Wednesday, 6 January 2010

Guantánamo: The Definitive Prisoner List (Updated for 2010) by Andy Worthington

Back in March, I published a four-part list identifying all 779 prisoners held at Guantánamo since the prison opened on January 11, 2002, as “the culmination of a three-year project to record the stories of all the prisoners held at the US prison in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.” Now updated (as my ongoing project nears its four-year mark), the four parts of the list are available here: Part One, Part Two, Part Three and Part Four.
As I explained at the time, the first fruit of my research was my book The Guantánamo Files, in which, based on an exhaustive analysis of 8,000 pages of documents released by the Pentagon (plus other sources), I related the story of Guantánamo, established a chronology explaining where and when the prisoners were seized, told the stories of around 450 of these men (and boys), and provided a context for the circumstances in which the remainder of the prisoners were captured.
The list provided references to the chapters in The Guantánamo Files where the prisoners’ stories can be found, and also provided numerous links to the hundreds of articles that I wrote between May 2007 and March 2009, for a variety of publications, expanding on and updating the stories of all 779 prisoners. In particular, I covered the stories of the 143 prisoners released from Guantánamo from June 2007 onwards in unprecedented depth, and also covered the stories of the 27 prisoners charged in Guantánamo’s Military Commission trial system in more detail than was available from most, if not all other sources.
In addition, the list also included links to the 12 online chapters, published between November 2007 and February 2009, in which I told the stories of over 250 prisoners that I was unable to include in the book (either because they were not available at the time of writing, or to keep the book at a manageable length).
As a result — and notwithstanding the fact that the New York Times had made a list of documents relating to each prisoner available online — I believe that I was justified in stating that the list was “the most comprehensive list ever published of the 779 prisoners who have been held at Guantánamo,” providing details of the 533 prisoners released at that point (and the dates of their release), and the 241 prisoners who were still held (including the 59 prisoners who had been cleared for release by military review boards under the Bush administration), for the same reason that my book provides what I have been told is an unparalleled introduction to Guantánamo and the stories of the men held there: because it provides a much-needed context for these stories that is difficult to discern in the Pentagon’s documents without detailed analysis.
When I first published the list in March, I promised — perhaps rather rashly — that I would update the list as more prisoners were released, a task that proved easier to promise than to accomplish. As a result, this update to the four parts of the list draws on the 290 or so articles that I have published in the last ten months, tracking the Obama administration’s stumbling progress towards closing the prison, reporting the stories of the 41 prisoners released since March, and covering other aspects of the Guantánamo story; in particular, the prisoners’ habeas corpus petitions in the US courts, in which, since March, nine prisoners have had their habeas corpus petitions granted by the US courts, and six have had their petitions refused (the total, to date, is 32 victories for the prisoners, and just nine for the government). Overall, as it stood at December 31, 2009, 574 prisoners had been released from Guantánamo (42 under Obama), one — Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani — had been transferred to the US mainland to face a federal court trial, six had died, and 198 remained, including one man, Ali Hamza al-Bahlul, who is serving a life sentence after a one-sided trial by Military Commission in 2008.
As for my intention, it remains the same as it did when I first published the list. As I explained at the time:
It is my hope that this project will provide an invaluable research tool for those seeking to understand how it came to pass that the government of the United States turned its back on domestic and international law, establishing torture as official US policy, and holding men without charge or trial neither as prisoners of war, protected by the Geneva Conventions, nor as criminal suspects to be put forward for trial in a federal court, but as “illegal enemy combatants.”
I also hope that it provides a compelling explanation of how that same government, under the leadership of George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, established a prison in which the overwhelming majority of those held — at least 93 percent of the 779 men and boys imprisoned in total — were either completely innocent people, seized as a result of dubious intelligence or sold for bounty payments, or Taliban foot soldiers, recruited to fight an inter-Muslim civil war that began long before the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and that had nothing to do with al-Qaeda, Osama bin Laden or international terrorism.
To this I would only add that, nearly a year after President Obama took office, I hope that the list and its references provide a useful antidote to the current scaremongering regarding the failed Christmas plane bomber, Omar Farouk Abdulmutallab, and his alleged ties with one — just one — of the 574 prisoners released from Guantánamo, in a Yemen-based al-Qaeda cell. This purported connection is being used by those who want the evil stain of Guantánamo to endure forever (still led by former Vice President Dick Cheney, but also including a number of spineless Democrats) to argue that no more of the Yemenis — who make up nearly half of the remaining prisoners — should be released, even though the ex-prisoner in question is a Saudi, even though no more than a dozen or so of the 574 prisoners released have gone on to have any involvement whatsoever with terrorism, and even though all of these men were released during the presidency of George W. Bush.
One year ago, it looked feasible that Guantánamo would close by January 2010. We now know that President Obama’s self-imposed deadline will be missed, partly through the unprincipled agitating of opportunistic opponents in Congress and the media, and partly through the government’s own lack of courage in the face of this opposition, but this is no reason for complacency. As the eighth anniversary of the prison’s opening approaches, it remains imperative that those who oppose the existence of indefinite detention without charge or trial — and who call, instead, for the full reinstatement of the Geneva Conventions for prisoners of war, and federal court trials for terrorists — maintain the pressure to close Guantánamo, and to charge or release the prisoners held there, as swiftly as possible.
Andy Worthington
London
January 2010

Beatniks?


   DJ Bone NYE 2009 ATTACK Mix  by  DJBone

Q says:


Tuesday, 5 January 2010

RIP! A Remix Manifesto trailer


Just watched this on TV.
Try and see it if you haven't already!
Superb.

Bruce Sterling's State of the World 2010


Ring of shopping trolleys - 'Applied Geometry'


Created by Robert Wechsler in a Costco parking lot in Goleta, California in 2004.
(Thanx Floyd)

Lhasa de Sela (1972 - 2010)

The singer Lhasa de Sela passed away in her Montreal home on the night of January 1st 2010, just before midnight.
She succumbed to breast cancer after a twenty-one month long struggle, which she faced with courage and determination.
Throughout this difficult period, she continued to touch the lives of those around her with her characteristic grace, beauty and humor. The strength of her will carried her once again into the recording studio, where she completed her latest album, followed by successful record launches in Montreal at the Théatre Corona and in Paris at the Théatre des Bouffes du Nord. Two concerts in Iceland in May were to be her last.
She was forced to cancel a long international tour scheduled for autumn 2009. A projected album of the songs of Victor Jara and Violeta Parra would also remain unrealized.
Lhasa de Sela was born on September 27, 1972, in Big Indian, New York.
Lhasa's unusual childhood was marked by long periods of nomadic wandering through Mexico and the U.S., with her parents and sisters in the school bus which was their home. During this period the children improvised, both theatrically and musically, performing for their parents on a nightly basis. Lhasa grew up in a world imbued with artistic discovery, far from conventional culture.
Later Lhasa became the exceptional artist that the entire world discovered in 1997 with La Llorona, followed by 2003's The Living Road, and 2009's self-titled LHASA. These three albums have sold over a million copies world-wide.
It is difficult to describe her unique voice and stage presence, which earned her iconic status in many countries throughout the world, but some Journalists have described it as passionate, sensual, untameable, tender, profound, troubling, enchanting, hypnotic, hushed, powerful, intense, a voice for all time.
Lhasa had a unique way of communicating with her public. She dared to open her heart on stage, allowing her audience to experience an intimate connection and communion with her. She profoundly affected and inspired many people throughout the cities and countries she visited.An old friend of Lhasa's, Jules Beckman, offered these words:"We have always heard something ancestral coming through her. She has always spoken from the threshold between the worlds, outside of time. She has always sung of human tragedy and triumph, estrangement and seeking with a Witness's wisdom. She has placed her life at the feet of the Unseen."
Lhasa leaves behind her partner Ryan, her parents Alejandro and Alexandra, her step-mother Marybeth, her 9 brothers and sisters (Gabriela, Samantha, Ayin, Sky, Miriam, Alex, Ben, Mischa and Eden), her 16 nieces and nephews, her cat Isaan, and countless friends, musicians, and colleagues who have accompanied her throughout her career, not to mention her innumerable admirers throughout the world.Her family and close friends were able to mourn peacefully during the last two days, and greatly appreciated this meaningful period of quiet intimacy. Funeral and services will be held privately.
It has snowed more than 40 hours in Montreal since Lhasa's departure.
HERE

Andy Kaufman trusted us

Daily life in Yemen


Between worlds: A wadi, which serves as a highway during dry season, separates new Sanaa (left) from old Sanaa (right). Old Sanaa is one of four UNESCO World Heritage sites in Yemen.

Manhattan of the desert: The ancient walled city of Shibam, situated in the vast Wadi Hadramaut in eastern Yemen, dates back to the fourth century A.D. Most of its towering “skyscrapers,” made of sun-dried mud bricks, were built in the 16th century or later. Some 7,000 residents still inhabit the narrow streets of this UNESCO World Heritage site.

East meets Middle East: The 11th century port city of Al Mukalla, located along the Gulf of Aden, was badly damaged during Yemen’s civil war, but remains an important center for the fishing industry. The mixture of architectural styles that still dominate local buildings reflect its history as a key trading post between India and Africa.

Suppressed BBC report on toxic dumping in the Ivory Coast by Trafigura



Here (PDF) is the original BBC story which has now been taken down from the BBC site.

Alcohol substitute that avoids drunkenness and hangovers in development

The new substance could have the added bonus of being "switched off" instantaneously with a pill, to allow drinkers to drive home or return to work.
The synthetic alcohol, being developed from chemicals related to Valium, works like alcohol on nerves in the brain that provide a feeling of wellbeing and relaxation.
But unlike alcohol its does not affect other parts of the brain that control mood swings and lead to addiction. It is also much easier to flush out of the body.
Finally because it is much more focused in its effects, it can also be switched off with an antidote, leaving the drinker immediately sober.
The new alcohol is being developed by a team at Imperial College London, led by Professor David Nutt, Britain's top drugs expert who was recently sacked as a government adviser for his comments about cannabis and ecstasy.
He envisions a world in which people could drink without getting drunk, he said.
No matter how many glasses they had, they would remain in that pleasant state of mild inebriation and at the end of an evening out, revellers could pop a sober-up pill that would let them drive home.
Prof Nutt and his team are concentrating their efforts on benzodiazepines, of which diazepam, the chief ingredient of Valium is one.
Thousands of candidate benzos are already known to science. He said it is just a matter of identifying the closest match and then, if necessary, tailoring it to fit society’s needs.
Ideally, like alcohol, it should be tasteless and colourless, leaving those characteristics to the drink it’s in.
Eventually it would be used to replace the alcohol content in beer, wine and spirits and the recovered ethanol (the chemical name for alcohol) could be sold as fuel.
Professor Nutt believes that the new drug, which would need licensing, could have a dramatic effect on society and improve the nation's health.
The NHS report Statistics on Alcohol: England, 2009 found more than 800,000 alcohol-related admissions to hospitals in 2007-08 – and more than 6,500 deaths – at a cost to the service of £2.7bn a year.
Some charities estimate that the toll could be up to five times higher. Drink is, for example, a factor in 40 per cent of fatal fires, 15 per cent of drownings, 65 per cent of suicides and 40 per cent of domestic abuse. It also has other costs, including 17 million lost working days a year, worth about £20bn to the economy.
“I’ve been in experiments where I’ve taken benzos,” said Professor Nutt. “One minute I was sedated and nearly asleep, five minutes later I was giving a lecture.
“No one’s ever tried targeting this before, possibly because it will be so hard to get it past the regulators.
“Most of the benzos are controlled under the Medicines Act. The law gives a privileged position to alcohol, which has been around for 3,000 years. But why not use advances in pharmacology to find something safer and better?”
Getting the drug approved could be hard for the team as clinical trials are expensive, and it is not clear who would pay for them, according to Professor Nutt.
He said that the traditional drinks industry has not shown any interest, however some countries might be persuaded to sponsor the team.
Some countries have more liberal regimes than others, though, and Professor Nutt thinks Greece or Spain, within the EU, could lead the way.
The latest Home Office performance figures showed that more than one in four people believe that alcohol is blighting their community.
A survey of every police force area in England and Wales found that 26 per cent of those polled “perceived people being drunk or rowdy in public placed to be a problem in their area” – a slight increase from last year.
The fears over the affects of alcohol range from urban to rural communities, with the worst hit being Manchester, South Wales, London, Northumbria and Gwent.
@'The Telegraph'
Hmmm!
This could well work though...

Les Negresses Vertes - Zobi La Mouche


Always struck me as France's answer to The Pogues.
Zobi La Mouche (Club Mix)
Album here.

The worst lyrics of ALL time


Over at Adrian Sherwood's MySpazz page there are new trax that are forthcoming On-U releases. Among them is "Scheisse" by Dub No Frontiers. Sung in German by Ari Up. Thanx to RalfW here is the English translation:
"And the mother looks silently around the whole table. Shit, piss, doo-doo, poo-poo, pushing, doo-doo, wizzing. Shit.
Oh, oh. Yes, whatcha doin'? You can't make in your pants. What are you just doing? You can't make in your pants. Also
not in the bathtub. So, go to the loo, full throttle. (repeated...) Especially not while swimming, better leave it
inside. (repeated...) What did you eat? Did you devour everything? x2 Now it's pushing like a spring, must go to the
toilet as fast as you can. x2 What did you eat? Did you devour everything? x2 Vegetables, fruits, even bread, everything
good, now you're in trouble. x2 You don't need pampers (=diapers) anymore, walking isn't difficult either. You already
can read. Where does it go from [!yes, wrong in German!], it's the loo, there you are. (chorus)"
Get it
HERE

Bomber at C.I.A. Base Had Ties to Jordan Spy Agency

The suicide bomber who killed seven C.I.A. officers and one Jordanian intelligence officer last week in southeastern Afghanistan was an asset of the Jordanian intelligence service who had been brought to Afghanistan to help hunt down top members of the Qaeda network, according to a Western official briefed on the matter.
The bomber had been arrested in Jordan and recruited by that country’s intelligence service — which believed that it had turned him into an ally — and then brought to Afghanistan to infiltrate the Qaeda organization by posing as a foreign jihadi.
“He was definitely someone who could be seen as very helpful for something very important,” the official said.
 But the supposed intelligence asset was actually a double-agent who was given explosives by militants in the frontier region between Afghanistan and Pakistan, which he wore to a meeting last Wednesday at Forward Operating Base Chapman, the C.I.A. base in the southeastern province of Khost.He was able to elude base security and was not closely searched because of his perceived value as someone who could lead American forces to senior Qaeda leaders, and because the Jordanian intelligence officer who was his handler identified him as an intelligence asset...

Joe Sacco - author of the graphic novel 'Footnotes in Gaza'


Slideshow at 'The Wall Street Journal'
“My eyeballs were merely fondled without permission.”

Monday, 4 January 2010

Burroughs on Ginsberg 1983

Meanwhile over @ Brainwashed


Well Sunn O))) hit the #1 album in the readers poll.
No arguement from me on that one, in my top ten of the year too and a lot of other good stuff in their charts but what the fug is it with Current 93 at #2?
I don't get this band at all. Never did.
Actually what I don't get is Dave (David) Tibet (Michael).
His fugn nonsensical Noddy songs warbled in that fugn awful voice with pretensious lyrics (Coptic anyone) of the highest (OTO?) order!
I want instrumental albums!
The music is great (Matt Sweeney, James Blackshaw, Sasha Grey (I will let her... sing) *sigh* amongst others, even had Bill Fay on stage with the group last year, but then he also had Sebastian fugn Horsley in the line up that night too!)
(Thinks to myself...if someone hadn't forced *ahem* heroin into my veins that night back in (81/82?) when 23 Skidoo blew up the stage at The Venue, I could have kidnapped Tibet in the smoke and kept him in a dungeon for the rest of his life, saving us all from the resulting dross. 
Problem is I suspect he probably would have enjoyed it.)


Congrats also to TG for the lifetime achievement award. 
Who would have thought it back then?
Transfer Window Day Three: Inter Milan target Steven Gerrard for £40m & Emile Heskey is targetted by Liverpool and Chelsea

Leonard Cohen - Un Canadien Errant

Michael Shields: Left with a lingering sense of injustice


If Michael Shields thought that the authorities were going to help smooth his return back into normal life, he was sorely mistaken. The combined shortcomings of the British and Bulgarian legal and political systems had already condemned the young Liverpool football fan to serve four-and-a-half years in prison for a crime he did not commit.
So when it came to his release, after a prolonged and impassioned campaign by his family and the people of his home city against his wrongful conviction for the attempted murder of a Bulgarian waiter, he was inured to the prospect of being let down again.
"If someone commits a crime and they get out of prison I know it's not much help but you do get a probation officer and they keep an eye on you. But no one has ever contacted me. I've never had anything from them, no offer of counselling or an offer of a reason why it happened," he says.
It is four months since the quietly spoken 23-year-old became the first Briton to be granted a royal pardon for a wrongful conviction overseas, and in that time he has begun to rebuild his life.
Shortly before Christmas, the young engineer found himself a job working on-site for a property management company. Still fit-looking from his time pumping iron at the prison gym, his hair longer now than in the pictures which publicised his campaign, work has provided a welcome change. In the immediate aftermath of his release, he spent long restless days in front of the television at his family home, trying not to mull over the sense of injustice burning away inside him. Life after jail poses considerable challenges for any former inmate. For those wrongly convicted those pressures can be immense.
Yet in many ways, admits Mr Shields, he has been lucky. He has a large and protective family and the support of a strong community of neighbours and fellow Liverpool FC fans. The club itself was pivotal in keeping up the pressure over his wrongful conviction, and he celebrated his first match back in the luxury of the directors' box at Anfield. His parents, Michael and Maria, who devoted all their energies to campaigning for his release, are having to adapt too. "They are fine. You can see them getting better. They are smiling more. It affected them more than anyone," Mr Shields acknowledges. "Through my family, I have had time to find my feet," he says.
Sitting in the front room of the smart terraced house in the Wavertree area of the city, with its vivid red colour scheme in tribute to Liverpool Football Club, he says he has found it easy to rekindle friendships that were put on ice when he was sentenced to 15 years by the court in Sofia in 2005 (though he declines to discuss whether he is now in a relationship). "The first two months everything happened too fast. I just couldn't take it in ... I couldn't relax. I couldn't sit down and watch the telly. I had to keep myself occupied. The last four weeks have been better." he says.
It was on the last day of his first-ever trip overseas, to see Liverpool win the Champions League, that normality was suspended for the young engineer, aged just 18 at the time. He was arrested by Bulgarian police investigating a brutal late-night attack on the waiter, Martin Georgiev, who had been punched to the ground and hit on the head with a heavy stone, leaving him severely injured. Failures in the inquiry, notably a flawed identity parade, meant Mr Shields was wrongly picked out. Another Liverpool fan, Graham Sankey, confessed to the assault, although he later withdrew his statement...
Continue reading
@'The Independent'

Obama and Afghanistan: America’s Drug-Corrupted War by Prof Peter Dale Scott


The presidential electoral campaign of Barack Obama in 2008, it was thought, "changed the political debate in a party and a country that desperately needed to take a new direction."[1] Like most preceding presidential winners dating back at least to John F. Kennedy, what moved voters of all descriptions to back Obama was the hope he offered of significant change. Yet within a year Obama has taken decisive steps, not just to continue America’s engagement in Bush’s Afghan War, but significantly to enlarge it into Pakistan. If this was change of a sort, it was a change that few voters desired.
Those of us convinced that a war machine prevails in Washington were not surprised. The situation was similar to the disappointment experienced with Jimmy Carter: Carter was elected in 1976 with a promise to cut the defense budget. Instead, he initiated both an expansion of the defense budget and also an expansion of U.S. influence into the Indian Ocean.[2]
As I wrote in The Road to 9/11, after Carter’s election:
It appeared on the surface that with the blessing of David Rockefeller’s Trilateral Commission, the traditional U.S. search for unilateral domination would be abandoned. But... the 1970s were a period in which a major "intellectual counterrevolution" was mustered, to mobilize conservative opinion with the aid of vast amounts of money... By the time SALT II was signed in 1979, Carter had consented to significant new weapons programs and arms budget increases (reversing his campaign pledge).[3]
I noted further that the complex strategy for reversing Carter’s promises was revived for a new mobilization in the 1990s during the Clinton presidency, in which a commission headed by Donald Rumsfeld was prominent.[4]
The Vietnam War as a Template for Afghanistan
It is as if Washington had emerged with only one objective from America’s failure in Vietnam: the urge to do it again and get it right. But the principal obstacle to victory in Afghanistan is the same as in Vietnam: the lack of a viable government to defend. The importance of this similarity has been stressed by Thomas H. Johnson, coordinator of anthropological research studies at the Naval Postgraduate School, and his co-author Chris Mason. In their memorable phrase, "the Vietnam War is less a metaphor for the conflict in Afghanistan than it is a template:"
It is an oft-cited maxim that in all the conflicts of the past century, the United States has refought its last war. A number of analysts and journalists have mentioned the war in Vietnam recently in connection with Afghanistan. Perhaps fearful of taking this analogy too far, most have backed away from it. They should not—the Vietnam War is less a metaphor for the conflict in Afghanistan than it is a template. For eight years, the United States has engaged in an almost exact political and military reenactment of the Vietnam War, and the lack of self-awareness of the repetition of events 50 years ago is deeply disturbing.[5]
Many of the common features of an unpopular corrupted government have been well summarized by Johnson and Mason. In their words, quoting Jeffrey Record, "the fundamental political obstacle to an enduring American success in Vietnam [was] a politically illegitimate, militarily feckless, and thoroughly corrupted South Vietnamese client regime." Substitute the word "Afghanistan" for the words "South Vietnam" in these quotations and the descriptions apply precisely to today’s government in Kabul. Like Afghanistan, South Vietnam at the national level was a massively corrupt collection of self-interested warlords, many of them deeply implicated in the profitable opium trade, with almost nonexistent legitimacy outside the capital city. The purely military gains achieved at such terrible cost in our nation’s blood and treasure in Vietnam never came close to exhausting the enemy’s manpower pool or his will to fight, and simply could not be sustained politically by a venal and incompetent set of dysfunctional state institutions where self-interest was the order of the day.[6]
If Johnson had written a little later, he might have added that a major CIA asset in Afghanistan was Ahmed Wali Karzai, brother of President Hamid Karzai; and that Ahmed Wali Karzai was a major drug trafficker who used his private force to help arrange a flagrantly falsified election result.[7] This is a fairly exact description of Ngo dinh Nhu in Vietnam, President Ngo dinh Diem’s brother, an organizer of the Vietnamese drug traffic whose dreaded Can Lao secret police helped, among other things, to organize a falsified election result there.[8]
This pattern of a corrupt near relative, often involved in drugs, is a recurring feature of regimes installed or supported by U.S. influence. There were similar allegations about Chiang Kai-shek’s brother-in-law T.V. Soong, Mexican President Echevarría’s brother-in-law Rubén Zuno Arce, and the Shah of Iran’s sister. In the case of Ngo dinh Nhu, it was the absence of a popular base for his externally installed presidential brother that led to drug involvement, "to provide the necessary funding" for political repression.[9] This analogy to the Karzais is pertinent.
An additional similarity, not noted by Johnson, is that America initially engaged in Vietnam in support of an embattled and unpopular minority, the Roman Catholics who had thrived under the French. America has twice made the same mistake in Afghanistan. Initially, after the Russian invasion of 1980, the bulk of American aid went to Gulbeddin Hekmatyar, a leader both insignificant in and unpopular with the mujahedin resistance; the CIA is said to have supported Hekmatyar, who became a drug trafficker to compensate for his lack of a popular base, because he was the preferred client of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), which distributed American and Saudi aid.
When America re-engaged in 2001, it was to support the Northern Alliance, a drug-trafficking Tajik-Uzbek minority coalition hateful to the Pashtun majority south of the Hindu Kush. Just as America’s initial commitment to the Catholic Diem family fatally alienated the Vietnamese countryside, so the American presence in Afghanistan is weakened by its initial dependence on the Tajiks of the minority Northern Alliance. (The Roman Catholic minority in Vietnam at least shared a language with the Buddhists in the countryside. The Tajiks speak Dari, a version of Persian unintelligible to the Pashtun majority.)...
Continue reading

No doubt from Ashura, but some more motor bikes the basij can't use!

Scan 7 @ Movement, Milano 26 09 09

Word cloud of fundieundie-bomber's posts at Islamic forum


U.S. Intensifies Screening for Travelers From 14 Nations

Citizens of 14 nations including Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Nigeria who are flying to the United States will be subjected indefinitely to the intense screening at airports worldwide that was imposed in the aftermath of the Christmas Day bombing plot, Obama administration officials announced Sunday.
But American citizens, and most others who are not flying through these nations on their way to the United States, will no longer automatically face the full-range of intensified security that had been imposed after the attempted bombing of a Northwest Airlines flight, official said.
For American travelers, the change represents an easing of the response to the attempting bombing of the Delta flight from Amsterdam to Detroit. But it further establishes a global security system that treats people differently based on what country they are from, evoking immediate protests from civil rights groups Sunday.
Citizens of Cuba, Iran, Sudan and Syria, which are considered “state sponsors of terrorism” as well as citizens from “countries of interest” that consist of Afghanistan, Algeria, Lebanon, Libya, Iraq, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, and Yemen, will also face the special scrutiny, officials said.
For people holding passports from these nations, or taking flights that originated or passed through any of these countries, they will be required to undergo a full-body pat down and have special attention to their carry on bags before they can board a plane to the United States.
In certain countries that have more advanced equipment, they also will be required to pass through so-called whole body scanners that can look underneath clothing for hidden explosives or weapons, or checked with a device that can find tiny traces of explosives.
All other passengers coming to the United States may face similar measures, but it will be on a more random basis, or if there is some reason to believe that a particular passenger might present a threat, officials said.
The changes should speed up boarding of international flights bound for the United States, while still increasing security beyond the standard x-ray of carry on bags and a metal detector check of all passengers.
The changes will mean any citizen of Pakistani or Saudi Arabia, for the first time, will automatically be patted down before boarding any flight to the United States. Even if that person has lived in a country like Great Britain for decades—and there are thousands of them—they would now be subject to these extra security checks.
Nawar Shora, legal director at the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, said the rule wrongly implies that all citizens of certain nations are suspect.
“I understand there needs to be additional security in light of what was attempted on Christmas Day,” Mr. Shora said, adding that he intended to file a formal protest Monday. “But this is extreme and very dangerous. All of a sudden people labeled as related to terrorism just because of the nation they are from.”
In the United States, requirement for so-called “second screening” has already been in effect for a dozen countries, a fact that is not widely known, including by civil rights activists like Mr. Shora.
But it often does not have much of an impact, as most passengers traveling domestically in the United States use driver’s licenses -- not passports -- when approaching checkpoints, so officials do not know what their nationality is, meaning they would likely pass without getting extra attention.
Also, with the new rule, for the first time citizens of Nigeria and Pakistan and Saudi Arabia are being added to this “country of interest” list that will be subject to automatic additional screening for flights to the United States.
Nigerian-born American Charles Oy, 28, of Chicago, said he detected heightened security this weekend -- not in Nigeria, but upon his arrival Sunday at O’Hare Airport. He was one of a few passengers taken aside for an individual interview, where his bags and passport were examined.
Even though suspected terrorist Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was Nigerian, the added scrutiny did not leave him discouraged. “I feel it is very isolated, and is something not characteristic of Nigeria,” he said. “I had no particular feelings of unpleasantness. I understand it is part of the world we live in. I factor all that into my traveling. If it happens, I roll with it.”
One Homeland Security official said the Obama administration did not consider this move a step in the direction of racial profiling, which the Transportation Security Administration has said it has long attempted to avoid.
“Out of abundance of caution and based on the latest intelligence in this evolving threat environment, additional screening measures are necessary to keep transportation safe,” the official said, asking that she not be identified by name, as she was not authorized to address the question on the record.
@'NY Times'
Hmmm, THIS article from 'The New Yorker'  back in October 2001 is perhaps worth a re-read!.
 
Treating everyone as suspect is absurd

Not a Leeds fan but...


...I love seeing ManU getting beaten!
Can anyone tell me what Ferguson whinged about after the game?
Been told that he complained that not enough extra time was given LOL!

Massive Attack - Paradise Circus (NSFW)


Massive Attack recently released their new video for “Paradise Circus” (ft. Hope Sandoval) off HeligolandIn what runs more like a documentary than a music video, the Toby Dye directed piece features former porn star, Georgina Spelvin, and her candid look on filming the infamous adult film, 'The Devil in Miss Jones'. Original shots of the ‘73 hit are interlaced with Spelvin’s honest take on her physical and emotional state during the production of the film nearly forty years ago. An interesting and entertaining concept, but definitely (NSFW)

A look back... (US edition)


(Click to enlarge)

A World of Megabeats and Megabytes


My 21st century started in 1998, when I got a new toy. It was the Diamond Rio PMP300, a flimsy plastic gadget the size of a cigarette pack. PMP stood for Portable Music Player. It had a headphone jack, and it played a recently invented digital file format: MPEG-1 Audio Layer Three, or MP3.
The Rio’s 32 megabytes of storage held a dozen songs at passable fidelity. Its sound was clearly inferior to a portable CD player; its capacity was comparable to a cassette or two. But the beauty of it was that it didn’t need any CD or cassette inserted, just digital files — copies of songs — loaded from a computer, to be changed at whim. They might come from albums people owned or borrowed; they might come, even back then, from strangers online. The Recording Industry Association of America sued to have the PMP300 taken off the market and failed — the prelude to a decade of lawsuits trying to corral online music.
It was already too late. For those who were willing to be geeky — learning new software, slowly downloading via dial-up — music had forever escaped its plastic containers to travel the Web. The old distribution system was on its way to becoming irrelevant. “You really think you’re in control? Well, I think you’re crazy,” Cee-Lo Green of Gnarls Barkley sang in 2006.
Because songs are small chunks of information that many people want, music was the canary in the digital coal mine, presaging what would happen to other art forms as Internet connections spread and sped up. For the old recording business everything went wrong. Sales of CDs have dropped by nearly half since 2000, while digital sales of individual songs haven’t come close to compensating. Movies and television (and journalism too) are now scrambling not to become the next victims of an omnivorous but tight-fisted Internet.
By now, in 2010, we’re all geeks, conversant with file formats and software players. Our cellphone/camera/music player/Web browser gadgets fit in a pocket, with their little LCD screens beckoning. Their tiny memory chips hold collections of music equivalent to backpacks full of CDs. The 2000s were the broadband decade, the disintermediation decade, the file-sharing decade, the digital recording (and image) decade, the iPod decade, the long-tail decade, the blog decade, the user-generated decade, the on-demand decade, the all-access decade. Inaugurating the new millennium, the Internet swallowed culture whole and delivered it back — cheaper, faster and smaller — to everyone who can get online...
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Otis Ferry: What I think of anti-hunting ‘idiots’

Otis Ferry
Otis Ferry with his hounds near Shrewsbury He is the son of rock star Bryan Ferry and works as an amateur whipper-in for the Middleton hunt in Yorkshire.


Even before we reach the sofa in the sitting room of his mother’s Kensington home, Otis Ferry, the 27-year-old pro-hunting firebrand and son of the Roxy Music singer Bryan, is in a state of barely bridled agitation. Agitation at the hunting ban. Agitation at Tony Blair. Agitation at lefties; at the way the whole country is going “lefter”. But mostly, he’s agitated at Simon Cowell, he gasps. He has just seen the X Factor maestro “on Newsnight, talking about the five key issues affecting people in Britain today”, he says.
“The war in Afghanistan, knife crime ... and fox hunting! He said, ‘It’s got to be banned.’ Well, Simon, it is already banned. Oh. Banned properly. Just the most bizarre thing you’ve ever heard. Unbelievable.”
Unbelievable, because a few days shy of hunting’s biggest annual event — thousands turn out to watch Boxing Day meets — even the joint master of foxhounds for the South Shropshire hunt is amazed that hunting is still getting such airtime.
“We’re in the middle of the biggest f***-ups in British history, the economy,” he continues, focusing his shrewishly handsome features on me and exasperatedly swinging his Converses up onto the coffee table. “The sheer shitness of our country ... Hunting affects 0.0001% of the population, and then you’ve got Cowell and some woman [Emily Thornberry MP] standing up and saying, ‘Can we have our PM’s assurances that he won’t let his government repeal the ban on hunting?’”...
@'The Times'
You can read the rest of the story at the link. Yes he is a complete twat!
"What did you do in the style-wars Daddy?"

Eddie & The Hot Rods


Get Out Of Denver


Do Anything You Wanna Do

The sound of speed indeed!

'Remember Naught' by Devilstower

I was nice about it.  I didn't make any demands on 2000.  I didn't fuss that we were nowhere near launching that manned mission to Jupiter's moons, that we hadn't broken regolith on the lunar base, or that Pan Am's service to the orbital hotel was very far behind schedule.  I did not even demand that most basic right of every American -- my own flying car.
Now that it's 2010, I don't think I can be quite so generous. After all, I went into the decade a relatively young man with parents, grandparents, a series of novels on the shelves, and even a television show about to appear on (not then quite so ubiquitous) basic cable. I came out the other side with a cubicle job, an AARP card, and a lot of "out of print" citations on Amazon. Not exactly a tragedy, but it does leave me feeling that I'm entitled to a least a Nexus 3 to help out around the house. So be warned, 21st century teen decade, I have high expectations for you.
Now that the decade we still don't know how to name is in rear view (even if the "Objects in Mirror Are Closer Than They Seem" label is still very visible), there's been something of a movement to forget the last ten years. There are web sites, pundits, and television shows pushing the idea that we should just put the decade of zeros out of our minds, write it off as a lost period, and move on.
Of course, many people remember nothing about the naughts but moments of unmatched horror. To understand why, here's a simple experiment (animal lovers turn away now) involving rats and a tank of water. Rats can swim, but that doesn't mean they like it and a rat in the water is generally a rat in panic. Scientists tossed rats into a small tank of water in which a block of clear plastic had been suspended. Everywhere else in the tank it was so deep that the rat had to keep on paddling, but if the rat reached the plastic block it could climb up, rest, and shiver in relief. The scientists let the rats catch their breath, took them out... then tossed them back in again. It may seem cruel, but there's a point to it. On repeat visits into the tub, rats remembered where the plastic platform was and scrambled over to it much more quickly. But here's the kicker: rats given a compound that blocked the action of adrenalin on their first visit had a much harder time locating the platform on their return trips. In other words, they remembered better when they were terrified.
The same rules apply to us. If you think you remember the worst days more clearly, it's because you do. There's a good reason for this. For a primate making it's living back in the savanna, every moment of every day wasn't worth recording in the big book of memories. But the time you went down to the water hole and a leopard nearly jumped you? That one gets a page all it's own -- one with flashy stickers and a bright red border.
As tempting as it is to forget the bad times, the reason there's a whole friggin' biological system built around the idea of burning these events irrevocably into your cerebellum in 18pt type is so you don't do it again.
Here's the thing about the naughts: there was nothing magic about the numbers. It wasn't because of a double-zero in the middle of the dates that we launched an invasion that's cost the lives of thousands of Americans, the lives of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, and a trillion dollars plus out of the pocketbooks of taxpayers. We launched into that still unresolved idiocy because of bad policy based on the conservative philosophy of smash things first, think never. We went there because of a extreme version of American exceptionalism, one that views America as above the the rules of law and exempt from questions of morality. A view that says not only if the president does it, it's not a crime, but that if America does it, it can't be wrong.
It wasn't the decade that caused the economy to come down in tatters. It was a conservative approach to the marketplace that views government as the enemy, greed as the only acceptable motivation, and the only solution for disasters brought on by a lack of regulation as still less regulation.
It wasn't the calendar that brought down the banks, or American manufacturing, or American's influence around the world. It wasn't the date that did in our reputation or erased the budget surplus.
Don't forget the naughts, because this decade, no matter what anyone on the right might say, was conservatism on trial. You want less taxes? You got less taxes. You want less regulation? You got less regulation. Open markets? Wide open. An illusuion of security in place of rights? Hey, presto. You want unlimited power given to military contractors so they can kick butt and take names? Man, we handed out boots and pencils by the thousands. Everything, everything, that ever showed up on a drooled-over right wing wish list got implemented -- with a side order of Freedom Fries.
They will try to disown it, and God knows if I was responsible for this mess I'd be disowning it, too. But the truth is that the conservatives got everything they wanted in the decade just past
, everything that they've claimed for forty years would make America "great again". They didn't fart around with any "red dog Republicans." They rolled over their moderates and implemented a conservative dream.
What did we get for it? We got an economy in ruins, a government in massive debt, unending war, and the repudiation of the world. There's no doubt that Republicans want you to forget the last decade, because if you remember... if you remember when you went down to the water hole and were jumped by every lunacy that ever emerged from the wet dreams of Grover Norquist and Dick Cheney, well, it's not likely that you'd give them a chance to do it again.
Because they will. Given half a chance -- less than half -- they'll do it again, only worse. Because that's the way conservatism works. Remember when the only answer to every economic problem was "cut taxes?" We have a surplus. Good, let's cut taxes. We have a deficit. Hey, cut taxes even more! That little motto was unchanging even when was clear that the tax cuts were increasing the burden on everyone but a wealthy few. That's just a subset of the great conservative battle whine which is now and forever "we didn't go far enough." If deregulation led to a crash, it's because we didn't deregulate enough. If the wars aren't won, it's because we haven't started enough wars. If there are people still clinging to their rights, it's because we haven't done enough to make them afraid.
Forget the naughts, and you'll forget that conservatives had another chance to prove all their ideas, and that their ideas utterly and completely failed. Again.
The point of remembering bad events is to stop them from repeating. So remember, and remind others if they start to forget. Because really, this is one trip to the water hole we can't afford to repeat.

The Rabbi Leib Tropper 'sex' tapes



Sunday, 3 January 2010

HA! (Thanx for the words Vinc!)


The editorial team here @ 'Exile'...


...hard at work thinking what our next 8 posts will be which will take us to the 3,500th post since we started this blog 14 months ago!

Fernando Torres will become the world's most expensive footballer if he leaves Liverpool in the summer.

 
Manchester City and Chelsea have made Torres their number one target but would have to splash out more than £140m in transfer fees and wages to land the Spanish superstar. Not only has Torres' value eclipsed the £80m Real Madrid paid for Cristiano Ronaldo, he can anticipate a salary offer of around £15m a year given the current inflated levels for the most wanted players.
It would require the biggest financial package in football history to secure a deal
City offered Brazilian Kaka a staggering £280k a week in their ill-fated bid a year ago, and Torres would comfortably match that.
Liverpool have made it clear they won't listen to any offers for their star striker and manager Rafa Benitez recently insisted he'd resign if the player was sold against his will.
But Liverpool also know matters will be out of their hands unless the club attracts investment and finish in the top four.
After years fighting against the financial troubles caused by the American ownership, the next six months will finally bring matters to a head at Anfield one way or the other.
If Liverpool don't sort themselves out off the pitch, their rivals intend to capitalise and are now openly targeting their most prized assets.
New City boss Roberto Mancini was appointed partly because his Arab owners believe he can assist in luring the top names to Eastlands.They didn't believe Mark Hughes had the same clout when it came to attracting a player of Torres' calibre.
They think the Italian has the aura required to tempt such a player, but realise only by ousting Liverpool from the top four will they have any hope of doing business.
Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich has also been pursing Torres for the last two seasons and believes Liverpool will be more vulnerable than ever unless Americans Tom Hicks and George Gillett Jr get out of the Merseyside club.
Torres became the quickest Liverpool player to reach 50 goals earlier this week as he kick-started his club's bid to retain its Champions League status.
Sport of the World revealed last weekend how the striker's ongoing commitment to the Merseyside giants is conditional on the club proving it can continue to match his ambitions.
Kop fans have been reassured by the Spaniard's determination to help Liverpool recover their position and make interest in him irrelevant.
But the only way they can do that longer-term is by securing massive investment to ensure next season the target is winning the Premier League rather than 'managing the debt,' as Benitez recently suggested.
Benitez has 'guaranteed' Liverpool will finish in the top four. His confidence is geared at reassuring his star striker that this season's onfield problems are a one-off and warning Manchester City and Chelsea to keep their hands in their pockets. 
@'News of the Screws' 
140 million quid and an annual wage of 15 million quid. 
Me and the Spacebubs are gonna be out practicing footie ALL day tomorrow!
(And I am going to be his manager!!!)


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Three of Scientology's elite parishioners keep faith, but leave the church


Mary Jo Leavitt
They advanced to the Church of Scientology's highest spiritual level, to "Operating Thetan VIII," a vaunted realm said to endow extraordinary powers of perception and force of will.
But Geir Isene of Norway and Americans Mary Jo Leavitt and Sherry Katz recently announced they were leaving the church, citing strong disagreements with its management practices.
Isene left first, a decision that emboldened Leavitt, who inspired Katz. Such departures are rare among the church's elite group of OT VIIIs, who are held up as role models in Scientology. The three each told the St. Petersburg Times that they had spent decades and hundreds of thousands of dollars to reach the church's spiritual pinnacle.
All three stressed their ongoing belief in Scientology and say they remain grateful for how it helped them. Yet they took to the Internet — an act strongly discouraged by church leaders, who decry public airing of problems — to share their reasons for leaving. They said they hoped it would resonate within the Scientology community...
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Rap producer Shawty Redd charged with murder

Shawty Redd

Well the new year just started and the drama is already unfolding in the Hip-Hop community. Widely popular Atlanta producer Shawty Redd has turned himself in for murder, according to reports. Apparently, Redd got into an argument of sorts with an unknown male at his home on New Years Day. Things got escalated and the unknown male threatened the producer. Redd then proceeded to draw his firearm and shoot the male to death. Right after the shooting took place, Redd turn himself over to the Henry County Police.

UPDATE:
Music producer Demetrius Lee Stewart, known as Shawty Redd, is being held in a suburban Atlanta jail on a murder charge.
Henry County Police Capt. Jason Bolton says Stewart was arrested Friday morning.
Stewart is accused of shooting 35-year-old Damon A. Martin of Detroit in an argument at Stewart's home in Hampton, about 30 miles southeast of Atlanta.
The 28-year-old Stewart is charged with murder and was being held without bond in the Henry County jail Saturday. His first court appearance is scheduled for Jan. 12. Police didn't know whether Stewart has a lawyer.
Stewart has worked with Young Jeezy & Snoop Dogg.