel, The Trial,
Eggebraaten baldly stated that she pooled the funds in the Phelan
Family Trust with "other estates" managed by the Public Guardian's
office as a reason for not supplying the bank statements to a
beneficiary. The Probate Code strictly forbids such commingling of
funds. The request for discovery was made by Janet Phelan, after she
noted that Eggebraaten's accountings were not consonant with the
minimal discovery that the attorney provided. Eggebraaten had supplied
cancelled checks with payee, endorsement and bank cancellation
information redacted (blacked out) but refused to submit the bank
statements, which are necessary to reconcile the account. Phelan has
stated that there appears to be fraud and possible embezzlement of
funds. Eggebraaten has replied that since she pooled the Phelan Trust
monies with other accounts, it would violate the privacy of those other
estate beneficiaries receiving funds from the pooled account if she
were to abide by discovery laws and turn these over to Janet Phelan.
Phelan promptly informed the Judge, Thomas Cahraman, of the violation
of law by Eggebraaten but Cahraman did not respond. Phelan had already
issued subpoenas for the bank records, which were served on the
financial institutions last week and states that a continuance is
necessary due to the fact that there are active subpoenas. In 2009,
Phelan, who is an investigative reporter, broke a story in the San
Bernardino County Sentinel which stated that a number of Inland Empire
judges had questionable financial transactions keyed to their home
loans, and were possibly laundering bribes and pay-offs through these
loans. At that time, Judge Cahraman was the Presiding Judge of
Riverside County. Cahraman subsequently pulled three judges whose loan
history was questioned off the Phelan Trust case, although he issued an
angry and accusatory letter to Phelan, refusing to investigate the
loans and citing Phelan as making things difficult in the court system.

When first contacted by Salem-News.com, attorney Tony
Eggebratten said, "I don't feel comfortable discussing the details of
this trust with you..."

She went on to say, "The trust pays for the benefit of
each a monthly stipend of $2500; if Janet told us to make a direct
deposit into her account, we would. If you start with the beginning
balance, we show every expense that we pay."

Eggebratten contends that her actions were reasonable and credible according to
the law.

"Just do the math. Take the starting balance,
documented income, subtract the expenses, it all comes out to the
balance we have on hand."

Phelan responded, "Toni Eggebraaten's response failed
to address the issues of illegally pooled accounts. Nor does it answer
the questions raised by her attorney's time records, which indicate
that she most likely has falsified the accountings."

Cahraman has taken the issue of the continuance under
consideration and will be issuing a decision shortly. No action appears
to have been taken on the violation of law by Toni Eggebraaten and the
Public Guardian's office. To the knowledge of this reporter, this is
the first time that an attorney has claimed that she is not bound by
the law due to her committing a prior illegal act.

_________________________________________________________

Tim
King is a former U.S. Marine with twenty years of experience in
broadcast and Internet news. In addition to his role as a war
correspondent, this Los Angeles native serves as Salem-News.com's
Executive News Editor. Tim spent the winter of 2006/07 in Afghanistan,
and he was in Iraq over the summer of 2008, reporting from the war
while embedded with the U.S. Army and Marines.

Tim holds numerous awards for reporting,
photography, writing and editing, including the Oregon AP Award for
Spot News Photographer of the Year (2004), first place Electronic Media
Award in Spot News, Las Vegas, (1998), Oregon AP Cooperation Award
(1991); and several others including the 2005 Red Cross Good
Neighborhood Award for reporting. Tim has several years of experience
in network affiliate news TV stations, having worked as a reporter and
photographer at NBC, ABC and FOX stations in Arizona, Nevada and
Oregon. Tim is a member of the Orange County Press Club in Southern
California, you can send Tim an email at this address: newsroom@...


_________________________________________________________


Michael Hjelmstad and Salem-News.com founder Tim King met in the Anbar
province, at al Asad Marine Corps Air Station in Iraq, when Tim was
covering Marine operations there during the summer of 2008. In addition
to his work in Marine Corps Public Affairs, Michael has a highly
diversified background in media. Mike works as the U.S. Motion Picture
and Television Liaison for the Marine Corps, ensuring that movies
portraying Marines do so with accuracy.

Mike is another Los Angeles native who shares a
common past both as a U.S. Marine and as a journalist. We at
Salem-News.com sincerely appreciate Michael's valuable contributions
and his highly developed skills in both writing, and press and sports
photography. Email sent to our newsroom at newsroom@..., will be
forwarded to Michael Hjelmstad.

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

News & Views for Anarchists & Activists:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smygo

http://www.csrwire.com/press_releases/32158-100-000-Expected-to-Participate-in-W\
orld-Fair-Trade-Day-Events-Across-North-America
100,000 Expected to Participate in World Fair Trade Day Events Across
North America
Hundreds of sessions to educate the public on the benefits of fair trade
and provide samples of products from around the globe
Submitted by: Green America
Categories: Fair Trade & Supply Chain, Events
Posted: May 04, 2011 – 01:30 PM EST

WASHINGTON, D.C., May. 04 /CSRwire/ - A record 100,000 people across the
US and Canada are expected to participate in hundreds of events over the
next two weeks to mark World Fair Trade Day, which is May 14, 2011.
Cities, towns, churches, groups and individuals are planning events to
highlight social, economic, and environmental benefits to buying Fair
Trade. The events include Fair Trade festivals, Fair Trade coffee
breaks, webinars and Fair Trade artisan tours among others.

For information about World Fair Trade Day events in your area or to
find out more information about the benefits of buying Fair Trade, go to
http://www.fairtraderesource.org/wftd/ .

Many Americans are unaware how many day-to-day items are produced in
abusive labor conditions which include sweatshops and child labor. These
items include clothing, furniture, and foods such as coffee, chocolate,
and sugar. The Fair Trade system helps producers and suppliers earn a
living wage and take steps to protect the environment. It also serves to
empower individuals and communities, support women's and children's
rights, promote dignity and respect, and connect developing nations with
developed nations and markets.

World Fair Trade Day national campaign coordinator, and Executive
Director, Fair Trade Resource Network Jeff Goldman, said: "the
meaningful activities comprising this largest Fair Trade event in North
America allow adults and kids to learn about empowering marginalized
people while celebrating justice and sustainability with hundreds of
thousands worldwide."

Examples of World Fair Trade Day events around the U.S. include:

      * Texas. Austin Fair Trade Film Festival, May 12-14 at various
locations. Events include a short film competition, a Fair Trade wine
and chocolate pairing event, and the Fair Trade film festival and global
market.
      * Illinois. Chicago World Fair Trade Day celebration, May 6, 2011
at Daly Plaza. Companies will be selling Fair Trade gifts, coffee,
chocolate, and more and there will be programs and world music played
throughout the day. Additionally there will be a Fair Trade pavilion at
the Chicago Green Festival on May 14-15 at McCormick Place in Lakeside,
IL where non-profits and Fair Trade vendors will be on hand.
      * New York State. Several upstate events are planned, including a
World Fair Trade Day celebration in Albany on May 13th at the Ten
Thousand Villages store, and a Fair Trade/Coffee Break Celebration in
Rochester on May 14th at One World Goods.
      * Oregon. A variety of events in Portland to include an
informational Fair Trade 101 Panel Discussion at Kells Irish Pub on May
9th, and the St. Andrew/Catholic Relief Services World Fair Trade Day
celebration on May 15th featuring music, food, crafts, and informational
talks.
      * Florida. A Fair Trade wine tasting in Orlando on May 15, at the
Lake Eola Farmers Market. This event will also feature food, live music,
and local craft vendors.

Major sponsors of World Fair Trade Day include nonprofit and faith-based
organizations, such as Green America, Catholic Relief Services, Fair
Trade Towns and Fair Trade USA, as well as retail companies, such as Ben
and Jerry's, Fair Trade Apparel, Green Mountain Coffee, Lucuma Designs,
Wholesome Sweeteners, and Dr. Bronner's Magic Soaps. Regular sponsors
include Fair for Life Social & Fairtrade Certified, Fair World Project,
Global Exchange, Indigenous Designs, Maggie's Organics, Theo Chocolate
and WorldofGood.com by eBay.

ABOUT FAIR TRADE RESOURCE NETWORK

Founded in 1999, the Fair Trade Resource Network (FTRN) seeks to build a
more just and sustainable world by gathering, developing, and
disseminating educational resources about Fair Trade. FTRN is the only
non-profit organization in the world focused exclusively on Fair Trade
education, helping people to better understand the impact of their
buying decisions.

--
Dan Clore

New book: _Weird Words: A Lovecraftian Lexicon_:
http://tinyurl.com/yd3bxkw
My collected fiction: _The Unspeakable and Others_
http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/the-unspeakable-and-others/6124911
Lord Weÿrdgliffe & Necronomicon Page:
http://tinyurl.com/292yz9
News & Views for Anarchists & Activists:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smygo

"From the point of view of the defense of our society,
there only exists one danger -- that workers succeed in
speaking to each other about their condition and their
aspirations _without intermediaries_."
--Censor (Gianfranco Sanguinetti), _The Real Report on
the Last Chance to Save Capitalism in Italy_