Schwarzenegger's blueprint for terminating British PM

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger on Sunday gave Britain's main opposition Conservative Party his action plan for winning power and overhauling Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

The former Hollywood tough-guy, famous for his roles in the "Terminator" films, told Conservative leader David Cameron to focus on issues that matter to people rather than political parties.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown is reported to be considering calling a snap general election in the coming weeks, with his governing Labour Party riding high over the Conservatives in the opinion polls since he took over from Tony Blair in June.

Schwarzenegger had been due to appear in person at the Conservatives' annual conference in Blackpool, on the north-west English coast, but spoke via satellite link instead due to pressing health care and water legislation matters in the United States.

Calling Cameron a dynamic leader, Schwarzenegger said: "Our job is to recognise the issues that matter to the people the most and to solve them.

"Issues like health care, balanced budgets, economic development, education reform, public safety, infrastructure and of course global warming and protecting the environment.

"These are not conservative or liberal issues. They are issues everyone cares about."

He praised Cameron's leadership on climate change, which has forced it high up the British political and social agenda.

"By being a strong and forceful voice on climate change, David Cameron has revived your Conservative Party's green heritage and helped strengthen Britain's resolve to set an example on this issue," the Republican governor said.

"That is the kind of leadership people are hungry for. They want action and results, not ideology and stalemate.

"They prefer progress with messy compromise, over defeat with pristine principles," Schwarzenegger added.

 

Quoted from http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=070930190707.l7fwc249&show_article=1&67:

Schwarzenegger's blueprint for terminating British PM

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Navy to alter swastika-shaped barracks

CORONADO, Calif. - The Navy will spend as much as $600,000 to modify a 40-year-old barracks complex that resembles a swastika from the air, a gaffe that went largely unnoticed before satellite images became easily accessible on the Internet.

The Navy said officials noted the buildings' shape after the groundbreaking in 1967 but decided against changing it at the time because it wasn't obvious from the ground. Aerial photos made available on Google Earth in recent years have since revealed the buildings' shape to a wide audience.

The Navy approved the money to change the walkways, landscaping and rooftop solar panels of the four L-shaped barracks, used by members of the Naval Construction Force at the Navy's amphibious base at Coronado, near San Diego.

"We don't want to be associated with something as symbolic and hateful as a swastika," Scott Sutherland, deputy public affairs officer for Navy Region Southwest, told the Los Angeles Times.

Online commentators remarked widely about the buildings' resemblance to the Nazi symbol.

Dave vonKleist, host of "The Power Hour," a Missouri-based radio-talk show, said he wrote to military officials calling for action.

"I'm concerned about symbolism," he said. "This is not the type of message America needs to be sending to the world."

The Navy decided to alter the buildings' shape following requests this year by Anti-Defamation League regional director Morris Casuto and U.S. Rep. Susan Davis.

"I don't ascribe any intentionally evil motives to this," Casuto said of the design. "It just happened. The Navy has been very good about recognizing the problem. The issue is over."

 

Quoted from http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070926/ap_on_fe_st/swastika_barracks:

Navy to alter swastika-shaped barracks - Yahoo! News

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French PM Fillon tells farmers 'France is broke'

By Henry Samuel in Paris

France is bankrupt and can no longer afford to pay its workers generous salaries and subsidies, its prime minister has declared.

Francois Fillon made the undiplomatic outburst during a trip to the French island of Corsica, where farmers were demanding more government money.

"I am at the head of a state that is in a position of bankruptcy," he said.

"I am at the head of a state that for 15 years has been in chronic deficit. I am at the head of a state that has not once passed a balanced budget in 25 years. This can't go on."

Mr Fillon's government is due to announce the 2008 budget this week with a deficit of €41.5billion (£29billion).

But his remarks drew immediate fire, both from within his own ranks and from the opposition.

Francois Bayrou, the head of the centrist Modem party, said Mr Fillon seemed to forget that both he and Nicolas Sarkozy, who was finance minister before becoming president, had been in government since 2002 without improving the situation.

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He added that Mr Sarkozy's decision to spend up to €15billion (£10.5billion) on a package of tax cuts had only made things worse. One deputy from Mr Fillon's UMP party added: "This phrase was badly timed. The French are liable to ask why we committed all this spending on the fiscal package if we are in such a bad way."

It is the second time in two weeks that Mr Fillon has run into trouble over his tough-talking rhetoric.

The first came when he announced that he only needed "the word" from Mr Sarkozy to roll out a plan to enact state pension reforms, even before trade unions had begun negotiations. They called a strike for Oct 18.

This gaffe reportedly enraged Mr Sarkozy, who spent days reassuring the unions that they would be consulted.

There were rumours that Mr Fillon would be replaced in a reshuffle in the New Year. However, in an interview last week, the president showered his prime minister with praise, even describing the two men's views as "interchangeable".

Some observers say Mr Fillon has decided to speak out because he is tired of being stifled by the "hyper-president" and his media-friendly aides at the Elysee, and is keen to push ahead with reforms.

One colleague from the Sarthe region, where Mr Fillon is a deputy, said: "Fillon has immense pride. While Sarkozy continues to stifle him and wants to do everything, Fillon will try and give provocative speeches in order to exist. It's a process that could get out of control."

Others argue that his "spontaneous" outbursts are part of a co-ordinated double act, with Mr Fillon playing the tough guy and Mr Sarkozy the conciliator.

Either way, Le Monde praised Mr Fillon's "language of truth" in its editorial, adding that, given the parlous state of France's debt and deficit, he "had good cause for concern."

Quoted from http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/09/24/wfra124.xml:

French PM Fillon tells farmers 'France is broke' - Telegraph

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Batman's arrival ruffles HK politicians: report

HONG KONG (Reuters) - The arrival of Batman in Hong Kong this November for filming of the latest Hollywood sequel has ruffled local politicians who say the masked hero could disrupt traffic and cause noise pollution, reports said Friday.

In "The Dark Knight" due for release next July, the caped crusader will leave Gotham City for Hong Kong to fight his enemies, Hong Kong's Standard newspaper reported.

But local politicians who met the film's producers on Thursday reportedly expressed concerns at the inconvenience and "traffic chaos," Batman might cause during the nine-day shoot.

One district councilor warned residents in the normally teeming, high-decibel city to "prepare earplugs" as the movie-makers planned to use a helicopter for late night scenes, the report added.

"Of course, we are worried that the residents will be disturbed," Kam Nai-wai, a district councilor for the affected downtown district of Central was quoted as saying.

Hong Kong's stunning, modern cityscapes and harbor panoramas have proven a draw for Hollywood producers in the past, including a "Tomb Raider" movie starring Angelina Jolie.

"We welcome the movie but want to ensure arrangements are hassle free," said Kwok Ka-ki, a legislator who attended the meeting. "Just don't get it done in the middle of the night at 2 a.m.," he told Reuters, referring to the helicopter sequences.

The Batman flick will be directed by Christopher Nolan and star Christian Bale, Heath Ledger and Michael Caine, with filming to also take place in Chicago and London according to reports.

 

Quoted from http://www.reuters.com/article/oddlyEnoughNews/idUSHKG23201220070921:

Batman's arrival ruffles HK politicians: report | Oddly Enough | Reuters

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Students to McCain: Too old to be prez?

By PHILIP ELLIOTT,

Associated Press Writer

Tue Sep 4, 6:18 PM ET

An unflinching John McCain was told Tuesday by New Hampshire high school students he might be too old to be president and too conservative to be respected. McCain, the Arizona senator whose presidential bid has stumbled through the summer, countered the Concord High School students with humor.

"Thanks for the question, you little jerk," McCain joked back to one student who asked the 71-year-old about his age. "You're drafted."

McCain's two-day trip to New Hampshire launches his fall campaign for the GOP nomination. During a morning visit with students, he explained why he was not shrinking from his support for a temporary increase of troops in Iraq and why students should pay attention.

"If this war continues much longer, there will be people in this audience who will serve in the military, who also may be going over there (in Iraq) or to Afghanistan," McCain told the high school students.

He said the students should watch the upcoming report on Iraq from Gen. David Petraeus.

"It may be a seminal debate. It may be one of the most important debates in history and it may directly affect your lives," he warned. "He's going to say: Whether it was or was not in the beginning, if we lose Iraq, it will be part of this struggle against radical, Islamic extremism because al-Qaida will take over and the area will deteriorate into chaos and destruction."

But during a town hall-style meeting, students were more interested in pushing McCain on the environment, his support for gay rights and even his age.

"If elected, you'd be older than Ronald Reagan, making you the oldest president. Do you ever worry you might die in office or get Alzheimer's or some other disease that might affect your judgment?" one student asked.

The audience groaned; McCain slid into a joke.

"I think it was one of my sons that alleged I'm getting to the point I hide my own Easter eggs," McCain said to laughter. "When you saw my 95-year-old mother (on a video introduction), you saw the kind of genes I have."

He said he's a hard campaigner and his age won't be an issue.

Another student pushed him on gay rights; McCain repeated his pledge to oppose discrimination but support for traditional marriage.

"I came here looking to see a good leader," 16-year-old William Sleaster told McCain, earning himself boos from his classmates. "I don't."

McCain, a veteran of such candid exchanges in New Hampshire, smoothly pushed forward and told the crowd not to disrespect its peer.

"I understand. I thank you," McCain said. "That's what America is all about."

 

Quoted from http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070904/ap_po/mccain_students:

Students to McCain: Too old to be prez? on Yahoo! News

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Odd clothes and unorthodox views - why MI5 spied on Orwell for a decade

· 1984 author suspected of being a communist
· Newly released files reveal Special Branch blunders

Stephen Bates
Tuesday September 4, 2007
The Guardian

'This man has advanced communist views ... He dresses in a bohemian fashion both at his office and in his leisure hours ... ' Photograph: Vernon Richards Estate

The extent to which Special Branch police monitored George Orwell as a suspected communist has been revealed in papers disclosed for the first time today at the National Archives in Kew. The documents, which include details of surveillance between the 1920s and 60s, indicate not only the wide range of groups and individuals being watched by police but also officers' spectacular ability to misjudge what they saw. The obtuseness of some exasperated their superiors.

A Sergeant Ewing of Special Branch, monitoring Orwell's attempt to recruit Indians to work for the BBC's India service in January 1942, noted: "This man has advanced communist views ... He dresses in a bohemian fashion both at his office and in his leisure hours." A Home Office official named W Ogilvie - whose pencil was probably responsible for a question mark against Ewing's statement - responded a few days later: "I spoke to Inspector Gill of Special Branch asking whether his sergeant could elaborate on the question of Blair's 'advanced communist views'. Mr Gill rang me up this morning to say that Sergeant Ewing described Blair as being 'an unorthodox communist' apparently holding many of the views but by no means subscribing fully to the party's policy.

"I gathered that the good sergeant was rather at a loss as to how he could describe this rather individual line, hence the expression ... This fits in with the picture we have of Blair@Orwell [sic]. It is evident from his recent writings ... that he does not hold with the Communist party, nor they with him."

The authorities finally decided Orwell was not a communist from his answers to a questionnaire posed to leading leftwing figures and published in Left magazine, including the question: "Should Socialists support the British war effort?" to which he answered, "yes".

By then, Special Branch had been monitoring Orwell for more than 10 years.

Orwell, who was born Eric Arthur Blair in India in 1902, worked for the Burma police in the 1920s before heading to France, where the then penniless writer first came to the attention of MI6.

The file on "Orewell", as his name is spelt at least once, starts with him as Mr EA Blair in January 1929, when he was offering to work as Paris correspondent of the Workers' Life, the forerunner of the Daily Worker. Within a month Scotland Yard noted he was also claiming to be Paris correspondent for the Daily Herald and Daily Express.

It continues in the 30s as he helped out at a leftwing bookshop, Booklovers' Corner in Hampstead, where he was a friend of the owner, Francis Westrope: "[He] and Blair are on friendly terms and the latter is known to spend a good deal of time at the shop. He has on occasion conducted the business. Westrope is known to hold socialist views and considers himself an 'intellectual'."

The file contains a cutting from the Manchester Guardian in September 1938, noting that Orwell had signed the Joint Peace Manifesto alongside the Peace Pledge Union, the Quakers and the Labour party. Two years earlier, the chief constable of Wigan had requested information about the writer, who had been seen addressing Communist party meetings in the town.

There are also details from his passport application, noting: "height 6ft 2ins, eyes grey, hair brown, tattoo marks on the backs of both hands".

The police never found enough on the author of Animal Farm and 1984 to prevent him obtaining a passport or being accredited as a war correspondent for the Observer. A record in the file, dated 1942, describes him as someone who "has been a bit of an anarchist in his day and in touch with extremist elements". It adds that he had "undoubtedly strong leftwing views, but he is a long way from orthodox Communism".

Among others kept under watch in the 1950s was the American folk song collector Alan Lomax, who appeared regularly on the BBC.

Special Branch monitored the programmes, noting his association with the Scottish singer Ewan McColl "who is connected with Theatre Workshop, a dramatic company with communist connections", and even the film director Joseph Losey (left), labelled a communist sympathiser. A concert in St Pancras town hall in December 1953 was deemed suspicious because its theme, Songs of the Iron Road, with "melodies originating on the railway system" was advertised in the Daily Worker.

The BBC was asked to keep an eye on Lomax, but he was allowed to continue broadcasting and his folk song programme preceded the Queen's Christmas Day message in 1957.

A file from 1941 contains 13 pages of reports on a strike by dockyard apprentices in Chatham which followed a complaint about the standard of canteen food.

It includes a report by Sergeant Ivan Smith of the Kent police, who hid himself in the gents' toilet at a working men's club in Gillingham to listen to the speakers at a union meeting: "I was unable to hear the majority of the proceedings owing to my obscure position in the lavatory and to the fact that a boy was standing in the cloakroom door the whole time," it says. "I heard someone say that the best thing would be to have all the big fellows for that job [on the picket line]. The reply was that all present at the meeting should take their share and no shirking. The meeting closed at 1630 hours but I was unable to leave until 1655 as some of the apprentices were in the hall until that time."

The interrogation files of suspected spies and German agents have also been released, including, in that of a Norwegian seaman, a copy of the Naturist magazine of March 1945 whose photographs of nude women and advertisements for breast enhancement and "the Vitaman iodised jockstrap" were combed to see whether they contained writing in invisible ink.

One bulky file contains interviews over years with a Russian defector, Leon Helfland, who had been a KGB officer and assassin, and charge d'affaires in the Soviet embassy in Rome for seven years until he fled to the US in 1940. Helfland told an astonished British consular official named WH Gallienne over lunch in New York in 1941 that the Soviets, Italians and Germans had read every telegram and document from the British embassy in Rome from 1933: "Mr H said they often marvelled at our laxity."

Helfland never named the spy involved, but it is known to have been the Italian valet of the British ambassador, Sir Eric Drummond, who refused to believe that his servant could have betrayed Britain.

Quoted from http://books.guardian.co.uk/news/articles/0,,2161853,00.html?gusrc=rss&feed=11:

Technorati Tags: Celebrity, History, International, Lame, Politics, Privacy, Scary

Segregation in schools is increasing: report

By Matthew Bigg

ATLANTA (Reuters) - Public schools in the United States are becoming more racially segregated and the trend is likely to accelerate because of a Supreme Court decision in June, according to report published on Wednesday.

The rise in segregation threatens the quality of education received by non-white students, who now make up 43 percent of the total U.S. student body, said the report by the Civil Rights Project of the University of California in Los Angeles.

Many segregated schools struggle to attract highly qualified teachers and administrators, do not prepare students well for college and fail to graduate more than half their students.

In its June ruling the Supreme Court forbade most existing voluntary local efforts to integrate schools in a decision favored by the Bush administration despite warnings from academics that it would compound educational inequality.

"It is about as dramatic a reversal in the stance of the federal courts as one could imagine," said Gary Orfield, a UCLA professor and a co-author of the report.

"The federal courts are clearly pushing us backward segregation with the encouragement of the Justice Department of President George W. Bush," he said in an interview.

The United States risks becoming a nation in which a new majority of non-white young people will attend "separate and inferior" schools, the report said.

"Resegregation ... is continuing to grow in all parts of the country for both African Americans and Latinos and is accelerating the most rapidly in the only region that had been highly desegregated -- the South," it said.

The trend damages the prospects for non-white students and will likely have a negative effect on the U.S. economy, according to the report by one of the leading U.S. research centers on issues of civil rights and racial inequality.

Part of the reason for the resegregation is the rapidly expanding number of black and Latino children and a corresponding fall in the number of white children, it said.

Contrary to popular belief, the surge in the number of minority children in public schools was not mainly caused by a flight of white students into private schools.

Instead, it said, the post-"baby boom" generation of white Americans are having smaller family sizes.

"During the desegregation period there was a major decline in the education gap between blacks and whites and an increase in college entry by blacks .... That gap has stopped closing," Orfield said.

TRIPLE SEGREGATION FOR LATINOS

The record of successive administration reforms such as the Goals 2000 project of former President Bill Clinton and Bush's "No Child Left Behind" in 2001 "justifies deep skepticism," the report said.

Those changes focused pressure and resources on making the achievement of minority children in segregated schools equal to children in schools that were fully integrated.

School desegregation is a sensitive issue in the United States because of resistance to it from white leaders in the decade after a 1954 Supreme Court decision saying segregated public schools were unconstitutional.

One of the chief complaints of the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s was that black-only public schools were inevitably starved of resources by local government with the result that black children received inferior education.

Latinos are the fastest growing minority in U.S. schools and for them segregation is often more profound than it was when the phenomenon was first measured 40 years ago, according to the report, "Historic Reversals, Accelerating Resegregation and the need for new Integration Strategies."

"Too often Latino students face triple segregation by race, class and language," it said.

 

Quoted from http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSN2933434120070829?rpc=92&sp=true:

Segregation in schools is increasing: report | U.S. | Reuters

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Anti-authoritarian group to strategize this weekend for convention protests

The anarchists' plans, which don't include getting a permit, could include confrontational tactics.

By Randy Furst, Star Tribune

A group of activists who describe themselves as "anarchists and anti-authoritarians" will hold a private strategy session over the Labor Day weekend to discuss plans to protest at the Republican National Convention to be held in St. Paul Sept. 1-4, 2008.

The group, called the RNC Welcoming Committee, held a news conference Monday at the Jack Pine Community Center on Lake Street in Minneapolis, where Bea Bridges, speaking for the committee, showed a video that hinted at confrontational tactics, read a statement and walked out, taking no questions.

The group had sent out an announcement last week, saying questions had to be submitted by e-mail a week in advance.

Bridges said the group favors "ending capitalism, imperialism, patriarchy and all other forms of hierarchy" to be replaced with "direct, participatory democracy."

She said the group would not seek permits to demonstrate, and said efforts to restrict protesters in that way constituted repression and a "violent threat."

In discussing future tactics, she said, "Some may choose to resist state violence using pacifist tactics, while others use whatever methods they deem necessary and appropriate."

She said they are expecting "a few hundred people" to attend this weekend's gathering, of which about half are expected to come from out of town.

According to an earlier statement on its website, RNCwelcomingcommittee.org, the group plans workshops and a bus tour of the Twin Cities on Saturday and a private strategy session at Jack Pine on Sunday that is closed to the media. It plans to hold a news conference next Monday.

Darrin Blackford, a spokesman for the Secret Service in Washington, D.C., and Tom Walsh, a spokesman for the St. Paul police department, each said they had no comment.

A separate coalition of antiwar groups, which includes Women Against Military Madness, the Anti-War Committee and the Iraq Peace Action Coalition, has already announced plans for a mass march to protest the war in Iraq on Sept. 1, 2008 near Xcel Center in St. Paul where the convention will take place. They say their march will be a peaceful, legal demonstration.

 

Quoted from http://www.startribune.com/587/story/1385565.html?ic:

Anti-authoritarian group to strategize this weekend for convention protests

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USA Files Suit Against John Ford's Rolex

MEMPHIS, Tenn. (WHBQ FOX13 myfoxmemphis.com)  -- 

The federal government is suing former State Senator John Ford’s Rolex, claiming the watch was seized during the commitment of an unlawful offense and that confiscating it is within the law.

A lawsuit, filed in federal court Tuesday, sets the watch itself as defendant and establishes its value at $70,000. It’s not clear why federal attorneys decided to sue the watch and not its wearer.

According to a lengthy affidavit, sworn to by FBI agent Mark Jackson – one of the planners of the Tennessee Waltz – Ford accepted the pricey watch as part of an exchange with Memphis developer Rusty Hyneman. Ford had – according to the affidavit – offered to help Hyneman with an outstanding environmental claim levied by the State of Tennessee.

The matter came up during Ford’s public corruption trial several months ago. He was convicted on a single bribery count and his sentencing is scheduled for the end of August.

 

This was found at myfoxmemphis.com

Technorati Tags: Justice, Lame, Politics, Sad, Weird

Congress sends 9/11 bill to Bush

By JIM ABRAMS, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - Congress sent President Bush legislation Friday to intensify anti-terror efforts in the U.S., shifting money to high-risk states and cities and expanding screening of air and sea cargo to stave off future Sept. 11-style attacks.

The measure carries out major recommendations of the independent 9/11 Commission.

The bill, passed by the House on a 371-40 vote, ranks among the top accomplishments of the six-month-old Democratic Congress. The Senate approved the measure late Thursday by 85-8, and the White House said the president would sign the bill.

Six years after the Sept. 11 attacks and three years after the 9/11 Commission made its recommendations, "Congress is finally embracing what the 9/11 families have been saying all along," said Homeland Security Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson, D-Miss. "It takes a willingness to do things a different way."

The bill elevates the importance of risk factors in determining which states and cities get federal security funds — that would mean more money for such cities as New York and Washington — and also puts money into a new program to assure that security officials at every level can communicate with each other.

It would require screening of all cargo on passenger planes within three years and sets a five-year goal of scanning all container ships for nuclear devices before they leave foreign ports.

Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., who steered the legislation through the Senate with Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, said it would "make our nation stronger, our cities and towns more secure and our families safer."

Republicans generally backed the bill while stressing their own administration's success in stopping another major terrorist attack. The bill, said Rep. Peter King of New York, top Republican on the Homeland Security panel, "is another step in the right direction building on the steps of the previous 5 1/2 years."

"These efforts build upon the considerable progress we've made over the past six years," said White House spokesman Scott Stanzel.

Completion of the bill, six months after the House passed its original version on the first day of the current Congress, was a major victory for Democrats who have seen some of their other priorities — immigration and energy reform and stem cell research funding — thwarted by GOP and presidential resistance and House-Senate differences.

Another goal, raising the minimum wage, went into effect last Tuesday, and Democratic leaders still hope for agreement on ethics and lobbying changes before Congress departs for its August recess at the end of next week.

The independent 9/11 Commission in 2004 issued 41 recommendations covering domestic security, intelligence gathering and foreign policy. Congress and the White House followed through on some, including creating a director of national intelligence, tightening land border screening and cracking down on terrorist financing.

Democrats, after taking over control of Congress, promised to make completing the list a top priority.

Former Rep. Lee Hamilton, D-Ind., the vice chair of the 9/11 Commission, said with enactment of the bill some 80 percent of the panel's recommendations will have been met. "The bottom line is that the American people will be safer," he said.

The 9/11 bill led off the first busy legislative week in the House last January, and the Senate passed its version in March. The measure stalled after that, partly because of a White House veto threat over language, since dropped, to give collective bargaining rights to aviation screeners.

House-Senate negotiators finally reached an agreement this week after Democrats worked out a provision satisfying GOP demands that people who report what they in good faith believe to be terrorist activity around planes, trains and buses be protected from lawsuits.

The most controversial provision in the legislation requires the radiation scanning of cargo containers in more than 600 ports from which ships leave for the U.S. The White House, and other critics, say that the technology isn't there, that the requirement could disrupt trade and that current procedures including manifest inspections at foreign ports and radiation monitoring in U.S. ports are working well.

Supporters argue that the unthinkable devastation from the detonation of a nuclear device in an American port makes it imperative to scan cargo before it reaches U.S. shores. As a compromise, it was agreed that the Homeland Security secretary can extend the five-year deadline for 100 percent scanning in two-year increments if necessary.

The White House was also unhappy with a provision that requires total amounts requested and appropriated for the intelligence community to be made public.

There was more agreement on changing the formula to ensure that more federal security grants go to high-risk states and cities. The current formula makes sure that every lawmaker, even those representing rural areas relatively safe from terrorism, get a chunk of the federal grants. Under the new formula a larger percentage of grants will go to high-risk urban areas.

The bill also establishes a new grant program to ensure that local, state and federal officials can communicate with each other and approves $4 billion over four years for rail, transit and bus security.

It strengthens security measures for the Visa Waiver Program, which allows travelers from select countries to visit the United States without visas.

The massive legislation also contains language requiring the president to confirm that Pakistan is making progress in combatting al-Qaida and Taliban elements within its borders before the United States provides aid to the country.

Hamilton said that one shortcoming of the bill is that it fails to carry out the commission's recommendation that Congress streamline its own overlapping setup for monitoring intelligence and homeland security matters. "I think congressional oversight still remains a weakness in our homeland security," he said.

___

The bill is H.R. 1

 

This was found at Yahoo! News.

Technorati Tags: Maine, Politics, Security, War

Michael Moore says he's been served

BURBANK, Calif., July 26 (UPI) -- Michael Thursday said the Bush administration has served him with a subpoena regarding his trip to Cuba during the making of his new film, "Sicko."
The Oscar-winning filmmaker, who appeared Thursday on NBC's "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno," said he was notified about the subpoena at the network's studios in Burbank, Calif.
"I haven't even told my own family yet," Moore said. "I was just informed when I was back there with Jay that the Bush administration has now issued a subpoena for me."
Moore filmed the trip as part of his film comparing the U.S. healthcare system with government healthcare systems in other countries.
He took three Sept. 11, 2001, emergency rescue workers to Guantanamo Bay "because I heard the al-Qaida terrorists we have in the camps there, detained, are receiving free dental, medical, eye care, the whole deal, and our own (Sept. 11) rescue workers can't get that in New York City."
Moore said the film's distributor, the Weinstein Co., will donate 11 percent of "Sicko's" box-office receipts Aug. 11 to "help these workers and the other workers who need help."

This was found at United Press International.

Technorati Tags: Celebrity, International, Movies, Politics, Sad

On watch at atomic history

By TOM BERG

THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

HUNTINGTON BEACH - It was 50 years ago this month the two men defied death in the Nevada desert.

One hour before dawn, the young Marines were placed in an open trench, then ordered to kneel and cover their eyes.

Three miles away, what would be the largest atomic device detonated over U.S. soil was about to explode. Test shot Hood was five times greater than the bomb that killed 90,000 people in Hiroshima, Japan. And no one was sure what would happen this close to ground zero.

The blast blew doors off hinges 14 miles away, rattled homes all the way to Santa Ana and was seen by pilots near Hawaii. And that's not all.

“It was the dirtiest test stateside in terms of radiation fallout,” says R.J. Ritter, national commander of the National Association of Atomic Veterans. “And they walked about 2,200 Marines right into ground zero.”

This included the two men in the closest trench. One was Gary King, now 70, of Huntington Beach, a rough-and-tough Marine who still calls the blast “no big deal.” The other was a former Santa Ana Marine, who saw it quite differently. Darel Brower's memoirs, posted online, describe the eerie pre-dawn silence, the panicky Marines, the silvery-white explosion and the trek through 100-degree heat to ground zero with no masks.
When King read this, he tried to e-mail his former platoon mate. It bounced back. Then he tried to phone, but there was no listing.

He knew they'd both survived the blast 50 years ago. He was left to wonder if they'd both survived the fallout.

BOMB PARTIES

In retrospect, the audacity of 1957's Operation Plumbbob was stunning: a series of 29 aboveground atomic explosions witnessed at close range by 18,000 men testing their ability to fight on a nuclear battlefield.

Planes flew through radioactive clouds. Marines marched through radioactive sand. Paratroopers jumped through radioactive skies. Assaults were launched. Objectives taken. The military measured blast effects on pigs, dogs, rabbits, mannequins, tanks, trucks and the psyches of men witnessing unparalleled power.

Sixty-five miles south, Las Vegas was measuring how to cash in on the mushroom-cloud spectacle with “dawn bomb parties” on hotel rooftops.

Knowledge of radiation was still in its infancy.

“At the time, we were all very cavalier about it,” says King, whose specialty was atomic, biological and chemical warfare. “Nobody really talked about radiation too much. It wasn't a big thing. From the military standpoint, an A-bomb was nothing more than a high-explosive bomb.”

Both King and Brower had to monitor radiation at three detonations: Priscilla, Diablo and Hood. Their observations could not be any more different.

“People ask, ‘Weren't you scared?' ” King says. “The answer is no. We were macho. It was just another assignment.”

Marines climbed out of trenches after each blast and smoked, he says. Or ate. Or napped.

“Most ignored the devices,” he says.

Brower was positioned several miles from the blast, facing away so as not to go blind. He describes the 37-kiloton Priscilla test this way:

“I'm not sure anyone was breathing, as it surely could have been heard,” he wrote. “When the count went from 10 to zero, everything lost its color, including the olive, drab truck parked in front of us. It all turned brilliant silver-white. The air around us was alive with the sizzling and crackling of electrical charges. My neck, which was the only thing exposed to the light, felt as if someone was holding a blowtorch to it.”

A few days later, both men were brought to the trenches for Diablo. It would prove stranger than Priscilla.

Countdown to nothing

Before you're sent to the bottom of a 6-foot-deep trench, three miles from an atomic explosion, you get a warning to close your eyes tight and place an arm in front of them. If they open, you may go blind. You are also warned that if you lift a finger in the air, it will be scorched.

So when the loudspeakers count down – 3, 2, 1, 0 … – and nothing explodes, what should you do?

“No one dared move,” wrote Brower. “For close to 20 minutes we held those positions.”

Legs went numb. Expletives were shouted. Men feared crawling out of the trenches, but Diablo was a dud. Eventually, they were ordered up and trucked away. For King and Brower, that left only the granddaddy of atmospheric tests, the 74-kiloton Hood.

About it they would later agree on something. With eyes clenched tight, kneeling at the bottom of a trench, they both saw the same thing at detonation – the bones in their arms.

21 Cancers

We'll never know what Marine Maj. Charles Broudy saw in the trenches when Hood exploded. Or what he breathed when he marched – like King and Brower – to ground zero. He died of lymphoma in 1977.

We do know that the Veterans Administration denied him benefits, saying he couldn't prove he was there. And that his widow later showed he received more than 5,000 times the 13-millirad dose the government said his film badge read.

Broudy's widow Pat Broudy, 83, of Dana Point, fought an 11-year battle to help win benefits for atomic veterans, who now can claim relief for 21 kinds of cancers.

For many, however, it's too little, too late.

“Most of our guys are old,” she says. “And they don't have the fight or will or knowledge to confront our government agencies anymore.”

The number of living atomic veterans is hard to place. But the National Association of Atomic Veterans estimates that more than 900,000 men and women took part in about 1,000 nuclear tests from 1945 to 1992. And more than 140,000 may have suffered cancer or other illnesses as a result.

So far King is not among them.

“I have prostate cancer, but it's not attributed to that,” says the still macho Marine. “It's because I'm 70 years old. All men get it.”

Which leaves us wondering about his old battalion-mate Darel Brower, whose memoirs prompted King to reflect on the nuclear war games they played 50 years ago. What about him?

Godlike and demonic

Darel Brower, it turns out, is 76 and living in Jacksonville, N.C.

“For an old duff, I'm in good shape,” he says, suffering only heartburn and a slight heart arrhythmia.

The blasts remain vivid in his mind: The greens and blues, the beautiful hues glowing around the fireball, once he could look up, were both godlike and demonic.

That is the lesson he took from those long-ago tests.

“We are definitely part of something deeper,” he says, as if he were still in that trench. “And we are very fragile.”

 

This was found at The Orange County Register.

Technorati Tags: Energy, History, Lame, Sad, Scary, Science

Executive Order: Blocking Property of Certain Persons Who Threaten Stabilization Efforts in Iraq

 

Message to the Congress of the United States Regarding International Emergency Economic Powers Act

By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, including the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, as amended (50 U.S.C. 1701 et seq.)(IEEPA), the National Emergencies Act (50 U.S.C. 1601 et seq.)(NEA), and section 301 of title 3, United States Code,

I, GEORGE W. BUSH, President of the United States of America, find that, due to the unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States posed by acts of violence threatening the peace and stability of Iraq and undermining efforts to promote economic reconstruction and political reform in Iraq and to provide humanitarian assistance to the Iraqi people, it is in the interests of the United States to take additional steps with respect to the national emergency declared in Executive Order 13303 of May 22, 2003, and expanded in Executive Order 13315 of August 28, 2003, and relied upon for additional steps taken in Executive Order 13350 of July 29, 2004, and Executive Order 13364 of November 29, 2004. I hereby order:

Section 1. (a) Except to the extent provided in section 203(b)(1), (3), and (4) of IEEPA (50 U.S.C. 1702(b)(1), (3), and (4)), or in regulations, orders, directives, or licenses that may be issued pursuant to this order, and notwithstanding any contract entered into or any license or permit granted prior to the date of this order, all property and interests in property of the following persons, that are in the United States, that hereafter come within the United States, or that are or hereafter come within the possession or control of United States persons, are blocked and may not be transferred, paid, exported,

withdrawn, or otherwise dealt in: any person determined by the Secretary of the Treasury, in consultation with the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defense,

(i) to have committed, or to pose a significant risk of committing, an act or acts of violence that have the purpose or effect of:

(A) threatening the peace or stability of Iraq or the Government of Iraq; or

(B) undermining efforts to promote economic reconstruction and political reform in Iraq or to provide humanitarian assistance to the Iraqi people;

(ii) to have materially assisted, sponsored, or provided financial, material, logistical, or technical support for, or goods or services in support of, such an act or acts of violence or any person whose property and interests in property are blocked pursuant to this order; or

(iii) to be owned or controlled by, or to have acted or purported to act for or on behalf of, directly or indirectly, any person whose property and interests in property are blocked pursuant to this order.

(b) The prohibitions in subsection (a) of this section include, but are not limited to, (i) the making of any contribution or provision of funds, goods, or services by, to, or for the benefit of any person whose property and interests in property are blocked pursuant to this order, and (ii) the

receipt of any contribution or provision of funds, goods, or services from any such person.

Sec. 2. (a) Any transaction by a United States person or within the United States that evades or avoids, has the purpose

of evading or avoiding, or attempts to violate any of the prohibitions set forth in this order is prohibited.

(b) Any conspiracy formed to violate any of the prohibitions set forth in this order is prohibited.

Sec. 3. For purposes of this order:

(a) the term "person" means an individual or entity;

(b) the term "entity" means a partnership, association, trust, joint venture, corporation, group, subgroup, or other organization; and

(c) the term "United States person" means any United States citizen, permanent resident alien, entity organized under the laws of the United States or any jurisdiction within the United States (including foreign branches), or any person in the United States.

Sec. 4. I hereby determine that the making of donations of the type specified in section 203(b)(2) of IEEPA (50 U.S.C. 1702(b)(2)) by, to, or for the benefit of, any person whose property and interests in property are blocked pursuant to this order would seriously impair my ability to deal with the national emergency declared in Executive Order 13303 and expanded in Executive Order 13315, and I hereby prohibit such donations as provided by section 1 of this order.

Sec. 5. For those persons whose property and interests in property are blocked pursuant to this order who might have a constitutional presence in the United States, I find that, because of the ability to transfer funds or other assets

instantaneously, prior notice to such persons of measures to be taken pursuant to this order would render these measures ineffectual. I therefore determine that for these measures to be effective in addressing the national emergency declared in Executive Order 13303 and expanded in Executive Order 13315, there need be no prior notice of a listing or determination made pursuant to section 1(a) of this order.

Sec. 6. The Secretary of the Treasury, in consultation with the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defense, is hereby authorized to take such actions, including the promulgation of rules and regulations, and to employ all powers granted to the President by IEEPA as may be necessary to carry out the purposes of this order. The Secretary of the Treasury may redelegate any of these functions to other officers and agencies of the United States Government, consistent with applicable law. All agencies of the United States Government are hereby directed to take all appropriate measures within their authority to carry out the provisions of this order and, where appropriate, to advise the Secretary of the Treasury in a timely manner of the measures taken.

Sec. 7. Nothing in this order is intended to affect the continued effectiveness of any rules, regulations, orders, licenses, or other forms of administrative action issued, taken, or continued in effect heretofore or hereafter under 31 C.F.R. chapter V, except as expressly terminated, modified, or suspended by or pursuant to this order.

Sec. 8. This order is not intended to, and does not, create any right, benefit, or privilege, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity by any party against the United States, its departments, agencies, instrumentalities, or entities, its officers or employees, or any other person.

GEORGE W. BUSH

THE WHITE HOUSE,

July 17, 2007.

 

This was found at The Freakin' White House.

Technorati Tags: Business, History, International, Justice, Laws, Politics, Sad, Scary, War

Senior Qaeda figure in Iraq a myth: U.S. military

By Dean Yates

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - A senior operative for al Qaeda in Iraq who was caught this month has told his U.S. military interrogators a prominent al Qaeda-led group is just a front and its leader fictitious, a military spokesman said on Wednesday.

Brigadier-General Kevin Bergner told a news conference that Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, leader of the self-styled Islamic State of Iraq, which was purportedly set up last year, did not exist.

The Islamic State of Iraq was established to try to put an Iraqi face on what is a foreign-driven network, Bergner said. The name Baghdadi means the person hails from the Iraqi capital.

Bergner said the information came from an operative called Khalid al-Mashadani who was caught on July 4 and who he said was an intermediary to Osama bin Laden.

He said Mashadani was believed to be the most senior Iraqi in the Sunni Islamist al Qaeda in Iraq network.

"In his words, the Islamic State of Iraq is a front organization that masks the foreign influence and leadership within al Qaeda in Iraq in an attempt to put an Iraqi face on the leadership of al Qaeda in Iraq," Bergner said.

U.S. military officials in recent weeks have been pressed to explain the link between al Qaeda in Iraq and bin Laden's global network given the military's heightened focus on al Qaeda in Iraq as the biggest threat to the country.

The military blames al Qaeda in Iraq for most of the major bombings in Iraq, saying the group is trying to spark all-out civil war between majority Shi'tes and minority Sunni Arabs.

Bergner said Mashadani served as an intermediary between the al Qaeda in Iraq leader, Egyptian Abu Ayyab al-Masri and bin Laden and also the Egyptian cleric Ayman al-Zawahri, who is the global network's No. 2 commander.

The Islamic State of Iraq was set up in October, comprising a group of Sunni militant affiliates and tribal leaders led by Baghdadi. In April, it named a 10-man "cabinet".

The Islamic State of Iraq has claimed many high-profile acts of violence.

But Bergner said Mashadani and Masri had co-founded a "virtual organization in cyberspace called the Islamic State of Iraq in 2006 as a new Iraqi pseudonym for AQI".

"To further this myth, Masri created a fictional head of the Islamic State of Iraq known as Abu Omar al-Baghdadi," he said.

"To make al-Baghdadi appear credible, al-Masri swore allegiance to al-Baghdadi and pledged to obey him, which is essentially pledging allegiance to himself since he knew Baghdadi was fictitious and a creation of his own," he said.

"The rank and file Iraqis in AQI believe they are following the Iraqi al-Baghdadi. But all the while they have been following the orders of the Egyptian Abu Ayyab al-Masri."

Voice recordings purporting to be from Baghdadi have appeared on the Internet, although Bergner said he had been played by an actor. He did not refer to any video clips.

Bergner said Mashadani was al Qaeda's "media emir" for Iraq.

He said the operative was "providing significant insights into the nature and circumstances of al Qaeda in Iraq".

The U.S. military has always said al Qaeda in Iraq was run by foreigners.

 

This was found at Reuters.

Technorati Tags: International, Politics, Scary, War

Transsexual teacher alleges tiny torture

Technorati Tags: Health, Politics, Scary

By RICK MURRAY

The dirty tricks the CIA acknowledges committing in the so-called “Family Jewels” papers represent the tip of a sinister iceberg, according to a former Fort Dix military instructor.

Former U.S. Army Reserve Capt. Marjorie Lorsbach says secret government operatives are using weaponized nanotechnology to punish her for the transsexual surgery she underwent in the 1980s.

Lorsbach said secret enclaves of the federal government are using nano-poisons to harass and even assassinate members of unpopular minority groups and other political nonconformists.

“These nano-devices have literally exploded in my face and are part of a heinous and covert program of extra judicial killings within the United States,” said Lorsbach, a retired teacher.

Her comments come on the heels of the release by the CIA last week of the “Family Jewels,” a collection of damning internal reports.

The 693-page document recounts how in the mid-’70s CIA agents engineered assassination plots against foreign leaders, spying on civil rights and anti-war groups, and the experimentation with mind-altering drugs on unsuspecting American citizens.

Nanotechnology, Lorsbach said, involves artificially altered particles, amounting to one billionth of a meter or less. To give perspective, Lorsbach noted a human hair is 80,000 nanometers in width.

“The particles as vapor enter through the sinuses and into the circulatory system and go directly through the lungs into the coronary arteries, damaging the heart muscle and other internal organs” said Lorsbach.

The harassment against her, she said, began when she appeared to discuss her transsexual surgery on the nationally televised “Donohue Show” in 1991.

Lorsbach a resident of Monroe Township, Gloucester Township, points to her resume to establish credibility. She served through the 1970s as vice president of the Pine Hill Board of Education, Pine Hill Rent Control Officer, member of the Pine Hill Planning Board, and secretary to the mayor of Pine Hill. She also worked as an aide to New Jersey state Sen. Joseph Maressa (D-4). She taught history and government for 25 years in the Lower Camden County High School District at Overbrook and Edgewood High Schools in Lindenwold and Winslow Township, respectively.

Nano-devices can be remotely activated, according to Lorsbach, and exist in a variety of everyday substances, including glass, wood, fabrics, polymers and even metals.

Similar technology is used in many household products.

“Engineered nano-particles are being used in virtually every type of personal care product on the market, from sunscreens and anti-aging creams to toothpastes,” said Lisa Archer, senior health and environmental campaigner with Friends of the Earth U.S., a pro-environment industry watchdog group.

Lorsbach said she got a hint of the government’s involvement in weaponized nanotechnology while stationed at the JFK Special Warfare Center at Ft. Bragg, N.C.

She had already undergone her transsexual surgery and had experienced the onset of physical impairment due to what she was beginning to suspect was a covert form of bio-chemical contamination.

“A colonel ordered me to remain silent and to not discuss classified information outside a secure area,” she said.

Defense Intelligence Agency officials could not be reached for comment, but the CIA has gone on record, vowing that it has cleaned up its act and its agents no longer spy on or otherwise interfere with American citizens.

This was found at Trentonian.com

Clinton's Clock

A guy dies and goes to heaven. It's a slow day for St. Peter, so upon passing the entrance test, St. Peter says "I'm not very busy today. Why don't you let me show you around?"
The guy thinks it's a great idea and graciously accepts the offer. St. Peter shows him all the sights: the golf course, reading room, library, observation room, cafeteria and, finally, a HUGE room full of clocks.
"What's up with those clocks, Peter?"
"Everyone on earth has a clock that shows how much time he has left on earth. When a clock runs out of time, the person dies and comes to the Gates to be judged."
The guy thinks this makes sense, but notices that some of the clocks are going faster than others. He asks why that is.
"Every time a living person tells a lie, it speeds up his clock." This also makes sense, so the guy takes one last look around the room before leaving and notices one clock in the center of the ceiling. On this clock, both hands are spinning at an unbelievable rate.
"What's the story with that clock?"
"Oh, that," St. Peter replies. "That's Bill Clinton's clock. We decided to use it as a fan."

Blair digging graves to make his legacy

BY BRIAN PENDREIGH

SEAN Connery has given his most incendiary ever interview on politics, branding Tony Blair an "a***hole" making his legacy from graves in Iraq and suggesting that First Minister Jack McConnell is frustrating democracy in Scotland.

In his first interview since the Holyrood election, Connery also calls on Scottish Secretary Douglas Alexander to resign over the voting fiasco, which saw almost 150,000 ballot papers spoiled.

The actor reveals he has been giving post-election advice to SNP leader and likely new First Minister Alex Salmond and suggests he has already become a roving ambassador for Scotland. But on the issue of a return to the land of his birth, Connery remains as enigmatic as ever.

Speaking from his home in the Bahamas, Connery described the conduct of the election as an "embarrassment".

Connery told Scotland on Sunday: "I think [Douglas] Alexander should resign because he was warned. Alexander is not resigning, he's not even apologising."

Referring to the decision to hold council and Parliament votes together, he added: "No other place would attempt to do the two on the same day. It's a real, horrendous mistake."

Connery said of the outcome, in which the SNP won by 47 seats to Labour's 46: "It was an amazing result considering the Prime Minister and Jack McConnell were up there, and all the tabloids on full blast. They had all the ammunition stacked against them, and they've come through, the SNP. The thing is that they [Labour] pushed for a fear element into it."

He added: "Everybody got blinded by the Union issue. It wasn't the Union issue. It was a change of government they wanted.

"What I think got the people going behind Alex Salmond and the SNP was that they really conducted an excellent campaign and they have come out with what they are trying to do. And this will determine the future of Scotland, regardless of a referendum [on independence]."

McConnell has let it be known that should the SNP fail to form a government he is waiting in the wings to try for another coalition with the Lib Dems.

Asked if McConnell was betraying democratic principles by not letting Salmond get on with it, Connery said: "This is it completely. If you were asking the will of the people now, that's exactly what they would want. They would say, 'Let them get in, we're at least on the right track'. If they [Labour] start with a sabotage situation like now they can't blame anybody but themselves."

Connery said that if anybody should be a Labour supporter "it should be me, with my background". He added: "The problem is that Labour has been too long in power. They are totally fossilised. For 50 years until the opening of this Parliament we had nothing but a Labour majority in Scotland, regardless of what happened in the rest of the UK."

On the issue of independence, Connery remains convinced a referendum can still take place with or without the support of the Lib Dems. He even suggests that three years of minority rule under the SNP might be enough to persuade Scots it is time to go it alone.

"When you get to the crossroads in 2010, they [the SNP] might not even need a referendum, it would be so obvious that they want to run alone. The issue is that I do not think the UK is a United Kingdom. I think it is not a democracy, it is not equal, that's the problem."

But the star acknowledges that the SNP is facing a new challenge as a result of the imminent change of leadership of the UK Labour party. "That's going to be the major problem," said Connery. "From a not particularly powerful base, Salmond dealing with Gordon Brown, who is out to set a much bigger stall after this a***hole Blair."

Connery referred to the massive controversy during the election campaign when Blair criticised Sir George Mathewson, former chairman of the Royal Bank of Scotland, after he backed Salmond for First Minister. Blair responded during a trip to Scotland by calling Mathewson "self indulgent".

Connery said: "How can somebody like a Blair come up and knock somebody like George Mathewson of the Royal Bank, with his success, for being deluded? How dare he say that of somebody from his position who's digging graves to make a legacy? That's the sort of person in Scotland he's knocking. And that can't taste good in the mouth of the Scots."

He then took a side swipe at the Lib Dems, saying: "They [the SNP] are obviously not going to be in bed with the Liberal Democrats. I mean they are so non-productive anyway. They are like some kind of hybrid. Now if the Liberal Democrats were really interested in the big picture of Scotland, they would get in and prove that they can work with a party like the SNP."

Connery predicted the SNP would win the election last month when he declared that Salmond was "the right man at the right time". He also hinted that he may return to live in his homeland if Scotland voted for independence.

Connery told Scotland on Sunday he had followed the election results on the internet throughout the night of May 3 and 4 and had spoken to Salmond since the outcome.

Asked what role he might play in the new Scotland, Connery replied: "For me it's to get the [Scottish] voice heard.

"Since Winnie Ewing at the beginning it's unequal. Her treatment by the MPs when she got to London was deplorable. And if you ask any businessman or any chief, if he had four divisions like Scotland, England, Ireland, Wales, what would he do? He would bring them all up to the best they could be competitively for the benefit of the big picture. Well, that's what it should be, that kind of equality. All this talk about borders with guns and all that is s****, you know, absolute panic s****. We are talking about our people who want an equal deal."

Connery agreed he might become a roving, cultural ambassador for Scotland but he also made a plea for fairness towards the SNP, particularly from the media.

"The day we got the Parliament opened, I was asked, leaving the building, what did I think? I said it will be turmoil. Until we get a media which is sympathetic to a better and bigger picture of Scotland it won't work. And it's sadly come true.

"If we get a fair innings and everybody does work, there's a real genuine opportunity."

Connery's relationship with Labour has veered from conciliatory to outright hostile. He lent his support to the devolution referendum in 1997, standing alongside Blair, Donald Dewar and Salmond in urging Scots to vote 'yes'. But there was controversy after Dewar vetoed Connery's knighthood in December 1997. At the time, the veteran actor said he was "deeply disappointed but strangely not angry or greatly surprised". He was eventually made a knight in 2000.

Connery has worked alongside McConnell as well, especially during the annual Tartan Week celebrations in New York. However, this relationship was also strained after sources close to the First Minister described him as a "falling star".

An SNP spokesman said: "The difference between Alex Salmond and Tony Blair was that while Alex Salmond wanted to celebrate and build on Scottish success, Blair came north and attacked it. As for Sir Sean's points about Douglas Alexander and the causes of the election problems, Alex Salmond has already said that he will commission an independent inquiry into the voting fiasco if elected First Minister."

No one was available for comment from Scottish Labour.


I'll be in Scotland when weather improves, says Connery
BP: It was reported that you are thinking of moving back to Scotland or buying a house - is that right?

SC: That very first time I was supposed to have looked at houses is one of these rumours. It's not true.

BP: You are not actively looking for somewhere in Scotland just now?

SC: No, no. I don't feel the need. Travelling in the world today is a pain in the a***.

BP: Do you have any plans to come to Scotland in the near future? Is there anything that will bring you here?

SC: Well, I'm working on the Glasgow animation thing I'm doing, and I'm still doing this book on the history with Murray Grigor. In fact I'm doing quite a few things.

BP: So when will you next be in Scotland?

SC: When the weather improves.

BP: There is no political initiative to bring you here in the coming weeks?

SC: No, no, I won't figure in their plans, I don't think. They have got enough on their plate.

BP: Are you going to do Indiana Jones (left) 4?

SC: I'm still talking with them. I've got their script and they're still working on it.

BP: Can you tell me anything about the story? I believe it might shoot in the Bahamas?

SC: Is it? I don't know.

BP: Can you tell me what Henry Jones does?

SC: No, I can't. It's all secrecy. You know they're paranoid about it.

This was found at Scotsman.com.

Inventor of lethal injection stands behind it

Doctor rejects claims that it's cruel and unusual

By PAUL ELIAS
Associated Press


SANTA ROSA, CALIF. — Thirty years ago, Oklahoma Medical Examiner Dr. A. Jay Chapman marched into the Oklahoma Statehouse and dictated the formula for a cocktail of three drugs to a lawmaker looking for a more humane way to execute the condemned.

As Chapman spoke, Rep. Bill Wiseman scribbled on a legal yellow pad. That afternoon, Wiseman introduced the bill that made Oklahoma the first state to adopt lethal injection.

Chapman's method has since been taken up by 37 states in all, the federal government and the U.S. military and has been used to execute 900 U.S. prisoners.

But the formula and the way it is administered are now under broad legal assault around the country as a violation of the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment, with activists arguing that Chapman's protocol was hastily conceived and that some prisoners suffer excruciating pain without being able to cry out.

Chapman still sees it as a humane way to kill the worst criminals. Texas, the nation's most active death penalty state, uses lethal injection.

"Everything is political correctness and everyone wants to be a victim today," said the cantankerous 68-year-old Chapman, who lives alone in Santa Rosa when he is not teaching medicine in Nepal or trekking in the Himalayas. "All of the sudden, the person on death row is a victim. I reject that thinking, by and large, because these people made choices to do what they did."

A recent study in the online journal PLoS Medicine said some inmates suffer extreme pain during lethal injections because of insufficient and haphazard doses of the chemicals, including the painkiller that is the first drug in the three-part combination.

Chapman blames incompetent executioners.

"This protocol will work if it's administered as it should be," he said. "If it is competently administered, there will be no question about this business of pain and suffering."

Decades after he developed the protocol, defense lawyers, doctors and death penalty foes publicly question the amount of scientific research that went into the creation of lethal injection.

Chapman said he consulted a toxicologist and two anesthesiologists. But he said it didn't actually require much research because the three chemicals — a painkiller, a muscle-paralyzing agent and a heart-stopper — are well-known to physicians.

"It's simply an adaptation of a medical procedure," Chapman said this week. "It is anesthetizing someone for a surgical procedure, but simply carried to an extreme."

Chapman began thinking about a more humane way to mete out the ultimate punishment in 1976, after watching the debate in Utah over whether to execute killer Gary Gilmore by firing squad or hanging. That notion brought him to Wiseman's office in the Oklahoma Statehouse in 1977.

The former lawmaker remembers the short meeting vividly, down to the corduroy jacket Chapman wore that day.

"It was very simple and straightforward," Wiseman said.

Wiseman, a death penalty foe, nonetheless voted to reinstate capital punishment "because I didn't want to lose the next election." But he later introduced the bill establishing lethal injection as the method to soothe his guilty conscience. Previously, Oklahoma used the electric chair.

Wiseman said he now regrets introducing the world to lethal injection, because it makes capital punishment less gory and thus more acceptable.

Chapman, for his part, said he was surprised by how widespread his concoction became, and how quickly. But he said he has no regrets.

He moved to Santa Rosa in 1982 to work as a forensic pathologist for the Sonoma County coroner and said that until recently, he had stopped thinking about his role in dramatically changing the way executions are carried out in the United States.

"He is a man whose fame has come late and bizarrely," said Jamie Fellner, director of the anti-death penalty U.S. arm of Human Rights Watch. "I think Chapman proceeded in good faith. But the notion that you can have a humane execution is an oxymoron."

The American Medical Association and other doctors groups say medical ethics bar physicians from taking part in executions. Chapman is a rarity among physicians in playing such a central role in capital punishment.

If states are looking for a way to quickly and painlessly put someone to death, he has a suggestion.

"There is absolutely nothing wrong with the guillotine," he said impatiently. "It can be operated by an idiot and it is a very effective instrument."

This was found at The Houston Chronicle.

82 Inmates Cleared but Still Held at Guantanamo

U.S. Cites Difficulty Deporting Detainees

By Craig Whitlock
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, April 29, 2007; A01



LONDON -- More than a fifth of the approximately 385 prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have been cleared for release but may have to wait months or years for their freedom because U.S. officials are finding it increasingly difficult to line up places to send them, according to Bush administration officials and defense lawyers.

Since February, the Pentagon has notified about 85 inmates or their attorneys that they are eligible to leave after being cleared by military review panels. But only a handful have gone home, including a Moroccan and an Afghan who were released Tuesday. Eighty-two remain at Guantanamo and face indefinite waits as U.S. officials struggle to figure out when and where to deport them, and under what conditions.

The delays illustrate how much harder it will be to empty the prison at Guantanamo than it was to fill it after it opened in January 2002 to detain fighters captured in Afghanistan and terrorism suspects captured overseas.

In many cases, the prisoners' countries do not want them back. Yemen, for instance, has balked at accepting some of the 106 Yemeni nationals at Guantanamo by challenging the legality of their citizenship.

Another major obstacle: U.S. laws that prevent the deportation of people to countries where they could face torture or other human rights abuses, as in the case of 17 Chinese Muslim separatists who have been cleared for release but fear they could be executed for political reasons if returned to China.

Compounding the problem are persistent refusals by the United States, its European allies and other countries to grant asylum to prisoners who are stateless or have no place to go.

"In general, most countries simply do not want to help," said John B. Bellinger III, legal adviser to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. "Countries believe this is not their problem. They think they didn't contribute to Guantanamo, and therefore they don't have to be part of the solution."

A case in point is Ahmed Belbacha, 37, an Algerian who worked as a hotel waiter in Britain but has been locked up at Guantanamo for five years. The Pentagon has alleged that Belbacha met al-Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden twice and received weapons training in Afghanistan. His attorneys dispute the charges and say he was rounded up with other innocents in Pakistan in early 2002.

On Feb. 22, without explanation, the Pentagon notified Belbacha's lawyers in London that he had been approved to leave Guantanamo. Despite entreaties from the State Department, however, the British government has refused to accept Belbacha and five other immigrants who had lived in the country, because they lack British citizenship.

This month, Clint Williamson, the State Department's ambassador for war crimes, visited Algiers to discuss possible arrangements for the return of two dozen Algerians who remain at Guantanamo, including Belbacha, but no breakthroughs were reported. That country has been slow to accept its citizens.

Zachary Katznelson, a lawyer who represents Belbacha and several other prisoners who have been cleared, said defense attorneys have tried to speed up the process by contacting foreign governments to see if there are any specific obstacles to the return of their clients. In many cases, he said, the prisoners and officials in their home countries are willing to approve the transfer, but the delays persist.

"The holdup is a mystery to me, frankly," said Katznelson, senior counsel for Reprieve, a British legal defense fund. "If the U.S. has cleared these people and they want to go back, I don't understand why they can't just put them on a plane."

Other prisoner advocates said the Bush administration has made its task more difficult by exaggerating the threat posed by most Guantanamo inmates -- officials repeatedly called them "the worst of the worst" -- and refusing to acknowledge mistaken detentions.

Foreign governments have also questioned why U.S. officials should expect other countries to pitch in, given that Washington won't offer asylum to detainees either.

"This is a problem of our own creation, and yet we expect other countries to shoulder the entire burden of a solution," said Ben Wizner, staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union. "There needs to be a worldwide solution here. The U.S. has to bear some of that burden. It can't simply expect its partners and allies to absorb all its detainees."

The 82 cleared prisoners who remain stuck in limbo come from 16 countries in the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia, according to defense attorneys who have received official notification of their clients' status.

The 17 Chinese Muslim separatists make up the largest contingent. Other countries with multiple prisoners awaiting release include Afghanistan, Sudan, Tunisia, Uzbekistan and Yemen.

The Pentagon has reduced the population at Guantanamo by roughly half since the peak of 680 people in May 2003, generally by sending prisoners back to their native countries. But U.S. officials said progress has slowed because of the complexity of the remaining cases.

Of the roughly 385 still incarcerated, U.S. officials said they intend to eventually put 60 to 80 on trial and free the rest. But the judicial process has likewise moved at a glacial pace, largely because of constitutional legal challenges.

Only two people have been charged under a military tribunal system approved by Congress last year. One of those cases has been adjudicated. David M. Hicks, an Australian citizen, pleaded guilty in March to lending material support to terrorists. He was sentenced to nine months in prison and is scheduled to be transferred to Australia in May to serve his time there.

Defense lawyers for some of the 82 cleared prisoners whose release is pending said Hicks received a better deal than did their clients who were not charged with any offenses. "One of the cruel ironies is that in Guantanamo, you've got to plead guilty to be released," said Wizner, the ACLU attorney. "It's the only way out of there."

Complicating the return process is that virtually all the prisoners at Guantanamo come from countries that the State Department has cited for records of human rights abuses. Under U.S. rules, a pattern of abuses in a country does not automatically preclude deportation there. Rather, U.S. officials must investigate each case to determine whether an individual is likely to face persecution.

The investigations are time-consuming and often meet with resistance from the prisoners' home countries, which can be sensitive to suggestions that they allow torture, U.S. officials said. In cases where there is a risk of mistreatment, U.S. policy is to obtain a written promise from the host government that the prisoner will not be abused and that U.S. officials will be allowed to monitor the arrangement.

"It often takes us months and months, or even years, to negotiate the human rights assurances that we are comfortable with before we will transfer someone to another country," said Bellinger, the State Department's legal adviser.

Human rights groups have criticized the written assurances as unreliable. In March, the New York-based group Human Rights Watch issued a report on the fate of seven Russians who were released from Guantanamo three years ago, asserting that three of the men have been tortured since their return.

The watchdog group urged the U.S. government to find third-party countries willing to take Guantanamo inmates who are judged to be at risk for political persecution. U.S. officials countered that they have tried to do that for years, with virtually no success.

Only one country has been willing to accept Guantanamo prisoners who had never previously set foot inside its borders. Last year, after prodding by the State Department, the Balkan nation of Albania agreed to take five Chinese separatists who belong to an ethnic group known as Uighurs.

The men were captured in late 2001 after they crossed the Chinese border into Afghanistan and Pakistan. Their attorneys said they were mistakenly taken into custody and had not taken up arms against U.S. forces. U.S. officials said dozens of countries refused to grant asylum to the Uighurs for fear of angering China, which considers them terrorists for leading a secession movement in the western province of Turkestan.

Seventeen other Uighurs who were caught in similar circumstances have been cleared for release but remain in Guantanamo because the State Department has been unable to find a home for them. Human rights groups have pressed the U.S. government to offer the men asylum, to no avail.

A senior U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity said that the Bush administration had considered granting the Uighurs asylum but that the idea was nixed by the Department of Homeland Security. The Uighurs would be rejected under U.S. immigration law, the official said, because they once trained in armed camps and because their separatist front, the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, was labeled a terrorist organization by the U.S. government in 2002.

Attorneys for the Uighurs said their predicament has been compounded by the Pentagon's unwillingness to say they don't pose a national security risk to the U.S. government or its allies. In announcing that the Uighurs had been approved to leave Guantanamo, military officials made a point of noting that they had not been exonerated and were still classified as enemy combatants.

"It's not a distinction that makes sense at all," said Michael J. Sternhell, a New York lawyer whose firm represents four of the Uighurs. "It's a caveat that the Defense Department is offering to cover itself."

Some human rights advocates said the Bush administration could speed things up by asking the United Nations or another international body for help.

Manfred Nowak, an Austrian law professor who serves as the U.N. special monitor on torture, said European allies and other countries would continue to duck requests to accept released prisoners as long as the U.S. government approaches them separately. An international commission responsible for finding a solution, he said, might carry more weight.

"If the U.S. is willing to do something to close down Guantanamo, then it should be done in a cooperative manner with the international community," Nowak said. "It's a question of burden-sharing. Otherwise, every individual country that the U.S. approaches says, 'Why us?' "

This was found at Washington Post

If I do comment, it's usually at the end, but this is bullshit! Once again our rights as US citizens stripped without people even realizing it.
While I don't necessarily condone what was written, I do feel the kid is entitled to his rights just like everyone else.
Furthermore the remarks from the school stating that "Our staff is very familiar with adolescent behavior." should not even come up considering the student is 18 years old, legally an adult.

Slap on the wrist, stern talk explaining the implications of the writing, sure. Involve police, unacceptable.

Can we say "Good bye 1st amendment"?

By Jeff Long and Carolyn Starks
Tribune staff reporters
Published April 26, 2007

High school senior Allen Lee sat down with his creative writing class on Monday and penned an essay that so disturbed his teacher, school administrators and police that he was charged with disorderly conduct.

"I understand what happened recently at Virginia Tech," said the teen's father, Albert Lee, referring to last week's massacre of 32 students by gunman Seung-Hui Cho. "I understand the situation."

But he added: "I don't see how somebody can get charged by writing in their homework. The teacher asked them to express themselves, and he followed instructions."

Allen Lee, an 18-year-old straight-A student at Cary-Grove High School, was arrested Tuesday near his home and charged with disorderly conduct for an essay police described as violently disturbing but not directed toward any specific person or location.

The youth's father said his son was not suspended or expelled but was forced to attend classes elsewhere for now.

Today, Cary-Grove students rallied behind the arrested teen by organizing a petition drive to let him back in their school. They posted on walls quotes from the English teacher in which she had encouraged students to express their emotions through writing.

"I'm not going to lie. I signed the petition," said senior James Gitzinger. "But I can understand where the administration is coming from. I think I would react the same way if I was a teacher."

Cary Police Chief Ron Delelio said the charge was appropriate even though the essay was not published or posted for public viewing.

Disorderly conduct, which carries a penalty of 30 days in jail and a $1,500 fine, is filed for pranks such as pulling a fire alarm or dialing 911. But it can also apply when someone's writings can disturb an individual, Delelio said.

"The teacher was alarmed and disturbed by the content," he said.

But a civil rights advocate said the teacher's reaction to an essay shouldn't make it a crime.

"One of the elements is that some sort of disorder or disruption is created," said Ed Yohnka, a spokesman for the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois. "When something is done in private—when a paper is handed in to a teacher—there isn't a disruption."

The "key outcomes" this month for the Creative English class was for students to identify and utilize poetic conventions to communicate ideas and emotions. With that in mind, teachers reminded students that if they read something that posed a threat to self or others, the school could take action, said High School District 155 Supt. Jill Hawk.

The English teacher read the essay and reported it to a supervisor and the principal. A round-table discussion with district officials conveyed, with lively debate, and they decided to report it to the police.

"Our staff is very familiar with adolescent behavior. We're very well versed with types of creativity put into writing. We know the standards of adolescent behavior that are acceptable and that there is a range," Hawk said.

"There can certainly be writing that conveys concern for us even though it does not name names location or date," he said.

The charge against Lee comes as schools across the country wrestle with how to react in the wake of the shootings at the Virginia Tech campus at Blacksburg, Va.

Bomb threats at high schools in Schaumburg and Country Club Hills have caused evacuations, and extra police were on duty at a Palos Hills high school this week because of a threatening note found in the bathroom of a McDonald's restaurant a half-mile away.

Experts say the charge against Lee is troubling because it was over an essay that even police say contained no direct threats against anyone at the school. However, Virginia Tech's actions toward Cho came under heavy scrutiny after the killings because of the "disturbing" plays and essays teachers say he had written for classes.

Simmie Baer, an attorney with the Children and Family Justice Center at Northwestern University, called the Cary incident an example of zero-tolerance policies gone awry. Children, she said, are not as sophisticated as adults and often show emotion through writing or pictures, which is what teachers should want because it is a safe outlet.

This was found at The Chicago Tribune.