Girlz With Gunz # 88

For god's sake

HERE

WTF?

JAMES CHANCE AND LES CONTORTIONS @ Matt Groenings ATP???

(Are they digging up George Scott?)

((While you are it...Quine (as extra special guest) is over there!))

(((PS - If someone wants to fly me there and put me up to see Adele Bertei...I promise I won't eat much over the weekend!)))

Damn...

Willie Mitchell (January 3, 1928 - January 5, 2010) was a soul, R&B, rock and roll, pop and funk music producer and arranger who ran Royal Recording in Memphis, Tennessee. He is best known for his Hi Records label of the 1970s, which released albums by a large stable of popular Memphis soul artists, including Mitchell himself, Al Green, Syl Johnson nd Ann Peebles. Known at the studio as "Papa Willie," Mitchell earned his nickname by taking over the reigns of Hi Records in 1970 and guiding it through its most successful period. Mitchell's productions have been much noted for featuring a hard-hitting kick drum sound (usually played by pioneering Memphis drummer Al Jackson, Jr. of Booker T. and the MG's)

A trumpeter and bandleader in his own right, Mitchell released a number of popular singles for Hi Records as an artist in the 1960s, including "Soul Serenade."

Threat Level Privacy, Crime and Security Online Body Scanners Might Violate U.K. Child-Protection Laws

The deployment of body-scanning X-ray machines could violate child-protection laws in Britain and prevent their implementation, according to The Guardian.
British officials were forced to exempt the scanning of anyone under 18 during a yearlong test of the machines at Manchester airport until legal questions could be worked out, the newspaper said.
There are also concerns that images of nude celebrities could be posted online or sold to tabloids.
Body scanning machines have been touted as a solution for catching hidden explosives and other dangerous items after a would-be bomber attempted to blow up a Christmas Day flight from Amsterdam to Detroit, using explosives concealed in his underwear. Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport has 15 of the scanners, but none were used to scan the would-be bomber before he boarded the flight, according to the Associated Press.
There are currently 40 full-body scanners being used at 19 U.S. airports. Some are being used for primary screening — instead of the traditional metal detectors — while others are reserved only for so-called secondary screening. The Transportation Security Administration has ordered 300 more machines in the wake of the recent bombing attempt, according to The Washington Post. Some in Congress want to limit the use to passengers designated for special screening.
TSA spokeswoman Suzanne Trevino told the Associated Press that the administration had been working with privacy advocates and the scanner makers to develop software that blurs the faces and genitalia of passengers. But this raises questions about whether a blurred image would be as effective at detecting hidden explosives, such as those concealed by the so-called underwear bomber. She said passengers also can currently opt for a full-body pat-down instead of a scan.
Although scanned images are not supposed to be stored, there are concerns that security personnel are not adequately monitored and that images of children could fall into the hands of pedophiles.
Threat Level has put in a call to the TSA about how it would address the same concern in the United States with regard to images of children. We will update the post when the TSA responds.

Simon Davies, founder of the British-based group Privacy International, said that scans of celebrities or even of people with unusual body features could have an “irresistible pull” for some employees who want to share them with friends or others.
A Manchester airport spokesman told the Guardian that 500 people had participated in its 12-month test so far on a voluntary basis. Nearly all of them had responded with positive feedback, according to the spokesman. The image is reportedly only seen by one security officer, who is stationed in a remote location to prevent the officer from matching the image to an identity.
Former Homeland Security secretary Michael Chertoff argued in a recent Washington Post editorial for nationwide deployment of full-body scanners in the United States. Chertoff has also been making the rounds of media outlets to tout the technology.
But according to The Washington Post, Chertoff failed to disclose during many of his appearances that his consultancy, the Chertoff Group, represents a company that makes body-scanning machines, Rapiscan Systems.
The Post reports that this year the TSA bought 150 machines from Rapiscan for $25 million in stimulus funds. Rapiscan was the only company at the time that qualified for the government contract because its machines produced a less-graphic image of bodies. Another company has since become eligible for future contracts.

Photo: Susan Hallowell, the director of the Transportation Security Administration’s security laboratory, allows her body to be X-rayed by the “backscatter” machine.

Brian Branch-Price/AP

@'Wired'

Posessed cat

(Thanx Fifi!)

Do check out the snow car vid at her blog too!

Sen. McCain Calls on Justice Dept. to Appeal Blackwater Massacre Case

During a visit to Iraq, Republican Senator John McCain called on the US Justice Department to appeal the dismissal of all charges against the five Blackwater operatives accused of being the shooters at the Nisour Square massacre in Baghdad in 2007.

“We hope and believe that the ruling will be appealed,” McCain said while seated next to Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki in Baghdad. “Our sympathy goes out to the families of those who were killed and injured in this very unfortunate and unnecessary incident.”

The Justice Department has not commented on what it plans to do. The case was dismissed on New Year’s Eve by US District Judge Ricardo Urbina, but not for lack of evidence or because the men were found not guilty. Urbina alleged that prosecutors had “recklessly violated the constitutional rights” of the Blackwater operatives by using statements the men had given after the shooting with the promise of immunity.

The five men were set to stand trial in February in Washington DC on 14 counts of manslaughter and weapons violations. A total of 17 Iraqi civilians were killed at Nisour Square and more than 20 others wounded. Some people were shot as they fled Blackwater’s forces, others while they had their hands raised in the air, according to the Justice Department.

@'Rebel Reports'

Facebook blocks social network profile removal service

Cocaine cargo hidden in bananas reaches shops in Spain

Drug smugglers appear to have made a major slip-up, after huge quantities of cocaine were delivered to supermarkets in Spain hidden in boxes of bananas.Police were alerted after a shelf-stacker at a Lidl supermarket in Madrid found a brick of neatly wrapped cocaine under a bunch of the fruit on Saturday.
Searching other Lidl shops, police sniffer dogs reportedly found 25 such packets, worth several million euros.
The fruit had been shipped in from Ecuador and Ivory Coast.
Reports suggest an error by drug smugglers had led to their failing to retrieve almost 80kg (175lb) of cocaine from the boxes before they were distributed. Police said the drug packets had not made it onto supermarket shelves.
Meanwhile, Dutch police arrested five men and seized more than a tonne of cocaine hidden in a shipment of whisky from Jamaica.
With a street value of some 30m euros, the 1,100kg of cocaine was the largest Dutch seizure of drugs from the Caribbean island, Reuters reported.
Nappies and seafood
The plantain bananas had arrived at a Madrid wholesale fruit and vegetable market from the south-east port of Sagunto last week, destined for supermarkets in the Madrid area.

Lidl destroyed thousands of bananas after the discovery

Bananas were removed from shelves of the Lidl supermarkets in the capital, and a tonne of the fruit had been destroyed, said a spokesman for the German company.
"It's the first time that this has happened to Lidl in Spain - and we hope it's also the last," he told the BBC.
A police investigation into the find has spread from the capital to the eastern Caceres region.
The discovery comes weeks after police discovered 228kg of cocaine hidden in banana boxes shipped into Sagunto.
Last year Spanish police seized more than 14 tonnes of cocaine, which had been smuggled into the country in stuffed animals, nappies, seafood and, in one instance, a picture of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

@'BBC'

Coming soon...

Primal Scream
plus

Adrian Sherwood
plus

Lee Perry

Money Man

RePost: One of the greatest 7" ever

One time member of The Subterraneans Chrissie Hynde with then partner Nick Kent.

Various members of The Damned played gigs with Kent as The Subterraneans but from memory I am pretty certain that Henry Padovani played guitar on this single. The line "like a deaf mute in a phone booth" came from an interview Kent did with Lou Reed I also seem to recall.

See what sort of things I keep in my brain...

My thanx to Malcolm as this was one of my holy grails...

My Flamingo/Veiled Women

Get it

HERE

 +

Hermine Demoriane

 'Veiled Women' / 'Dub'

Written with Nick Kent.

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

HERE

Beatniks?

   DJ Bone NYE 2009 ATTACK Mix  by  DJBone

Q says:

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

HERE

Ring of shopping trolleys - 'Applied Geometry'

Created by Robert Wechsler in a Costco parking lot in Goleta, California in 2004.

@'Urban Prankster'

(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.

@'Foreign Policy'

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.

WIKI 
(Thanx Chris Coltrane)

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

Les Negresses Vertes

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...

@'NY Times'

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

Slideshow at 'The Wall Street Journal'

HERE

The 'evil goblin king' LOL!

“My eyeballs were merely fondled without permission.”

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?

@'Brainwashed'

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.)...

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