Is there any doubt why people in the region loathe and support retaliation against white terrorists?
LONDON – Iraqi civilians who were detained by British troops during the U.S.-led war have leveled some 33 allegations of rape and abuse against male and female soldiers, Britain’s Ministry of Defense said Saturday.
The allegations come in the wake of the British withdrawal from Iraq this year.
One man says he was raped by two British soldiers while another claims he was sexually humiliated by both male and female personnel. Others allege they were stripped naked and photographed in the same style as the notorious pictures at Abu Ghraib, where abuses of prisoners by U.S. troops helped fuel anti-American sentiment.
British soldiers have faced a series of claims that they mistreated Iraqi civilians in southern Iraq during six years of combat operations. Last year, Britain settled a legal case involving the death of one Iraqi civilian, and the abuse of nine others, paying out nearly 3 million pounds in compensation.
A public inquiry is still under way into the death of hotel worker Baha Mousa. He died in the custody of British troops following a raid on his hotel in the southern Iraq city of Basra in 2003 and suffered 93 separate injuries. British Cpl. Donald Payne pleaded guilty to inhumanely treating Iraqi civilians in Britain’s first war crimes conviction.
“Given the history of the U.K.’s involvement in the development of these techniques alongside the US, it is deeply concerning that there appears to be strong similarities between instances of the use of sexual humiliation,” Phil Shiner, the lawyer representing the Iraqis who made the claims, said in a letter to the Ministry of Defense. He said some Iraqis are coming forward now since the withdrawal of British troops from Iraq this year.
The Ministry of Defense said the allegations were being taken seriously.
The 33 new cases include allegations of controversial techniques widely used by the Americans, including mock executions, dog attacks and exposure to pornography.
“Over 120,000 British troops have served in Iraq and the vast majority have conducted themselves to the highest standards of behavior, displaying integrity and selfless commitment,” the ministry said in a statement. “There have been instances when individuals have behaved badly but only a tiny number have been shown to have fallen short of our high standards. Allegations of this nature are taken very seriously but must not be taken as fact. Formal investigations must be allowed to take their course.”
Armed forces minister Bill Rammell said any new claims of mistreatment will be investigated.
In one of the most serious allegations, a 16-year-old boy claimed that he was among a group of Iraqis in May 2003 who were taken to the Shatt-al-Arab British camp to help fill sandbags. In a statement reported by The Independent newspaper, he alleged when he entered a room to get more sandbags he saw two British male soldiers engaged in oral sex. When he tried to leave, he alleges the men started to beat and kick him. When he fell to the floor, he claims one of the men held a blade to his neck while the other soldier stripped him naked. He claims the two British soldiers, one after the other, raped him.
In another claim, a 24-year-old Iraqi said he was playing football with friends in April 2007 when he was approached by British soldiers in vehicles and taken to a British base with another youth. When he arrived at the camp, he was allegedly surrounded by six to eight soldiers who ordered two of the young men to pick fights with one another. He alleges that the soldiers then stood on top of them and shouted and laughed.
Another 35-year-old carpenter said he was arrested in April 2006 and taken to the British camp at Shaaibah where he alleges he was subjected to sexual abuse and humiliation by both male and female soldiers.
He alleged soldiers used to watch pornographic films and would play loud music when he tried to pray. He also alleged that female soldiers exposed themselves or taunted him sexually. He alleged a soldier in the observation tower used to point the laser spot of his gun at his penis when he was in the toilet.
At the U.S. prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, female guards and interrogators were documented as using aggressive and sexually charged techniques with the detainees, most of whom were Muslim.
It was unclear when results of the investigation would be released.
A more “activist role”? Like what Lou, joining the Minutemen vigilantes to hunt Mexicans at the border?
New York — CNN’s Lou Dobbs stepped down from his controversial role as an advocacy anchor at the network at the end of his show Wednesday night after announcing plans to seek a more activist role.
“Over the past six months, it has become increasingly clear that strong winds of change have begun buffeting this country and affecting all of us, and some leaders in media, politics and business have been urging me to go beyond the role here at CNN and to engage in constructive problem-solving as well as to contribute positively to a better understanding of the great issues of our day and to continue to do so in the most honest and direct language possible,” Dobbs said during his 7 p.m. broadcast.
Dobbs, 64, said he had discussed the issue with CNN President Jonathan Klein, who had agreed to a release from his contract “that will enable me to pursue new opportunities.”
In a written statement, Klein called Dobbs “a valued founding member of the CNN family.”
“For decades, Lou fearlessly and tirelessly pursued some of the most important and complex stories of our time, often well ahead of the pack,” Klein said. “All of us will miss his appetite for big ideas, the megawatt smile and larger-than-life presence he brought to our newsroom, and we’re grateful to have known and worked with him over the years.
“With characteristic forthrightness, Lou has now decided to carry the banner of advocacy journalism elsewhere. We respect his decision and wish him, Debi [Dobbs' wife], and his family the very best.”
Dobbs, who is the last of the 29-year-old network’s original anchors, said he was considering “a number of options and directions.”
He cited the growth of the middle class, the creation of jobs, health care, immigration policy, the environment, climate change and the U.S. military involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan as “the major issues of our time.”
But, he said, “Each of those issues is, in my opinion, informed by our capacity to demonstrate strong resilience of our now weakened capitalist economy and demonstrate the political will to overcome the lack of true representation in Washington, D.C. I believe these to be profoundly, critically important issues and I will continue to strive to deal honestly and straightforwardly with those issues in the future.” Read Dobbs’ full statement about his departure from CNN
Those issues, he added, are defined in the public arena “by partisanship and ideology rather than by rigorous, empirical forethought, analysis and discussion,” and he vowed to work to change that.
In an e-mail to CNN staff members, Klein described the parting as “extremely amicable,” and said Dobbs’ replacement would be announced soon.
Dobbs was with Cable News Network from its initial broadcasts in 1980, acting as chief economics correspondent and host of the business program “Moneyline.”
His coverage of the 1987 stock market crash won him the George Foster Peabody Award for excellence in broadcasting. That was one of many awards he received while at CNN, including an Emmy for Lifetime Achievement that he received from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences in 2005.
Dobbs left the network in 1999 to found SPACE.com, a Web site devoted to space-related subjects. He returned to the network in 2001 as anchor and managing editor of CNN’s Moneyline News Hour, which became Lou Dobbs Tonight. He also acted as lead business news anchor for CNN/U.S. and CNNfn, the forerunner of CNNMoney.
During his second stint at CNN, Dobbs positioned himself as “tough, relentless, independent,” lashing out at what he described as the deficiencies and “partisan nonsense” of both major political parties, and injecting advocacy journalism into his coverage of topics ranging from free trade to immigration.
His no-holds-barred, sometimes acerbic style brought him a loyal following, but also attracted controversy both to him and to the network, especially over the subject of illegal immigrants.
Dobbs will continue as anchor of The Lou Dobbs Show, a daily radio show that began in March 2008 and is distributed to more than 160 stations nationwide by United Stations Radio Networks Inc.
Claiming that a GREEK ORTHODOX PRIEST with a crucifix around his neck was yelling “Allah hu Akbar”? Realizing how idiotic that sounded he got his lawyer to say that the priest tried to grab his genitals and rob him. Why can’t whites be truthful?
Tampa, Florida – Marine or Priest? Who do you believe? The accounts of what went on in a parking garage on Monday vary so drastically, it’s hard to tell which man wears the halo.
Police say it all started when Alexios Marakis, a priest from Greece, got lost in Tampa. He followed some cars into an apartment parking garage and in very broken English asked Jasen Bruce for help.
Bruce, a Marine Reservist, told police the priest tried to rob him, so Bruce hit him with a tire iron and chased Marakis three blocks.
Bruce also told police he thought the robed and bearded Marakis was an Arab terrorist.
Police spokesperson Laura McElroy says Bruce told officers that the priest shouted “Allahu Akbar!” The phrase, Bruce told officers, that Arab terrorists use before they blow you up.
McElroy says Bruce also told officers that Marakis made a sexual advance towards him in the parking garage.
And that sexual advance is what Bruce’s attorney Jeffrey Brown says motivated the attack. Brown held a news conference Tuesday afternoon to counter what he called the “one-sided, tainted” press release from TPD.
According to Brown, the priest “made a sexual reference and grabbed the genitals of Lance Corporal Bruce. Lance Corporal Bruce defended himself,” explained Brown.
Brown says he’s confident that eventually surveillance tapes and the 911 call will back up his client’s account.
However, the president of the group Tampa Bay Human Rights is urging the police and FBI to investigate the attack on the priest as a hate crime.
Ahmed Bedier told 10 Connects, “There was some sort of motivation based on the person’s ethnicity, where he perceived him to be Arab or Muslim and that’s simply unacceptable.”
Marakis is from Crete and is a visiting priest to St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Cathedral in Tarpon Springs. 10 Connects called and also visited the church on Tuesday, but no one was available to comment on the attack.
This was sent to us by a South American reader(Hat tip : Blanko). Was this the result of a lone wolf or something far more sinister? While this act should be condemned , we must also remember that those who orchestrated 9/11, lied about Iraq(resulting in the deaths of over 1.3 million of its citizens) cannot be trusted to speak the truth. The following article raises some very interesting points.
In what one Russian Military Analyst (jokingly?) speculated could possibly be a “very sick” way of publicizing a new American movie opening this week about the US Pentagons decades long experiments in mind-control technology (“The Men Who Stare At Goats”), has instead, according to these reports, resulted in a tragic massacre of at least 13 US Soldiers preparing for deployment to the Iraq war from the giant US military base of Fort Hood, Texas.
From Western propaganda news media reports on this massacre the American people are being told that a US Army Military Trained Psychiatrist, Major Nidal Malik Hasan [photo top left], became despondent over his recently receiving orders to deploy to Iraq and in “typical” lone gunman fashion “decided” to open fire on hundreds of his fellow soldiers killing and wounding them without discrimination.
Interesting to note in these reports, however, about Major Hasan is his past psychiatric training, paid for by the US Military, at Virginia Tech University where he graduated from that schools Center for Applied Behavior Systems with a degree in biochemistry, a school which FSB reports have long warned “is most likely” one of the US Department of Defenses top PSYOP training centers and where in April, 2007, it suffered the worst school massacre in US history when a Chinese student named Seung-Hui Cho, reported to be a subject to mind-control experiments, single-handedly gunned down 32 fellow students.
Even more interesting to note is that from the initial chaotic scene of the Fort Hood massacre not just the wounded Major Hanson taking into custody, but so were three other “alleged” gunmen, two of whom were released leaving one, at last report, still in US Army custody.
Now to understand the circumstances that placed Major Hasan at Fort Hood in the first place one has to understand that he was one of the US Militaries top PSYOP specialists and had received his medical degree, with honors, from the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, Maryland, in 2001, and did his internship at Walter Reed Army Hospital.
Major Hasan then became one of the top researchers at the US Center for the Study of Traumatic Stress in the field this US Military funded organization stated was:
[Note: The US Military has completely removed the website of their Center for the Study of Traumatic Stress organization early on the morning of 6 November 2009]
From his position at the Center for the Study of Traumatic Stress, Major Hasan became one of the originators of what is called the US Army’s “Warrior Combat Reset Program” set up to help American soldiers returning from war zones, or being redeployed to them, cope with what is called post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and which according to these reports led to his being at Fort Hood to “electronically prepare” an experimental group of US Soldiers for their return to the Iraq war zone.
Important to be understood about these reports is their detailing that nearly all of the US Military Forces are suffering what is termed a “catastrophic” level of stress disorders, murders, rapes and suicides so bad that American commanders are now warning that the readiness of their forces in is danger of “outright collapse”, and which is no wonder being that in just three short months this will become the longest war in US history.
So to yesterday’s massacre at Fort Hood, and Major Hasan’s “true role” in it, we need to turn to a little known, but extremely shocking case filed in the United States this past spring by a San Francisco lawyer named Gordon Erspamer and alleging:
So strong was the American Military and Intelligence establishments’ belief that only by “erasing” the previous “battle stained” memories of their Soldiers could they be made to continue killing and dying that in 2007 they contracted with Russia’s Psychotechnology Research Institute in Moscow to purchase a system called Semantic Stimuli Response Measurements Technology (SSRM Tek) which is a software-based mind reader that tests a subject’s involuntary response to subliminal messages and which was used by the Soviet Military on Russian troops being redeployed to Afghanistan.
Unfortunately for the Americans, and who were undoubtedly warned by their Russian counterparts about this, the previous Soviet experiments using SSRM Tek software combined with RHIC-EDOM technology had a very dangerous side-effect of “triggering immediate battle memories” instead of “erasing” them and resulting in masses of Russian troops who were undergoing these experiments to “erupt” in “immediate violence” which left an estimated 37 of them dead when they began (for no apparent reason) to begin firing upon each other.
In the United States today 13 American Soldiers lie dead, and many more are wounded leaving countless numbers of wives, children, fathers and mothers to mourn over their seemingly senseless killing.
But, like the events of 9/11, the assassinations of their President John F. Kennedy, his brother Robert, and the great civil rights leader Martin Luther King have shown us, these Americans have been well schooled in seeing only what they are told to see when tragedies like these, and Fort Hood now, occur.
Sometimes the childlike stories concocted by their propaganda masters to explain these horrific events are enough to placate the American people, but one has to wonder when at least some of them will wake up to the stark and brutal truth about what is happening to them. One can only wonder if these Americans had demanded the truth before if these Soldiers were massacred would still be alive?
That is not in our knowing. But what is in our knowing is this, before they awaken from their long slumber these Americans can expect many more such deaths. We’re sure their propaganda organs are up to the task.
Opponents of a plan to ease travel between France and Switzerland face legal action for racism. The right-wing Swiss People’s Party says a new train line between Geneva and the border town of Annemasse will flood Switzerland with what it calls criminal ‘scum.’
“I agree with what this advert says: we must stop the train link because of the cost and because it will open us up to all the delinquents of Europe,” said People’s Party spokesman Yves Nidegger. “However, I admit the way it has been done is not very clever.”
Annemasse lies right on the Swiss border and thousands of people, French and others, cross every day to work in Geneva. The town’s mayor is outraged.
“I’m going to sue them,said Mayor Christian Dupessey. “My legal team is looking at how to proceed, because France and Switzerland are two countries with different legal systems. But I intend to sue the party for daring to issue this advert, and the paper which published it.”
The Swiss People’s Party earned widespread criticism last year after an election campaign showing a black sheep being kicked out of the country by white sheep – another advert denounced as racist.
What is truly disturbing and despicable are the number of whites supporting the murder of this woman and her unborn child. Will justice be done?
The killing of Marwa el-Sherbini provoked outrage among Muslims for its sheer brutality and brazenness. According to witnesses, the pregnant mother was stabbed to death in front of a courtroom full of people in Germany by a man with an apparently deep-seated hatred of Muslims. Thousands marched in Egypt, Iran and other Muslim countries against what they perceived as a disturbing rise of Islamophobia and racism in Germany, as well as the scant attention the attack received in the German media.
Now, four months later, the trial of el-Sherbini’s alleged killer is being closely watched by Muslims across the world — not to mention Germany’s four-million-strong Muslim community — amid fears that anything but a severe punishment for the defendant, an unemployed Russian émigré identified only as Alex W., could spark more unrest. In Egypt, where el-Sherbini has been dubbed by the media as the “headscarf martyr,” people are expecting “justice to be administered in a swift way,” Ramzy Ezzeldin Ramzy, Egypt’s ambassador to Germany, told Al-Jazeera.
The trial began Monday in exactly the same courthouse in Dresden where the killing took place. The 28-year-old defendant wore a cap, a dark blue hooded top and sunglasses to conceal his face as he was led into the courtroom flanked by police officers and seated behind a screen of bulletproof glass. Prosecutors then described how el-Sherbini, 31, was attacked. The pharmacist had appeared in court on July 1 to testify in a hearing against Alex W., who was appealing an earlier conviction for defaming el-Sherbini by calling her an “Islamist” and a “terrorist” on a playground. Prosecutors say that after el-Sherbini’s testimony, Alex W. lunged at her with a seven-inch kitchen knife he had smuggled into court and stabbed her at least 16 times. Her husband, Elwy Okaz, 32, was also repeatedly stabbed before being shot by a policeman who mistook him for el-Sherbini’s attacker. El-Sherbini, who was three months pregnant at the time, bled to death in front of the couple’s 3-year-old son.
Okaz was back in court on Monday, walking with the help of crutches after having undergone two operations. “We wanted to leave the court and then he attacked her,” Okaz said in a calm voice, recalling the incident. “When I saw that he had a knife, I tried to get it off him. He continued stabbing my wife even when she was lying on the ground.” Okaz said their son was meant to be in kindergarten on the day of the attack but he was ill. “Marwa wanted to take him to the doctor after the hearing. The little boy misses her and he’s suffering a lot,” Okaz testified.
Alex W., who emigrated from Russia in 2003 and was granted German citizenship because he had distant ethnic roots to the country, faces a maximum sentence of life in prison if convicted of murder and attempted murder. Prosecutors say he had been motivated by a deep-rooted racism. “He stabbed [the couple] out of pure hatred against non-Europeans and Muslims. He wanted to kill them,” prosecutor Frank Heinrich told the court Monday.
Surprisingly, the killing was scarcely reported in Germany, which caused massive embarrassment for Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government when the story made headlines across the Muslim world. Following the demonstrations in Egypt, Merkel expressed her condolences to Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak on the sidelines of the G-8 summit in Italy in July. Given the outcry over the lack of publicity before, Alex W.’s trial is now receiving extensive coverage in the country. German political leaders are also nervously watching the proceedings. “Politicians regarded the murder of Marwa el-Sherbini as a foreign policy issue, but it was really an internal matter,” Ali Kizilkaya, the head of the Islamic Council of Germany, tells TIME. “The case shows that a small part of German society is Islamophobic and that shouldn’t be underestimated. Politicians have to learn that Muslims must be recognized as an equal part of German society.” He added, though, that he has faith in the German justice system and he’s confident there will be a fair judgment in the case.
If not, some fear a possible repeat of the riots that swept the Muslim world following the publication of cartoons lampooning the Prophet Muhammad several years ago in Denmark. After death threats against Alex W. were reportedly posted on the Internet, Dresden authorities imposed extra security measures for the duration of the trial. Roads around the courthouse have been closed off and 200 police officers will stand guard until a verdict is reached, which is expected to be on Nov. 11. With tensions running high, German authorities aren’t taking any chances this time.
We do not endorse any sort of violence, but Indians do have a right to defend themselves from racist thugs while Australian authorities do nothing.
Two locals, who allegedly abused a group of Indians and vandalised their car, were bashed up by them here, police said on Monday.
The incident took place at a carpark outside Meadowglen International Athletics Stadium in Epping when a local skateboarder damaged the rear window of a car belonging to an Indian.
The skateboarder also used the abusive language against some Indians who were coming out of the stadium where a Kabaddi match had ended on Sunday night.
“Associates of the people, whose car was damaged, came to their assistance. Two men were assaulted and hit with sticks in the brawl. These two injured men were from the group outside who had allegedly started to verbally abuse the people from the vehicle,” police said in a statement.
The two men, aged 25 and 42, were taken to Northern Hospital with minor injuries, they said. However, no arrests have been made and the incident was under investigations, police told PTI.
“A lot of people were leaving, the presentations were on at the time, I spoke to one of the boys that was there and he said a guy had smashed the rear window of a car that was leaving,” Councillor from the City of Darebin Tim Singh, who was present at the medal presentations ceremony for Kabaddi tournament, was quoted as saying by the media.
Why do whites refuse to assimilate? Maybe he should change his name to Pancho. (Hat tip : Native American)
TAOS, N.M. – Larry Whitten marched into this northern New Mexico town in late July on a mission: resurrect a failing hotel.
The tough-talking former Marine immediately laid down some new rules. Among them, he forbade the Hispanic workers at the run-down, Southwestern adobe-style hotel from speaking Spanish in his presence (he thought they’d be talking about him), and ordered some to Anglicize their names.
No more Martin (Mahr-TEEN). It was plain-old Martin. No more Marcos. Now it would be Mark.
Whitten’s management style had worked for him as he’s turned around other distressed hotels he bought in recent years across the country.
The 63-year-old Texan, however, wasn’t prepared for what followed.
His rules and his firing of several Hispanic employees angered his employees and many in this liberal enclave of 5,000 residents at the base of the Sangre de Cristo mountains, where the most alternative of lifestyles can find a home and where Spanish language, culture and traditions have a long and revered history.
“I came into this landmine of Anglos versus Spanish versus Mexicans versus Indians versus everybody up here. I’m just doing what I’ve always done,” he says.
Former workers, their relatives and some town residents picketed across the street from the hotel.
“I do feel he’s a racist, but he’s a racist out of ignorance. He doesn’t know that what he’s doing is wrong,” says protester Juanito Burns Jr., who identified himself as prime minister of an activist group called Los Brown Berets de Nuevo Mexico.
The Virginia-born Whitten had spent 40 years in the hotel business, turning around more than 20 hotels in Texas, Oklahoma, Florida and South Carolina, before moving with his wife to Taos from Abilene, Texas. He had visited Taos before, and liked its beauty. When Whitten saw that the Paragon Inn was up for sale, he jumped at it.
The hotel sits along narrow, two-lane Paseo del Pueblo, where souped-up lowriders radiate a just-waxed gleam in the soft sunshine as they cruise past centuries-old adobe buildings. One recent afternoon, a woman slowly rode her fat-tire bicycle along a cracked sidewalk, oversized purple butterfly wings on her back and a breeze blowing her long, blonde dreadlocks.
The community includes Taos Pueblo, an American Indian dwelling inhabited for over 1,000 years, and an adobe Catholic church made famous in a Georgia O’Keeffe painting.
After he arrived, Whitten met with the employees. He says he immediately noticed that they were hostile to his management style and worried they might start talking about him in Spanish.
“Because of that, I asked the people in my presence to speak only English because I do not understand Spanish,” Whitten says. “I’ve been working 24 years in Texas and we have a lot of Spanish people there. I’ve never had to ask anyone to speak only English in front of me because I’ve never had a reason to.”
Some employees were fired, Whitten says, because they were hostile and insubordinate. He says they called him “a white (N-word).”
Fired hotel manager Kathy Archuleta says the workers initially tried to adjust to his style. “We had already gone through four or five owners before him, so we knew what to expect,” Archuleta says. “I told (the workers) we needed to give him a chance.”
Then Whitten told some employees he was changing their Spanish first names. Whitten says it’s a routine practice at his hotels to change first names of employees who work the front desk phones or deal directly with guests if their names are difficult to understand or pronounce.
“It has nothing to do with racism. I’m not doing it for any reason other than for the satisfaction of my guests, because people calling from all over America don’t know the Spanish accents or the Spanish culture or Spanish anything,” Whitten says.
Martin Gutierrez, another fired employee, says he felt disrespected when he was told to use the unaccented Martin as his name. He says he told Whitten that Spanish was spoken in New Mexico before English. “He told me he didn’t care what I thought because this was his business,” Gutierrez says.
“I don’t have to change my name and language or heritage,” he says. “I’m professional the way I am.”
After the firings, the New Mexico chapter of the League of United Latin American Citizens, a national civil rights group, sent Whitten a letter, raising concerns about treatment of Hispanic workers. Whitten says he sent them a letter and posted messages on the hotel marquee, alleging that the group referred to him with a racial slur. LULAC denied the charge.
The messages and comments he made in interviews with local media, including referring to townsfolk as “mountain people” and “potheads who escaped society,” further enflamed tensions.
Taos Mayor Darren Cordova says Whitten wasn’t doing anything illegal. But he says Whitten failed to better familiarize himself with the town and its culture before deciding to buy the hotel for $2 million. “Taos is so unique that you would not do anything in Taos that you would do elsewhere,” he says.
Whitten grew subdued as a two-hour interview with The Associated Press progressed. He said he was sorry for the misunderstanding and insisted he has never been against any culture.
“What kind of fool or idiot or poor businessman would I be to orchestrate this whole crazy thing that’s costed me a lot of time, money and aggravation?” Whitten said.
Whitten should have dealt with the situation differently, especially in a majority Hispanic town, said 71-year-old Taos artist Ken O’Neil, while sipping his afternoon coffee on the town’s historic plaza.
“To make demands like he did just seems over the top,” he says. “Nobody won here. It’s not always about winning. Sometimes, it’s about what you learn.”
BNP activists rounded on Nick Griffin yesterday over his car-crash performance on Question Time – playing their own part in the fascist bigot’s downfall.
They joined in condemnation of the far-Right party leader’s vile TV outpourings.
A poll taken after his appearance showed the extremist would still be snubbed by voters. Around two-thirds of people questioned said they would not vote BNP “under any circumstances”. Only seven per cent in the YouGov poll of 1,314 people said they would “definitely” or “possibly” back them.
Griffin, 50, vowed to complain about the BBC show, saying he’d faced a “lynch mob”. But BNP press officer John Walker admitted: “I’d say anyone opposed to the BNP will be feeling very smug.”
More than 8.2million viewers watched Griffin’s squirming performance on BBC1’s flagship debate show.
Sitting in the studio audience, Khush Kumar, 38, was cheered as he suggested a whip-round to send Griffin and his supporters to the “colourless” South Pole.
Anguish … Khush Kumar
Financial services firm boss Khush said: “Seeing smug Griffin sitting there I just boiled over.”
Choking back tears, anguished Khush yesterday told how his dad was KNIFED by a race-hate nut as fellow members of the studio audience joined him in saying they were proud to expose the BNP leader as a tin-pot Nazi.
Khush revealed his postman father Gian-Chand Klare was only saved by his thick DUFFEL COAT after a racist knife thug stopped him in the street and asked the time.
Khush also told how his family previously found the dad bleeding on their Wolverhampton doorstep – victim of a racist mob.
He said: “I’ll never forget the night we heard him struggling to get his key in the door.
Hate victim … Khush’s dad
“He’d been ambushed on his way home by a gang of six or seven thugs. They beat him black and blue because he was Asian.
“He was taken to hospital. Police confirmed it had been a racial attack.”
Khush, who lives in West London, said his Indian immigrant father – who was 51 when he died ten years ago – shrugged off the attackers as “a tiny minority”.
He said: “He knew racists like Nick Griffin will never get a foothold in Britain.”
Black lawyer Nathaniel Ikeazor, 43, of Twickenham, West London – who also hurled a question from the audience – branded Griffin “slimy”. He said: “Just the fact he was sitting there on the panel on live TV wound me up.”
Beth Pritchard, 28, said after being confronted by the floundering fascist: “He is a nasty man with very unpleasant views.”
Proud … Nick Billey
The Tory-supporting bank clerk, who lives in South London with her civil partner of 2½ years Ellen Mellington, 29, said: “I’m glad he was asked to appear on the programme. It showed him in his true colours.”
Dad-of-two Nick Billey, also in Thursday night’s audience, said: “Griffin didn’t cope at all.”
The IT account manager, of St Albans, Herts, savaged the BNP leader as “poison” on the show. Nick said: “He was clearly shaking, fiddling with his papers and looking very uncomfortable.”
Griffin claimed the programme should not have been televised in London because the capital was “no longer British”.
He said it had been “ethnically cleansed” of “English and British people”. London mayor Boris Johnson scoffed that he was right to say the cosmopolitan capital was not his city. He vowed: “The BNP has no place here.”
Three times as many viewers as normal tuned into Question Time after 1,000 protesters besieged the Beeb’s West London HQ. Griffin had to be smuggled into Television Centre via a back door.
He crowed 3,000 had rushed to join his party thanks to the show. But John Walker – the BNP’s own press officer – admitted: “Anyone who was opposed to the BNP will be feeling very smug with themselves after last night.”
Griffin battled in vain to present himself as a MODERATE on the programme – declaring he was “the most loathed man in Britain” among Nazi sympathisers.
Yesterday far-Right websites were swamped with messages from disillusioned BNP voters. They accused him of being inept and “overawed”.
Former Home Secretary David Blunkett last night said the biggest fear was people feeling SORRY for the oaf – elected a Euro MP. He warned the BBC may have “played into Griffin’s hands by managing to create a victim out of a perpetrator”.
Gordon Brown phoned to thank Jack Straw for appearing on David Dimbleby’s Question Time panel – though the PM did not watch. The Justice Secretary was joined by Tory Baroness Warsi, Lib Dem Chris Huhne and writer Bonnie Greer.
BODY language expert Robert Phipps yesterday said he was “stunned” at how badly Griffin came across. He declared: “Everything about him screamed shifty and fake.”
..full of s*** considering Australia is one of the least populated countries in the world. Is such violent behavior to be expected since most of them are descendants of illegal immigrants and criminals from England?
Each January 26, Australians gather in parks and on beaches to celebrate all that is great about their country: mateship, sunshine, barbecues and free-flowing beer.
But this year, across the country’s most populous state, the day of national pride turned violent when groups of youths rampaged through suburbs targetting non-white shopkeepers in a display of racism that echoed the ugly scenes of the 2005 Cronulla riots.
In the affluent Sydney suburb of Manly, where hundreds of families had set up their picnics for the day, more than 100 shirtless young men draped in “Aussie pride” flags smashed car windows and vandalised shops
Carrying signs that read “—- off we’re full”, they paraded up and down the seafron threatening bypassers.
One 18-year-old Asian woman was injured when the gang smashed her car window, showering her in glass and causing several cuts to her arms.
There were also reports that the group attacked a taxi driven by an Indian Sikh and an Asian shopkeeper.
In scenes reminiscent of the Cronulla riots, when 5,000 white Australians congregated in the Sydney beachfront suburb and attacked Lebanese immigrants, groups of men jumped on cars that were stopped at traffic lights and chanted racist slogans to the terrified passengers.
At one point the gang was reportedly heard singing “lets go —- with these Lebs”.
Jean Hay, the mayor of Manly, said the youths came from the north-west of Sydney and were not Manly residents.
The unrest was brought under control by the late afternoon. Police charged a 16-year-old for assaulting police and three others were cautioned for offensive and dangerous behaviour.
The violence in Manly was mirrored in the coastal towns of Shellharbour to Sydney’s south and Port Macquarie to the north. Fights were also reported as far north as Queensland’s Gold Coast, where hundreds of teenagers clashed on a popular family beach.
Doctors in Iraq are recording a sharp rise in the number of cancer victims south of Baghdad. Sufferers in the province of Babil have risen almost tenfold in just three years.
Locals blame depleted uranium from US military equipment used in the 2003 invasion.
In this part of Iraq, 500 cases of cancer were diagnosed in 2004. That figure rose to almost 1,000 two years later.
In 2008, the number of cases increased sevenfold to 7,000 diagnoses. This year, there have so far been more than 9,000 new cases … and the number is rising.
Nazi paraphenalia, bombs and weed in a day care center? Stoner Skinhead fun for the whole family!
Explosives and a marijuana farm were discovered at a Southern California home doubling as a state-licensed child day care center after a man blew off four of his fingers while mixing homemade explosives, authorities said Thursday.
Benjamin Kuzelka, 23, remained hospitalized at Loma Linda Medical Center and will be arrested when he his discharged, said sheriff’s Sgt. Dennis Gutierrez. His mother, Rebecca Kuzelka, 55, and brother, Grey Kuzelka, 21, were booked Thursday on suspicion of manufacturing illegal explosives, illegal growing of marijuana and child endangerment, he said.
Authorities went to Kuzelka Family Day Care after a local hospital reported late Wednesday that Kuzelka walked in and said he had shot himself in the hand. Doctors, however, became suspicious because the wound was inconsistent with a gun shot injury and they called authorities, Gutierrez said.
Investigators found explosives, a sophisticated marijuana-growing facility and evidence that the home had been used as a state-licensed child care facility as recently as the day before, Gutierrez said. The home is on a cul-de-sac in a remote area of Riverside County about 70 miles southeast of Los Angeles.
“We do believe that when all this illegal activity was going on, that children were present,” he said. However, no children were home at the time of the explosion, authorities said.
The explosives were hidden outside and detectives believe Grey Kuzelka moved them from the garage to the backyard while his brother was seeking medical treatment, said sheriff’s Sgt. Pat Chavez.
A hazardous device team responded to the scene and defused explosives Thursday in several controlled blasts throughout the day. They left the scene by the late afternoon, Gutierrez said.
The FBI, which is also investigating, said there was no immediate indication that the case was linked to any terrorist investigation or any threat to public safety.
FBI spokeswoman Laura Eimiller referred all other questions to Gutierrez, who said he did not know what types of explosives were found at the site or how powerful they were.
Grey Kuzelka had been arrested on Saturday for investigation of possessing marijuana and concentrated cannabis, and was released the next day on $5,000 bail. Riverside County court records show Benjamin Kuzelka has a string of convictions for drunken driving and drug possession dating back several years.
A child care advocate with the state’s community licensing division, which awards day care licenses, did not immediately respond to an e-mail or phone message seeking comment.
The facility was licensed for children ages 2 to 5 and was approved for no more than eight children at a time, Chavez said.
Italians…10000 different shapes of pasta and just 2 sauces.
It was the gaffe heard around the globe. Last November, just two days after Barack Obama’s historic election victory, the world’s collective jaw dropped when Silvio Berlusconi quipped that the next U.S. President was “young, handsome and even has a good tan.”
Though the Italian Prime Minister refused to apologize for the failed attempt at humor, Obama and his aides gave Berlusconi a pass. The incoming President was not going to be sidetracked by a diplomatic incident with a man already notorious as a loose cannon. Berlusconi kept his place that week on Obama’s initial round of phone calls to world leaders, with the “tan” remark firmly off the agenda and both sides hailing strong relations between the key transatlantic allies.
Strangely, it is Berlusconi who has not let the incident rest. He called his critics “imbeciles,” saying the remark was meant as a compliment. “We’d all like to be tanned like Naomi Campbell and Obama,” he said two weeks after the original one-liner. He has made other references to it in the months since. (See Berlusconi’s worst gaffes.)
And then on Sunday, he dropped the abbronzato bomb again. Having returned from the G-20 meeting in Pittsburgh, he told supporters in Milan that he carried greetings from “someone tan, what’s his name? Barack Obama!” Not satisfied, he continued, “You will not believe it, but the two of them went together to get some sun at the beach, because the wife is also tanned.”
The conventional wisdom in Italy, in both press and political circles, seems to be that it’s just Berlusconi being Berlusconi. The latest quip got only passing notice from Italy’s center-left opposition, which is more focused on Berlusconi’s ongoing sex scandal. Even the leading leftist daily, La Repubblica, referred to the remarks as the latest “Berlusconi Show.” (See pictures of Italy.)
But that’s telling in itself. In many ways, mainstream Italian society is several generations behind the rest of the West when it comes to race. In supposedly polite company, one can still hear the word negro, (pronounced neh-grow) which essentially translates to the N word. A cleaning woman is often generically referred to as a “Filippina.” Northern Italians joke that darker-skinned southerners are “Moroccans.”
Unlike some of his political allies, Berlusconi has never seemed to suffer from mean-spirited racism. Still, his eagerness to continue cracking racial jokes shows how outdated he and a big chunk of Italian society are. The lack of outrage from ordinary Italians compounds the crime. (Read “The Berlusconi Tapes: 5 Ways to Evade the Scandal.”)
Does that mean it’s up to the White House to tell Berlusconi basta? During the 2008 campaign, Republican political consultantGrover Norquist was lambasted by Obama supporters for describing the candidate as “John Kerry with a tan.” But when it comes to Silvio, the Administration seems to want to play it cool. The U.S. embassy in Rome declined this week to comment on the latest quip. Asked Wednesday by TIME about the remarks, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said, “There are far bigger issues in the world than this.”
That’s true. And no doubt the issues of any perceived political incorrectness – and potential racial reverberations – are trickier to handle when the offender is the leader of a NATO ally. But Berlusconi’s prominence is the point, and as the first black leader of the most powerful nation on earth, Obama is seen as a model by many countries struggling to integrate people of different races and religions. (See pictures of Barack Obama’s family tree.)
In Italy, where immigration has skyrocketed in the past decade, racism is becoming a front-burner issue. Aly Baba Faye, regional director in Rome of the Anti-Racism Observatory, says the Prime Minister’s comments are indicative of attitudes in Italy and unhelpful in changing prejudices. “Berlusconi thinks he’s funny, but he’s not,” says Faye, an Italian citizen who emigrated from Senegal 30 years ago. “For one world leader to talk about the skin color of another is utterly disrespectful and sets a bad example for ordinary folk.” Faye says Berlusconi’s comments make it more likely that people on the street in Rome will make a crack about the color of his or his children’s skin. (See pictures of Rome.)
Faye, who was head of Italy’s first pro-Obama initiative during the 2008 campaign, says he understands the President’s not wanting to turn the issue into a diplomatic affair. “But someone has to make him stop. Maybe just a private note through the embassy?” Or maybe the next time he sees Berlusconi, Obama himself can lean over and say, “Hey Silvio, you know the tan jokes? Basta.”
The hate-mongering right-wing boss, 50, has branded gypsies “anti-social and criminal”.
So it will be a shock to his followers to discover his great-grandfather George Griffin was a hawker who went from town to town selling cheap goods.
The controversial MEP’s great-grandfather George Griffin roamed from town to town in a horse-drawn caravan with his wife Esther and their children, selling china and crockery.
Census reports show he spent years living the gypsy life, never settling in one place because as an impoverished traveller he was on the margins of society and never fully accepted anywhere.
Last week Griffin, 50, who condemned attacks on Romanian gypsies in Northern Ireland, said: “We have to bear in mind that the gypsy community is notorious for its extremely high rate of criminality and antisocial behaviour.
“Everyone in Romania and eastern Europe knows this and it is one reason why their governments are so keen to encourage them to come over here.”
Yet between 1868 and 1874 records show his great-grandfather represented just such a minority. He travelled in one caravan with his family while his business partner, Mary Ann Hollis, travelled in another.
George habitually lied about his age, describing himself as 25 in the 1871 Census, 41 a decade later, 47 in the 1891 Census and 58 in 1901. He plied his precarious trade in Devon and Cornwall and could often be found parked outside the London Inn pub in Liskeard.
The 1871 Census shows the caravans were parked next to the Cornish pub, noting: “Six persons not in houses”. In the column marked “Houses” it reports them as living in vans.
While George lived with Esther, 22, and his 10-month-old son George Junior in one, Mary Ann Hollis, 37, was in the second with George’s three-year-old daughter Mary Ann Griffi n and a William Huxham, 16.
He is described as a servant but probably earned his keep selling wares. In the Census column marked “Rank, profession or occupation” George is a “licensed hawker dealing in china and crockery ware”.
His lifestyle would not have fitted with the intolerant views of Mr Griffi n and the British National Party which does not accept black people as members.
“Griffin has called for an immediate halt to immigration, and voluntary resettlement of immigrants legally living in Britain.
When told this week of Mr Griffin’s heritage, shocked BNP deputy leader Simon Darby said: “That will please him.” Genealogy expert Nick Barratt added: “George Griffin travelled around, scratching a living. His group will have roamed from street to street like ragtag travellers trying to survive on their wits and selling their wares.
“And it is highly likely he spent many more years living the life of a traveller before he married.
“Today we would call his group travellers and just like today they would have been marginalised on the edge of society and seen as outsiders.
“They will have been treated with a degree of suspicion and as a minority.”
MORROW, Ga. — Morrow police said they arrested a man after he beat up a woman who asked him to “be careful” at a Cracker Barrel restaurant.
Morrow police were called to the Cracker Barrel restaurant on Southlake Plaza Drive in Morrow Sept. 9 at 7:30 p.m.Upon arrival, officers said they located the female victim and called for EMTs and Fire Department officials to assist. At the same time, the alleged offender in the case, Troy Dale West, of Poulan, Ga. was detained at the scene, police said.
Police said an investigation revealed that the female victim, identified as Tasha Hill, was entering the Cracker Barrel with her 7-year-old daughter as West was leaving the restaurant. As West was leaving, the exit door came close to striking the 7-year-old daughter of the victim, police said. Hill, by all witness accounts, politely asked West to be careful, officials said.
“The man slung open the door pretty hard and fast and I had to push my daughter out of the way. I turned to the man and I just said, ‘Excuse me sir, you need to watch yourself you almost hit my daughter in the face.’ And from there it just went downhill,” said Hill.
At that point, West became enraged and began to beat the victim in front of her 7-year-old daughter, according to police. Hill said she told West she was an Army servicemember and she did not want any trouble.West threw her to the ground and hit her in the head with his fists and feet, police said. During the exchange, witnesses said West could be heard screaming racial slurs towards the victim.
“He said, ‘You’re an f****** black (N-word) b****,’ is what he said,” said Hill. “Then he punched me in my face. And I fell to the ground and he proceeded to punch in my head and face.”Many witnesses stepped up to assist police in the investigation by providing written statements as to the events that transpired.
Cracker Barrel was also helpful to police in this investigation, Morrow police said.This case has been referred to the FBI Civil Rights Division for a possible violation of Federal Hate Crime Laws.Once officers obtained witness statements on the scene and looked at video surveillance from the Cracker Barrel, West was arrested and charged with battery, disorderly conduct, and cruelty to children in the first degree.West has bonded out of jail.
Yet another young promising life snuffed out by white violence.
NEW HAVEN, Conn. – Raymond Clark III appeared in court and was charged with murder Thursday hours after his arrest in the killing of a graduate student whose body was found stuffed in the wall of the research building where they both worked.
Raymond Clark III, 24, kept his head bowed during the three-minute appearance in the death of Annie Le, also 24. He didn’t enter a plea and said, “Yes, your honor,” when asked whether he understood his rights. The judge then set bail at $3 million and sent him to a holding cell.
New Haven Police Chief James Lewis said Le’s death was a case of workplace violence and elaborated little except to say reports that the two had a romantic relationship were untrue “to my knowledge.”
“It is important to note that this is not about urban crime, university crime, domestic crime but an issue of workplace violence, which is becoming a growing concern around the country,” Lewis said, adding he wasn’t ruling out additional charges.
Clark’s attorney, David Dworski, did not return calls seeking comment. He has said Clark was “committed to proceeding appropriately” with police.
Clark was arrested earlier Thursday at a Super 8 hotel in Cromwell, about 25 miles north of the Ivy League campus, where he got a room shortly after being released from police questioning in Le’s death.
Le was found dead on Sunday, her body hidden in the basement wall of a building where she worked as a medical researcher, on the day she was to marry her college sweetheart, Columbia University graduate student Jonathan Widawsky. The Connecticut medical examiner said Wednesday that Le died of “traumatic asphyxiation.”
Clark was under constant surveillance after he was released, and police spent Wednesday night and Thursday morning staking out the Super 8 hotel where Clark was staying.
Shortly after 8 a.m. Thursday, police moved closer, shutting down the highway outside the hotel and blocking the road leading into the hotel as they made the arrest. Clark was wearing a white shirt with tan stripes and tan pants as police ushered him into the back of a dark sedan with tinted windows. The car then sped off toward the highway, and arrived at the New Havenpolice department about an hour later.
Richard Levin, the president of Yale, released a statement shortly after the arrest, saying Clark’s employment history gave no indication he was capable of such a crime.
“This incident could have happened in any city, in any university, or in any workplace. It says more about the dark side of the human soul than it does about the extent of security measures,” Levin said in a message sent to the Yale community.
The family of Le’s fiance, Jonathan Widawsky, said Thursday that they would not attend services for the “foreseeable future” at their temple on New York’s Long Island.
They said they want to “facilitate the safety, security and sensitivity” of services at Temple Beth El.
The family also thanked people who were involved in preparations for “a wedding that was not to be.”
Yet another example of violent intolerant white “manhood,” but he only gets charged with a misdemeanor.
A Muslim-hating Long Island man threatened to murder two women wearing traditional Islamic robes, then tried to run them over at a gas station, police said yesterday.
“This isn’t Halloween! Get into my car so I can f- – - the s- – - out of you, chop you into little pieces and kill you,” Joseph Ballance screamed, according to one of the women.
Ballance, a 23-year-old self-employed landscaper, admitted to investigators he wanted to cut up the women.
“They don’t belong here,” he told detectives, adding, “They shouldn’t be walking around like that.”
Ballance allegedly confronted Chervern Cartier, 49, and her 20-year-old daughter on Aug. 20 in the parking lot of a Hess gas station in Smithtown.
He was enraged because the women were dressed in black Muslim robes, with only their eyes showing, police said.
After the alleged threat, Cartier began writing down the license plate of Ballance’s 1994 Mercury.
He spat on their car, then got into the Mercury, put it in reverse and tried to back over them, the women told cops.
The women were unhurt and Ballance roared off.
“He is full of hatred,” Suffolk County Detective Sgt. Robert Reecks said. “He saw them, the way they were dressed, and it just set him off.”
Ballance was picked up by police at his Islandia home yesterday and held on a charge of second-degree aggravated harassment, a misdemeanor hate crime.
“This kind of behavior has no place in Suffolk,” County Executive Steve Levy said, adding the county would prosecute offenders “to the fullest extent of the law.”
n the mother’s statement, she said a white male came up behind them yelling, “Take that stuff off. What do you think it is, Halloween?” The man followed them into the store, continuing to yell.
The woman said the man then drove his car so close to hers that she couldn’t open the gas cap and he “kept striking a match on a matchbook like if I was to start pumping the gas he would throw the match at me,” according to the statement.
In a statement signed by Ballance, he said that while he was at the station, “two people dressed for Halloween looking like the wicked witch,” pulled in.
But Muslim leaders criticized the charge as too lenient, and pressed for federal civil rights charges.
Nayyar Imam, president of the Islamic Association of Long Island in Selden, said he would request to meet with authorities about the charges. “These charges have to be ramped up,” he said. “It’s unacceptable.”
The US army officer convicted for his part in the notorious My Lai massacre during the Vietnam War has offered his first public apology, a US report says.
“There is not a day that goes by that I do not feel remorse for what happened,” Lt William Calley was quoted as saying by the Columbus Ledger-Enquirer.
He was addressing a small group at a community club in Columbus, Georgia.
Calley, 66, was convicted on 22 counts of murder for the 1968 massacre of 500 men, women and children in Vietnam.
Cold blood
“I feel remorse for the Vietnamese who were killed, for their families, for the American soldiers involved and their families. I am very sorry,” the former US platoon commander said on Wednesday.
The My Lai massacre was a turning point in the Vietnam War
He was sentenced to life in prison for his role in the killings in 1971. Then-US President Richard Nixon commuted his sentence to three years’ house arrest.
But Calley insisted that he was only following orders, the paper reported.
He broke his silence after accepting a friend’s invitation to speak at the weekly meeting of the Kiwanis Club, a US-based global voluntary organisation.
At the time of the killings, the US soldiers had been on a “search and destroy” mission to root out communist fighters in what was fertile Viet Cong territory.
Although the enemy was nowhere to be seen, the US soldiers of Charlie Company rounded up unarmed civilians and gunned them down.
When the story of My Lai was exposed, more than a year later, it tarnished the name of the US army and proved to be a turning point for public opinion about the Vietnam War.
Perhaps this is one of the reasons why these guys(90% of Israelis are White Europeans) aren’t liked or wanted in the Middle East?
The article published in Sweden’s largest circulation daily Aftonbladet on Monday claimed Israeli soldiers abduct young Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza Strip and return their bodies to their families after removing their organs.
The shocking report was revealed following the arrest of a New York rabbi accused of trafficking in human organs.
The article,They plunder the organs of our sons, nonetheless, was heavily criticized by Israeli media as well as officials who accused its writer, Donald Bostrom, of being “anti-semite.”
Bostrom, however, says he has based the story on testimony from Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza and has denied accusations that he was motivated by anti-Semitism.
In the article, he mentions an incident in which a Palestinian was shot and killed by Israeli soldiers apparently for hurling stones at their vehicle in the northern West Bank city of Nablus.
The Palestinian, who was shot in his chest, stomach and both legs, was moved to an unknown location while being in critical condition. Five days later, his body was returned to his family with a visible scar from his neck to stomach.
Autopsy revealed that some of his organs were removed.
Bostrom believes a shortage of organs for transplant in Israel is the real cause behind the violent crime and mentions a 1992 government campaign to recruit new donors.
At the same time that this organ campaign was going on, young Palestinian men were disappearing and being delivered back to their villages five days later at night, dead and cut open, he writes.
Responding to the shocking report, an Israeli military spokesman denied the charges and said Palestinians killed by Israeli forces were routinely subjected to autopsies.
The Israeli Foreign Ministry has also condemned the report, saying This piece is so blatantly racist and can induce to hate crimes in such a way that we think authorities need to take care of the matter.
The ministry is also reportedly considering summoning the Swedish ambassador to protest against his government policies as well as the article.
The Israeli Embassy in Stockholm has also sent a strong diplomatic protest to the Swedish government.
Bostrom said another Swedish newspaper, Dagens Nyheter, refused to publish his piece “with no explanation” while Aftonbladet, a popular newspaper in Sweden, published the article without making any editorial changes.
NIGeria+GAZprom = NIGAZ with attitude. Some real geniuses at work in Russia.
It probably seemed a good idea at the time. But Russia’s attempt to create a joint gas venture with Nigeria is set to become one of the classic branding disasters of all time ‑ after the new company was named Nigaz.
The venture was agreed last week during a four-day trip by Russia’s president Dmitry Medvedev to Africa. The deal between Russia’s Gazprom and Nigeria’s state oil company was supposed to show off the Kremlin’s growing interest in Africa’s energy reserves.
Instead, the venture is now likely to be remembered for all the wrong reasons ‑ as a memorable PR blunder, worse than Chevrolet’s Nova, which failed to sell in South America because it translates as “doesn’t go” in Spanish.
Alert users of Twitter first highlighted the unfortunate English connotations of Nigaz, which appears to have eluded Medevedev’s Russian-speaking delegation.
Writing on Monday, shunty 75 observed: “Nigaz is the name for the new Gazprom Nigeria venture. They need a new PR outfit. NO WAY!! Haha!!” Other twitterers also derided the name.
An article in Brand Republic pointed out the obvious: that the name has “rather different connotations” for English-speakers.
It recalled other international branding mishaps including the Ford Pinto ‑ which in Brazil means small penis ‑ and the Pepsi slogan “come alive with the Pepsi generation”. In Taiwan this rousing motto translated as “Pepsi will bring your ancestors back from the dead”.
It is unclear why nobody alerted Medevedev to the blunder. But one possible explanation is that the offending word is still widely used in Russia, and was even famously employed by the poet Vladimir Mayokovsky in the 1920s.
The new company Nigaz plans to invest at least $2.5bn (£1.5bn) in oil and gas exploration and aims to build refineries, pipelines and gas power stations across Nigeria.
“We have a chance to become major energy partners,” Medvedev declared last week following a meeting with Nigeria’s presient Umaru Yar’Adua in the capital Abuja.
Americans look at Thomas Jefferson and see the one of the authors of the Declaration of Independence, a statesman, a former president and one of the founding fathers,’ however; when I look at him, I see the face of a rapist. When Jefferson first met Sally Hemings, his slave through inheritance, she would have been no more than 15 or 16 years old. It is rumoured that when she returned from France with him, that she was already pregnant with his child.
It was widely suggested within his own life time that he kept a light skinned negro concubine. You see, Sally was 3/4 white and was described as a handsome light skinned woman with long dark hair in one of the few known descriptions of her. Jefferson’s children through his wife Martha Wayles Skelton Jefferson, denied the relationship, however; Jefferson himself did not publicly answer the rumours. The only slaves that Jefferson freed were the children of Hemings and he petitioned the government for two of her sons to stay in Virginia after emancipation. At the time, a slave had to leave the state within one year of manumission.
There are those that to this day vehemently deny that Jefferson fathered Sally’s six children despite the DNA evidence. It is my belief that such denial is not based in the simple fact that it would prove that he was a lecher but that he chose a woman of color.
On the other side of the coin are those that believe the oral, written, and DNA evidence. They often refer to the relationship as an illicit love affair, citing that Sally had the opportunity to stay in France where slavery was outlawed, rather than returning to the United States with Jefferson. Assuming that Sally had chosen to stay in Paris, what would an uneducated 1/4 negresss do with no money to support herself and her unborn child? She chose to return because Jefferson gave his word that he would free her children and offer her a life of comfort relative to the other slaves at Monticello.
Jefferson may have felt love for Sally but how can we possibly term this relationship a love affair? Once they returned to the US, he had the power to have her flogged, or even put to death. At anytime he could have sold her children away from her. For a relationship based in love to exist, both parties must be equal and due to the power differential between Jefferson and Hemings what occurred cannot be described as anything other than rape. Some have even had the nerve to refer to Hemings as the first Black first lady of the United States as a way of further legitimizing the relationship between the two, however; to sanitize it and call it anything other than rape, is to once again violate her spirit.
Jefferson was not the first or last White man to sneak into the slave cabins. One of the reasons White women argued so vehemently for the abolition of slavery, was to save the poor overwhelmed White man from the negro temptress. It was not uncommon to see near white or light skinned children resembling the master working on the plantation. The Black woman was and still is blamed for her own rape. Victim blaming began with women of color and continues to this day.
No matter how many times Black women have angrily contested the use of the term love affair between Hemings and Jefferson, it continues to be the most common descriptor by those who believe the DNA evidence. This assumes that Hemings actually had the power to deny Jefferson sexual access, or that Jefferson had a right to Sally’s body for the purposes of sexual gratification. Both suppositions are erroneous. Due to the patriarchal nature of gender relations, many men believe that they exist with the right to access women’s bodies and that is specifically grounded in the power imbalance between the genders. If we can acknowledge in a modern context that a power imbalance exists between men and women, how much more likely is it that this same imbalance existed between Jefferson and Hemings?
Some may look back at Jefferson and simply claim that he was a man of his time and that he should not be judged outside of historical context, however; in my mind a rapist is a rapist. What he did at the time may not have been considered a violation due to current race and gender relations, however; today we can correctly name his actions. Sally did not have the power to consent to his advances even if she was so inclined; this simple fact must be affirmed not only to honour the memory of Hemings but to change the social understanding that Black women’s bodies are unrapeable. We are not naturally licentious whores who exist to fulfill the sexual fantasies of depraved racist men. We are women that must be accorded the right to control over our bodies without punishment for any decisions we make in that regard.
Many people were shocked by the video that surfaced recently of three young Caucasian men apparently swarming a lone black man in a strip mall parking lot on a hot summer night in the Vancouver Island city of Courtenay.
But having to fight because of his skin colour was no surprise for that black man, 38-year-old Jay Phillips. It was just history repeating itself.
His father also had to defend himself in B.C. because he was black.
On Friday, David Samuel White, 19, Adam David Huber, 24, and Robert William Rodgers, 25, were charged with assaulting Phillips on the evening of July 3, in an apparent racist attack captured on video and broadcast on the Internet.
The trio were allegedly involved in a separate attack on a young Caucasian man later that evening, RCMP Const. Tammy Douglas told The Province.
Phillips and his mother, Kirsten, who is Caucasian, responded to the charges in separate interviews with The Province.
Both remembered Jay’s father Reginald Phillips, who died before Christmas, as a man who taught his son to be proud of his colour and to defend himself.
Reginald and Kirsten first started dating in the 1960s in Prince Rupert.
“He was the only black man in town, dating a white woman, so of course he had to fight plenty,” Jay Phillips said with a laugh.
Racially-motivated fights continued in various B.C. towns, Kirsten said.
Reginald taught Jay Phillips to box from a young age, both mother and son recalled. Those skills are apparent in the July 3 video, as Phillips, a 210-pound man who can bench press 300 pounds, fought three men to a draw at the very least.
But it’s the way Jay has acted after the fight that Reginald would most appreciate, Kirsten said.
“He’d be extremely proud of the way Jason is handling this with his brain.” “He’d be beaming; he’d be so proud that I did this the right way,” Jay said. “My dad told me stand up for yourself — don’t be racist. Don’t take s— from anyone.” The family is well aware that the video of Phillips repelling three brawlers has become an Internet sensation. But the ugly incident can be used to teach and spark dialogue, they say.
Initially, Kirsten felt the gut-wrenching emotion of a mother watching her son on the pavement getting hammered by six fists.
“My heart stood still and I still choke up when I watch the video,” she said. “But I had to cheer when Jason got up and they started to scatter like little flies.” “It shows racism is alive and well,” she added. “First and foremost, people are talking about it.” Phillips says the media sensation around his actions has led to offers to teach in classrooms and even run for politics, as he proves he can “speak well” with his message against racism and gang-up attacks.
“I was at a rally [in Courtenay against racism] and eight mothers came up to me and said the same thing has happened to their kids,” he said.
“There’s a mentality bubbling up [with bullying and fighting in Courtenay] and I don’t want to see it explode.” Phillips says he will eventually show the now-famous fight video to his baby son, Malik. And like his father taught him, he’ll teach the boy to box.
“I’ll let him know racism is out there. I just hope he doesn’t have to go through this.” Before they were charged, the alleged attackers appeared in a TV interview with faces obscured under hooded sweaters. They admitted to racist language easily heard on the video, but claimed racial motivation in the fight was “blown out of proportion.” “We’re not white supremacists,” one said.
Police have presented evidence to Crown prosecutors and if the three are convicted, a judge will decide whether hate-crime law is warranted during sentencing, RCMP say.
Phillips told The Province he’s convinced he was the victim of a hate crime, but he’s not at all interested in vengeance on the three.
In fact, he hopes they get proper instruction — in the justice system.
“They’re young and stupid, so hopefully they’ll learn from this,” Phillips said.
“You start running around and doing this kind of stuff and sooner or later, someone loses their life.”
Ironic that he was in town filming a movie about racial profiling. Perhaps its time to racially profile whites across the world given the security risk they have constantly proven to be…
This never happened to Schwarzenegger.
Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan, who plays a Muslim mistaken for a terrorist in his latest film, says he was racially profiled at Newark Airport and detained for two hours on Friday.
The 43-year-old “Tom Cruise of India” – cited last year by Newsweek as one of the world’s 50 most influential men – was released only after Indian diplomats intervened.
“I was really being hassled, perhaps because of my name being Khan,” the international box office sensation charged Saturday in a text message to reporters.
“These guys wouldn’t let me through.”
Khan, who has appeared in more than 70 films, said he was waiting for his luggage Friday when his name popped up on a computer alert list. Security then pulled him aside.
“Absolutely uncalled for, I think,” Khan said. “I felt angry and humiliated.”
Khan said he endured two hours of interrogation before he was allowed to call the Indian embassy in Washington. An official there vouched for the star, who was then released.
“I was really taken aback,” Khan told an Indian television station. “I did not want to say anything just in case they took everything wrong, because I am a little worried about Americans because they do have this issue when your name is Muslim.”
The actor insisted he had all the proper paperwork when he was brought to a detention room at the New Jersey airport. But, he said, Khan “is a Muslim name, and I think the name is common on their checklist.”
“Shah Rukh Khan, the actor and global icon, is a very welcome guest in the United States,” Roemer said Saturday. “Many Americans love his films.”
But there were no Bollywood buffs in Newark as Khan came through the airport on his way to Chicago for a celebration of India’s independence day.
“I told them I am a movie star,” Khan said – although the line fell on deaf ears.
He recently signed a deal with Fox Star Studios to finance and distribute his new movie, “My Name is Khan” – the story of a Muslim man mistaken for a terrorist in post-9/11 America.
The incident caused outrage in his homeland, where the Khan-troversy dominated television news.
10 white guys to beat up 1 black kid…real he-men types..
REDCLIFFE: AN Aboriginal teenager who collapsed unconscious when his jaw was broken with a fence paling has told of a chilling ordeal with 10 attackers.
Woonun Willoughby’s mother Patrice Ann Power said her 18-year-old son was lucky to be alive after attempting to stop a late-night street fight at Kippa-Ring.
The family claims white supremacists, aged in their twenties and sporting Nazi tattoos on their arms, surrounded the Redcliffe High student and three of his friends.
“They wanted to speak with one of the boys Woonun was talking to but Woonun suggested there was a better way to solve the situation,’’ Mrs Power said.
“He was met with loud racist abuse and then smashed across the face with a fence paling with a nail in one end.
“He collapsed unconscious to the footpath with blood pouring from the hole in his face made by the nail, but fortunately his friend Justin bravely stood his ground and stayed with Woonun.’’
Redcliffe police this week downplayed fears of growing youth violence in Redcliffe.
But a Crimestoppers Redcliffe Committee source said violence was becoming more of a concern.
“We are very much aware of the youth violence problem,’’ she said.
Jarryd Williams, manager of the government-funded Redcliffe Youthspace, said youth violence was sporadic on the Peninsula.
“When these attacks occur probably nine out of 10 of them are racially motivated,’’ he said.
Woonun said he could not remember much of the attack but knew he needed to get to a safe spot and get an ambulance.
“Me and my mate weren’t even planning on doing anything, we were just chilling,’’ he said.
“The next thing I know, Im in hospital.’’
Woonun had been walking home with a friend after a night of playing video games when they met up with two former school mates, just prior to the bashing at about 12.30am Saturday.
He was taken to Caboolture Hospital because Redcliffe was overloaded.
“He had a titanium plate in his mouth. His jaw and lower teeth will be wired for six to eight weeks,’’ his mother said.
Mrs Power warned people about racial violence on the Peninsula, and the group that attacked her son.
“They don’t fear anyone and they’re thriving in Redcliffe,’’ she said.
Sen-Sgt Darryl Keys said Redcliffe police were not aware of the incident.
He said no complaint had been made on behalf of Mr Willoughby adding the local police were managing the levels of assaults (nine since July) on the Peninsula.
As usual white media plays down the high number of domestic terrorists in its midst…
Neo-Nazi Neil Lewington had “chilling” ambitions of forming a racist hit squad along the lines of Hitler’s Waffen SS.
Calling itself the Waffen SS UK, he envisaged teams working in twos to plant bombs all over Britain.
His plans were found in a hand-written manual called Waffen SS UK Members Handbook, discovered in his bedroom.
After defining terrorism and the law, he set out his “statement from the command council”.
It said: “A new group has been formed, the Waffen SS UK. We have 30 members split into 15 two-man cells.
“We are highly trained ex-military personnel and will use incendiary and explosive devices throughout the UK at random until all non-British people as defined by blood are removed from our country. This is no joke.
“In this country the most serious domestic terrorist threat is the Alf (Animal Liberation Front), start rewriting the books?
“Finally our motto: You cannot stop what can’t be stopped.”
Brian Altman QC told the jury: “You may conclude that this was a chilling mission statement, a statement of intention by this defendant, one he took very seriously and, quite clearly, an intention he had begun to put into effect.”
Under another title, Targeting/Attacking Pakis, was written “general surveillance, names and addresses, observing Asians in cars, planting motion-sensitive bombs, hate mail, hit-and-run by vehicles”.
He also used a statement linked to Combat 18, described as “Britain’s leading neo-fascist group”.
During the war, the feared Waffen SS acted as the Nazi party’s combat section and ran death camps in which millions of people were murdered.
Counter-terrorism police found nothing to suggest the existence of a UK group following Lewington’s arrest.
Although he had sympathies for fascist groups, there was no proof that he was a member of any organisation.
A source said: “The SS handbook, this was something he was planning – or at the very least gives an insight into his mind.
“He was a nobody who thought this would make him a somebody.”
In a ceremony at The Hague last week, the Dutch government officially restored an executed Ahanta chief’s head to Ghanaian tribal leaders, months after Ghana demanded its return.
Severed from the body of King Badu Bonsu II in 1838, the head hid preserved in a jar of formaldehyde in the Leiden University Medical Center’s anatomical wing for 170 years. It is believed that the Dutch decapitated the chief in retaliation for the deaths of two of their emissaries. Dutch officials issued a statement insisting that King Bonsu had been “handed over by his own nation,” according to the BBC. Arthur Japin, an author who came across the Ahanta chief’s head while researching a novel, believes that Maj. Gen. Jan Verveer brought the head back to the Netherlands at the request of a phrenologist. Phrenology, a pseudoscience popular in the 19th century, attempted to scientifically determine people’s characters by the lumps and structures of their skulls.
Professor Addo-Fening described to the BBC the head’s significance for the chief’s tribe, explaining that, “When people die and their bodies are not found and buried, it leaves a lingering fear that they will not find rest with their ancestors until this is done.”
Members of the Ahanta tribe, The Associated Press reports, sprinkled Dutch gin over the Foreign Ministry’s floor in honor of their former chief’s spirit. Despite Dutch Foreign Minister Maxime Verhagen’s insistence on the two countries’ “mutual desire to lay to rest episodes in … history that were unfortunate and shameful,” the Ahanta chief’s descendants remained angry, especially amid confusions over the transfer, according to the AP. Current Ahanta chief Nana Etsin Kofi II declared that, “We, the Ahanta, are not happy at all.” Leading the ceremony, Nana Kwekwe Darko III added that, “It is because of the injustice meted out to our people that our great king, who was fighting for his people, was murdered.”
With its extensive mineral wealth, Ghana, or the Gold Coast, was the first place in sub-Saharan Africa to attract European traders. In 1482, the Portuguese built the Gold Coast’s first permanent trading fort, the still-standing Elmina Castle. Although the government of Ghana reports that the area exported about 10 percent of the world’s gold supply by 1600, the gold trade rapidly gave way to the slave trade over the course of the 17th century.
According to Philip Curtin, a slave trade scholar cited by the Library of Congress, roughly 6.3 million slaves were sent to North and South America from West Africa. To this day, Ghana’s infamous Door of No Return, the spot where many shackled Africans last glimpsed the continent before boarding slave ships, stands as a monument to Ghana’s gruesome past.
With the new trade came new European traders, including the Dutch, the English, the Danish and the Swedish. The Dutch were a strong early presence, conquering Elmina Castle in 1642 and expanding their presence in the 1700s through the Dutch West India Company. During the 19th century, Britain became the dominant Gold Coast power, and finally expelled the Dutch in 1872 with the purchase of Elmina Castle. In 1874 the British declared their coastal protectorate the Gold Coast Colony, after having used hostility between tribes to expand their influence. The British continued to fight the powerful Asante tribe until 1902, the U.S. State Department explains, when they finally established control over that region.
In 1957, Ghana, the first sub-Saharan site of European trading, likewise became the first sub-Saharan country to declare independence from a colonial power.
Is it time for a “War on White Terror” to be declared?
A former Blackwater employee and an ex-US Marine who has worked as a security operative for the company have made a series of explosive allegations in sworn statements filed on August 3 in federal court in Virginia. The two men claim that the company’s owner, Erik Prince, may have murdered or facilitated the murder of individuals who were cooperating with federal authorities investigating the company. The former employee also alleges that Prince “views himself as a Christian crusader tasked with eliminating Muslims and the Islamic faith from the globe,” and that Prince’s companies “encouraged and rewarded the destruction of Iraqi life.”
In their testimony, both men also allege that Blackwater was smuggling weapons into Iraq. One of the men alleges that Prince turned a profit by transporting “illegal” or “unlawful” weapons into the country on Prince’s private planes. They also charge that Prince and other Blackwater executives destroyed incriminating videos, emails and other documents and have intentionally deceived the US State Department and other federal agencies. The identities of the two individuals were sealed out of concerns for their safety.
These allegations, and a series of other charges, are contained in sworn affidavits, given under penalty of perjury, filed late at night on August 3 in the Eastern District of Virginia as part of a seventy-page motion by lawyers for Iraqi civilians suing Blackwater for alleged war crimes and other misconduct. Susan Burke, a private attorney working in conjunction with the Center for Constitutional Rights, is suing Blackwater in five separate civil cases filed in the Washington, DC, area. They were recently consolidated before Judge T.S. Ellis III of the Eastern District of Virginia for pretrial motions. Burke filed the August 3 motion in response to Blackwater’s motion to dismiss the case. Blackwater asserts that Prince and the company are innocent of any wrongdoing and that they were professionally performing their duties on behalf of their employer, the US State Department.
The former employee, identified in the court documents as “John Doe #2,” is a former member of Blackwater’s management team, according to a source close to the case. Doe #2 alleges in a sworn declaration that, based on information provided to him by former colleagues, “it appears that Mr. Prince and his employees murdered, or had murdered, one or more persons who have provided information, or who were planning to provide information, to the federal authorities about the ongoing criminal conduct.” John Doe #2 says he worked at Blackwater for four years; his identity is concealed in the sworn declaration because he “fear[s] violence against me in retaliation for submitting this Declaration.” He also alleges, “On several occasions after my departure from Mr. Prince’s employ, Mr. Prince’s management has personally threatened me with death and violence.”
In a separate sworn statement, the former US marine who worked for Blackwater in Iraq alleges that he has “learned from my Blackwater colleagues and former colleagues that one or more persons who have provided information, or who were planning to provide information about Erik Prince and Blackwater have been killed in suspicious circumstances.” Identified as “John Doe #1,” he says he “joined Blackwater and deployed to Iraq to guard State Department and other American government personnel.” It is not clear if Doe #1 is still working with the company as he states he is “scheduled to deploy in the immediate future to Iraq.” Like Doe #2, he states that he fears “violence” against him for “submitting this Declaration.” No further details on the alleged murder(s) are provided.
“Mr. Prince feared, and continues to fear, that the federal authorities will detect and prosecute his various criminal deeds,” states Doe #2. “On more than one occasion, Mr. Prince and his top managers gave orders to destroy emails and other documents. Many incriminating videotapes, documents and emails have been shredded and destroyed.”
The Nation cannot independently verify the identities of the two individuals, their roles at Blackwater or what motivated them to provide sworn testimony in these civil cases. Both individuals state that they have previously cooperated with federal prosecutors conducting a criminal inquiry into Blackwater.
“It’s a pending investigation, so we cannot comment on any matters in front of a Grand Jury or if a Grand Jury even exists on these matters,” John Roth, the spokesperson for the US Attorney’s office in the District of Columbia, told The Nation. “It would be a crime if we did that.” Asked specifically about whether there is a criminal investigation into Prince regarding the murder allegations and other charges, Roth said: “We would not be able to comment on what we are or are not doing in regards to any possible investigation involving an uncharged individual.”
The Nation repeatedly attempted to contact spokespeople for Prince or his companies at numerous email addresses and telephone numbers. When a company representative was reached by phone and asked to comment, she said, “Unfortunately no one can help you in that area.” The representative then said that she would pass along The Nation’s request. As this article goes to press, no company representative has responded further to The Nation.
Doe #2 states in the declaration that he has also provided the information contained in his statement “in grand jury proceedings convened by the United States Department of Justice.” Federal prosecutors convened a grand jury in the aftermath of the September 16, 2007, Nisour Square shootings in Baghdad, which left seventeen Iraqis dead. Five Blackwater employees are awaiting trial on several manslaughter charges and a sixth, Jeremy Ridgeway, has already pleaded guilty to manslaughter and attempting to commit manslaughter and is cooperating with prosecutors. It is not clear whether Doe #2 testified in front of the Nisour Square grand jury or in front of a separate grand jury.
The two declarations are each five pages long and contain a series of devastating allegations concerning Erik Prince and his network of companies, which now operate under the banner of Xe Services LLC. Among those leveled by Doe #2 is that Prince “views himself as a Christian crusader tasked with eliminating Muslims and the Islamic faith from the globe”:
To that end, Mr. Prince intentionally deployed to Iraq certain men who shared his vision of Christian supremacy, knowing and wanting these men to take every available opportunity to murder Iraqis. Many of these men used call signs based on the Knights of the Templar, the warriors who fought the Crusades.
Mr. Prince operated his companies in a manner that encouraged and rewarded the destruction of Iraqi life. For example, Mr. Prince’s executives would openly speak about going over to Iraq to “lay Hajiis out on cardboard.” Going to Iraq to shoot and kill Iraqis was viewed as a sport or game. Mr. Prince’s employees openly and consistently used racist and derogatory terms for Iraqis and other Arabs, such as “ragheads” or “hajiis.”
Among the additional allegations made by Doe #1 is that “Blackwater was smuggling weapons into Iraq.” He states that he personally witnessed weapons being “pulled out” from dog food bags. Doe #2 alleges that “Prince and his employees arranged for the weapons to be polywrapped and smuggled into Iraq on Mr. Prince’s private planes, which operated under the name Presidential Airlines,” adding that Prince “generated substantial revenues from participating in the illegal arms trade.”
Doe #2 states: “Using his various companies, [Prince] procured and distributed various weapons, including unlawful weapons such as sawed off semi-automatic machine guns with silencers, through unlawful channels of distribution.” Blackwater “was not abiding by the terms of the contract with the State Department and was deceiving the State Department,” according to Doe #1.
This is not the first time an allegation has surfaced that Blackwater used dog food bags to smuggle weapons into Iraq. ABC News’s Brian Ross reported in November 2008 that a “federal grand jury in North Carolina is investigating allegations the controversial private security firm Blackwater illegally shipped assault weapons and silencers to Iraq, hidden in large sacks of dog food.” Another former Blackwater employee has also confirmed this information to The Nation.
Both individuals allege that Prince and Blackwater deployed individuals to Iraq who, in the words of Doe #1, “were not properly vetted and cleared by the State Department.” Doe #2 adds that “Prince ignored the advice and pleas from certain employees, who sought to stop the unnecessary killing of innocent Iraqis.” Doe #2 further states that some Blackwater officials overseas refused to deploy “unfit men” and sent them back to the US. Among the reasons cited by Doe #2 were “the men making statements about wanting to deploy to Iraq to ‘kill ragheads’ or achieve ‘kills’ or ‘body counts,’” as well as “excessive drinking” and “steroid use.” However, when the men returned to the US, according to Doe #2, “Prince and his executives would send them back to be deployed in Iraq with an express instruction to the concerned employees located overseas that they needed to ’stop costing the company money.’”
Doe #2 also says Prince “repeatedly ignored the assessments done by mental health professionals, and instead terminated those mental health professionals who were not willing to endorse deployments of unfit men.” He says Prince and then-company president Gary Jackson “hid from Department of State the fact that they were deploying men to Iraq over the objections of mental health professionals and security professionals in the field,” saying they “knew the men being deployed were not suitable candidates for carrying lethal weaponry, but did not care because deployments meant more money.”
Doe #1 states that “Blackwater knew that certain of its personnel intentionally used excessive and unjustified deadly force, and in some instances used unauthorized weapons, to kill or seriously injure innocent Iraqi civilians.” He concludes, “Blackwater did nothing to stop this misconduct.” Doe #1 states that he “personally observed multiple incidents of Blackwater personnel intentionally using unnecessary, excessive and unjustified deadly force.” He then cites several specific examples of Blackwater personnel firing at civilians, killing or “seriously” wounding them, and then failing to report the incidents to the State Department.
Doe #1 also alleges that “all of these incidents of excessive force were initially videotaped and voice recorded,” but that “Immediately after the day concluded, we would watch the video in a session called a ‘hot wash.’ Immediately after the hotwashing, the video was erased to prevent anyone other than Blackwater personnel seeing what had actually occurred.” Blackwater, he says, “did not provide the video to the State Department.”
Doe #2 expands on the issue of unconventional weapons, alleging Prince “made available to his employees in Iraq various weapons not authorized by the United States contracting authorities, such as hand grenades and hand grenade launchers. Mr. Prince’s employees repeatedly used this illegal weaponry in Iraq, unnecessarily killing scores of innocent Iraqis.” Specifically, he alleges that Prince “obtained illegal ammunition from an American company called LeMas. This company sold ammunition designed to explode after penetrating within the human body. Mr. Prince’s employees repeatedly used this illegal ammunition in Iraq to inflict maximum damage on Iraqis.”
Blackwater has gone through an intricate rebranding process in the twelve years it has been in business, changing its name and logo several times. Prince also has created more than a dozen affiliate companies, some of which are registered offshore and whose operations are shrouded in secrecy. According to Doe #2, “Prince created and operated this web of companies in order to obscure wrongdoing, fraud and other crimes.”
“For example, Mr. Prince transferred funds from one company (Blackwater) to another (Greystone) whenever necessary to avoid detection of his money laundering and tax evasion schemes.” He added: “Mr. Prince contributed his personal wealth to fund the operations of the Prince companies whenever he deemed such funding necessary. Likewise, Mr. Prince took funds out of the Prince companies and placed the funds in his personal accounts at will.”
Briefed on the substance of these allegations by The Nation, Congressman Dennis Kucinich replied, “If these allegations are true, Blackwater has been a criminal enterprise defrauding taxpayers and murdering innocent civilians.” Kucinich is on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform and has been investigating Prince and Blackwater since 2004.
“Blackwater is a law unto itself, both internationally and domestically. The question is why they operated with impunity. In addition to Blackwater, we should be questioning their patrons in the previous administration who funded and employed this organization. Blackwater wouldn’t exist without federal patronage; these allegations should be thoroughly investigated,” Kucinich said.
A hearing before Judge Ellis in the civil cases against Blackwater is scheduled for August 7.
BOULDER, Colo. — A Boulder transient faces a hate-crime charge after he was accused of calling a black teenager a racial slur, referring to him as Mike Tyson and challenging him to a boxing match.
Luke Barrett, 26, was arrested on suspicion of a bias-motivated crime and child abuse at about 8:30 p.m. Friday after two teenagers waved down a police officer and reported being harassed, Boulder police spokeswoman Sarah Huntley said.
The teens told officers an apparent homeless man walked up to them in the 1200 block of College Avenue and called the black 15-year-old a derogatory name before putting up his arms in a fighting stance, Huntley said.
Barrett is suspected of saying something to the effect of, “Hey Mike Tyson, let’s box,” according to Huntley. The teenager said he didn’t want to fight and stepped back. At that point, the suspect turned and started running away, she said.
The teens tried to follow, but they lost sight of him. When police arrived, the teens provided a detailed description of the suspect, and officers found him a short distance away, Huntley said.
Police stopped Barrett, and he admitted to approaching the teens and using language with the intent of “starting trouble,” Huntley said. Barrett also was under the influence of alcohol, she said.
Barrett didn’t physically assault the teenagers, but Huntley said he was arrested because “the victim was shaken by what happened.”
SCRANTON, Pa. – In a few weeks, thousands of foreign exchange students will arrive in the United States for what they hope will be a rewarding time of study and cultural enrichment. Shortly after that, Danielle Grijalva’s phone will start ringing, and her e-mail inbox will begin filling up. It happens every year.
While most of the 30,000 exchange students who come to the U.S. each year have positive experiences, some find themselves stuck in bad homes with little prospect of getting out — especially if the agency that placed them doesn’t take their concerns seriously or even blames them for the problems.
These are Grijalva’s kids.
From her base in Oceanside, Calif., the 43-year-old stay-at-home mom has almost single-handedly taken on the foreign exchange industry, intervening in abuse cases, questioning placement agencies‘ marketing practices, and bashing the U.S. State Department for what she says is lax regulation.
The industry says she exaggerates problems and makes reckless allegations. Two defamation lawsuits have been filed against her.
But the watchdog’s complaints about the dozens of programs that import foreigners were recently borne out in northeastern Pennsylvania, where a Scranton woman was charged last week with child endangerment for allegedly placing exchange students in filthy homes with ex-convicts and not enough food. Grijalva helped one of the teens file a complaint with the State Department and offered advice to local child welfare investigators on how to proceed.
Her involvement was to be expected. Since launching her tiny nonprofit five years ago — the Committee for Safety of Foreign Exchange Students — Grijalva (gree-HAHL’-vah) has answered thousands of e-mails and phone calls from aggrieved students and their worried parents back home.
“By the time they reach CFCES, they are so exhausted and so emotional, but so elated to find someone who will say, ‘We will help you as much as we can,’” Grijalva said.
She has racked up some notable successes. Besides getting students out of bad situations, her organization successfully pushed for regulatory reform in 2006 and investigated an Allentown-based placement agency that Pennsylvania authorities shut down earlier this year.
She’s also made enemies. On a recent Sunday morning, Grijalva was served with a state lawsuit that claims she defamed one of the largest exchange programs, California-based Council for Educational Travel, USA, by making “false statements” about it while intervening in the case of a Norwegian student in Minnesota.
A French agency, Programmes Internationaux d’Echanges, and two of its U.S. affiliates sued her for defamation in North Carolina two years ago, and won a preliminary injunction against her while the case proceeds.
Grijalva, who has countersued P.I.E., says the lawsuits are intended to shut her up.
But critics complain that she paints with an overly broad brush, resulting in a distorted picture of the U.S. exchange program. Since the majority of students go home happy, they say it’s unfair and inaccurate to malign an entire industry based on scattered cases of abuse and neglect.
“She tends to speak in fairly broad generalizations that are probably pretty hard to prove,” said John Hishmeh, executive director of the industry’s accrediting body, the Council on Standards for International Educational Travel. “When you look at (the recent Pennsylvania scandal) and somebody says, ‘That’s how they all are,’ that’s reckless.”
Grijalva makes no apologies for her activism or her tactics.
“Some people are trying to say I have an agenda, a vendetta. We’re talking about the health, safety and welfare of children that are treated like cars being moved off the lot,” she said. “This is not about me. This is about the efforts of CSFES to protect these kids.”
In that regard, she has a lot of satisfied customers.
Danish student Emily Larsen says her host family in Denver belonged to a fundamentalist church that denounced Jews, Muslims, homosexuals and others. Larsen, who was raised secular, says she was made to go to the church 10 hours a week, and that it “brainwashed” her and pressured her to join. When her placement counselor ignored her pleas for help, she turned to CSFES.
“I felt like my whole life was totally falling apart,” said Larsen, of Copenhagen, whose experience left her so traumatized that she has been seeing a psychologist. “In two days, Danielle got me out.”
Nemesia Lago, a Colombian whose teenage son was one of five exchange students found to be living in deplorable conditions in Scranton, says Grijalva responded immediately to her request for help and was dogged in her advocacy. “She became like an angel,” Lago, of La Guajira, wrote in an e-mail.
Grijalva says exchange agencies often bring students to the U.S. without first securing host families for them, leading to hasty, ill-advised placements like the ones in northeastern Pennsylvania. And many agencies require students to first approach their local coordinators with problems, threatening them with repatriation if they seek outside help.
She used to be part of the industry, working as a placement counselor between 2002 and 2004 and taking pride in matching exchange students with caring, qualified host families. But she was disturbed by her company’s marketing practices, and quit the business altogether in the wake of a case of sexual abuse — involving a placement by another representative — that she says the company tried to cover up.
Shortly thereafter, Grijalva began CSFES, which she operates on a shoestring, relying on a network of more than 1,000 volunteers around the country. A former legal secretary who left the work force 13 years ago to raise her three children, she is close to finishing her college degree and plans to go to law school.
Lana Simovic of Podgorica, Montenegro says her son was sent home by his exchange agency after only two months for what she described as relatively minor rules violations, prompting a State Department inquiry into the program’s actions. She called Grijalva a godsend.
“Danielle Grijalva is (the) only person that gave me hope that in America there are reasonable people,” she wrote in an e-mail.
Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr., one of the nation’s pre-eminent African-American scholars, was arrested Thursday afternoon at his home by Cambridge police investigating a possible break-in. The incident raised concerns among some Harvard faculty that Gates was a victim of racial profiling.
Police arrived at Gates’s Ware Street home near Harvard Square at 12:44 p.m. to question him. Gates, director of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research at Harvard, had trouble unlocking his door after it became jammed.
He was booked for disorderly conduct after “exhibiting loud and tumultuous behavior,” according to a police report. Gates accused the investigating officer of being a racist and told him he had “no idea who he was messing with,” the report said.
Gates told the officer that he was being targeted because “I’m a black man in America.”
Friends of Gates said he was already in his home when police arrived. He showed his driver’s license and Harvard identification card, but was handcuffed and taken into police custody for several hours last Thursday, they said.
The police report said Gates was arrested after he yelled at the investigating officer repeatedly inside the residence then followed the officer outside, where Gates continued to upbraid him. “It was at that time that I informed Professor Gates that he was under arrest,” the officer wrote in the report.
Gates, 58, declined to comment today when reached by phone.
The arrest of such a prominent scholar under what some described as dubious circumstances shook some members of the black Harvard community.
“He and I both raised the question of if he had been a white professor, whether this kind of thing would have happened to him, that they arrested him without any corroborating evidence,” said S. Allen Counter, a Harvard Medical School professor who spoke with Gates about the incident Friday. “I am deeply concerned about the way he was treated, and called him to express my deepest sadness and sympathy.”
Counter, who had called Gates from the Nobel Institute in Sweden, where Counter is on sabbatical, said that Gates was “shaken” and “horrified” by his arrest.
Counter has faced a similar situation himself. The well-known neuroscience professor, who is also black, was stopped by two Harvard police officers in 2004 after being mistaken for a robbery suspect as he crossed Harvard Yard. They threatened to arrest him when he could not produce identification.
That incident was among several that ignited criticism from black students and faculty, highlighting the prejudices that many black students say they continue to face at Harvard.
“This is very disturbing that this could happen to anyone, and not just to a person of such distinction,” Counter said. “He was just shocked that this had happened, at 12:44 in the afternoon, in broad daylight. It brings up the question of whether black males are being targeted by Cambridge police for harassment.”
Cambridge police would not comment on the arrest, citing an investigation into the incident by Middlesex District Attorney Gerard T. Leone Jr. A spokesman for Leone said Gates is scheduled to be arraigned on Aug. 26 and said the office could not provide details on the arrest until that time.
Gates is being represented by Harvard Law School professor Charles Ogletree, who has taken on previous cases with racial implications.
PARIS– French tourists are the worst in the world, coming across as bad at foreign languages, tight-fisted and arrogant, according to a survey of 4,500 hotel owners across the world.
They finish in last place in the survey carried out for internet travel agencyExpedia by polling company TNS Infratest, which said French holidaymakers don’t speak local languages and are seen as impolite.
“It’s mainly the fact that they speak little or no English when they’re abroad, and they don’t speak much of the local language,” Expedia Marketing Director Timothee de Roux told radio station France Info.
“The French don’t go abroad very much. We’re lucky enough to have a country which is magnificent in terms of its landscape and culture,” he said, adding that 90 per cent of French people did their traveling at home.
“So when they’re on holiday they can be a bit stressed, they’re not used to things, and this can lead them to be demanding in a way which could be seen as a certain arrogance.”
French tourists are also accused of generally spending less than other nationalities when abroad.
De Roux said the French, not accustomed to leaving large tips at home where a service charge is automatically levied on restaurant bills, can seem “tight-fisted” compared with other nationalities.
The Japanese ranked top of the Best Tourist survey, with the British and the Germans judged the best of the Europeans.
But French tourists received some consolation for their poor performance, finishing third after the Italians and British for dress sense while on holiday.
The White media has ignored this shocking tale of manslaughter in the hope that it will go away. Why do they tolerate Neo-Nazis, who insist on using murderous violence against non-whites? Should white males be considered terrorists until proven otherwise? Isn’t it time non-whites take measures to protect themselves and their families from savage unrepentant racist white terrorists?
A woman stabbed to death in a German court was an Egyptian who had sued her attacker after he insulted her for wearing the Islamic headscarf, local newspapers reported on Friday.
Marwa Aal-Sherbini, 32, who was killed in a court in Dresden on Wednesday, was the wife of Egyptian academic Elwi Ali Okaz who was also hurt in the incident and is now in critical condition in hospital, the state-owned Al-Akhbar reported.
Husband Okaz was in Germany on a scholarship through Menufiya University’s institute of Genetic Engineering. He is still unaware that his wife had died.
The attacker stabbed Sherbini “shortly before she was to give evidence in an appeal lodged by the man against a conviction for insulting her over wearing the hijab,” said the state-owned Egyptian Gazette.
The 28-year-old man, identified only as Axel W., was overpowered and was being investigated for manslaughter over the killing of the woman, a spokesman for the Dresden prosecutor’s office said.
Axel W. was previously found guilty and fined €2,800 in civil compensation for calling the victim a “terrorist” in August 2008 in a Dresden park because she was wearing a headscarf.
Magdi Al-Sayed, press officer at the German embassy in Cairo, said the case was isolated and did not reflect German attitude towards Muslims.
“It is a criminal act. It has nothing to do with persecution against Muslims,” Sayed told the Gazette.
The Minister of Higher Education Hani Helal has given orders that travel arrangements to Germany for the families of both victims be facilitated. –Daily News Egypt with additional reporting by AFP
Khursheda’s father and nephew were injured in the attack
Why aren’t Neo-Nazis being publicly executed for killing children? Hat tip : Greg
Russia’s Supreme Court has upheld the verdict in the high-profile killing of a nine-year-old Tajik girl in 2004.
In March, seven defendants were found guilty of hooliganism and one of them was found not guilty of murder.
Khursheda Sultonova died of 11 knife wounds in St Petersburg after being attacked by a group of teenagers.
The seven teenagers were given jail terms of 18 months to five-and-a-half years. Prosecutors and defence lawyers appealed against the verdict.
The jury also rejected prosecution claims that the attack in February in 2004 was ethnically motivated.
Ethnic minority activists in Russia have raised concerns that the ruling could provoke more attacks by racists who think they can act with impunity.
Russia has recently witnessed a series of attacks targeting foreigners and representatives of ethnic minorities. Some of the attacks were fatal.
Dissatisfaction
“The panel of judges ruled to uphold the verdict delivered by the St Petersburg City Court on 30 May to seven defendants,” said the Supreme Court’s ruling, quoted by Russia’s Itar-Tass news agency.
The court also dismissed requests by both sides to hold a retrial, without further elaboration.
Prosecutors had been pressing for a retrial, arguing that “the jury sympathised” with the defendants, Itar-Tass reported.
The defence lawyers also expressed dissatisfaction with the court’s ruling, claiming that the trial was flawed.
They said they did not rule out appealing against the verdict to the European Court of Human Rights.
Uefa has given referees the power to abandon matches in the event of racist chanting inside a stadium.
European football’s governing body has implemented a three-step procedure that comes into force with immediate effect.
The referee should first demand over the public address system that fans’ racist behaviour should stop.
The next step is to suspend the match for up to 10 minutes with the teams sent to the dressing room. If that does not work, the game should be abandoned.
Uefa president Michel Platini said there would be no compromise in his organisation’s stance against racism in football.
“Our policy on racism is one of zero tolerance,” said Platini.
“It was necessary to give the pitch people the means to do something, and we have determined the parameters and lines of conduct, whereby in important cases of racist behaviour in a stadium, a referee must stop the match.
“There are people of authority such as the referee and match delegate who can consult before deciding to temporarily suspend a match for five or 10 minutes, in agreement with officials responsible for security – and from then, if the atmosphere remains negative, the match must be stopped.”
Platini first revealed plans to abandon matches in April of this year after Inter Milan striker Mario Balotelli was racially abused by Juventus fans.
The Italian authorities ordered Juve to play their next home league game behind closed doors.
England players Ashley Cole and Shaun Wright-Phillips were subjected to racial abuse when they played against Spain at Real Madrid’s Bernabeu Stadium in 2004.
The decision was taken at a meeting of Uefa’s executive committee in Vilnius, Lithuania.
LOS ANGELES, CA – Plans for Michael Jackson’s funeral have been revealed by his estate.
Michael Jackson died yesterday afternoon of a heart attack. People all over the world mourn the loss of the King of Pop. In cities across the globe people gathered in squares and parks with candles in hand to mournfully sing his classics like “Beat It” and “Don’t Stop till You Get Enough.” In Utah the Salt Lake City Boys Choir did an a cappella version of “Billie Jean” that was broadcast on loudspeakers into the city and on Mormon Television Networks.
Representatives of the Jackson estate have released a statement detailing some of the plans for Mr. Jackson’s funeral. In his will Jackson wishes for his body to be cremated and sprinkled over the surface of the moon. However since then his finances have taken a downturn and new plans have had to be created.
A somber and respectful service will be held at an upscale funeral home in Los Angeles. The funeral will be closed casket, with a large picture of Michael from 1982. Seated front row will be Jackson’s ex-wife Lisa Marie Presley, the skeleton of the Elephant Man, Bubbles 4 (the most recent pet monkey to carry the name), and Macaulay Culkin. The remaining members of the Four Tops, The Temptations, Stevie Wonder, Diana Ross and the Supremes will all perform at the ceremony to pay their respects. Acting as pallbearers will be the Harlem Globetrotters, who made Michael an honorary member in 1978.
President Barack Obama has expressed his sadness at the news of Jackson’s death. In respect he held his press conference on the matter wearing one white glove. Secret Service reports indicate he spent last night drinking scotch and moon-walking through the White House.
Sources within the intelligence community believe that Kim Jong Il may be planning a tribute concert in Pyongyang, wearing a red leather version of his standard jumpsuit. Photographs show Kim Jong Il desperately trying to learn the dance to Thriller.
The closed casket, and other details, have raised some questions. Yesterday afternoon also saw a flurry of strange meteorological activity over the New Mexico desert. When asked, one source working out of Area 51 who wishes to remain anonymous said “Michael? He not dead. He’s just going home.”
Despite his many controversies and eccentricities the world mourns the loss of this unforgettable musical icon.
Two boys aged 15 and 16 have been charged in connection with the intimidation of Romanian families in south Belfast.
Both have been charged with provocative behaviour. The 15 year old is also charged with intimidation.
They were arrested in the wake of vandalism and attacks on the homes of more than 100 Romanian migrants.
Meanwhile, a crowd of about 200 people attended an anti-racism rally at Belfast City Hall on Saturday.
The attacks forced the Romanian people to leave their homes and seek refuge in a church hall.
The two youths are due to appear before Belfast Magistrates’ Court on Monday morning, a police spokesman said.
Two houses in the Donegall Avenue area were searched during a police operation.
A number of Romanian families had to leave their homes on Tuesday and were housed in temporary accommodation.
About 200 people attended an anti-racism rally at Belfast’s City Hall
A Romanian family was also attacked in east Belfast on Wednesday when a window was smashed in their home on the Upper Newtownards Road.
South Belfast MLA Anna Lo told the rally that most of the affected families are already preparing to leave Northern Ireland.
“The majority are making preparations to go back to Romania,” she said.
“I think this is a very sad picture for Northern Ireland, that we can’t protect people who have come seeking a better life.
“So many of them liked it here, they like the people here, they like their jobs – but what happened in the last few days makes them fearful of staying here.”
Patricia McKeown, of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, said: “We cannot accept this happening to anyone in our society, particularly those who are the most vulnerable and who have come here because they are fleeing repression in their own country and across Europe.”
Barbara Muldoon, of the Anti-Racism Network, addressed those who had carried out the attacks, saying: “You do not speak on behalf of the people of Belfast or Northern Ireland.
The benefits of of being a white war criminal : Torture and sexually abuse prisoners in an illegal war, barely spend anytime in prison, show no regret and get a book deal.
In this deeply disturbing interview, the trailer trash torturer who appalled the world by appearing in shocking ’souvenir’ photographs remains utterly unrepentant and says she has 800 MORE torture photos that could rock the White House
Normally, not much happens in Keyser, West Virginia, but today the folks in this quaint little railroad town, nestling in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains, are spoilt for choice.
Either they can whoop and holler along to fiddle music at the annual Strawberry Festival or head down to the bookshop, where a local ‘celebrity’ – as her agent-cum-lawyer describes her – is signing first editions of her new biography.
Arriving at Main Street Books to find a young woman – considerably heavier now, but still grimly familiar – loitering self-consciously beside a pile of unsold manuscripts, it becomes clear that the fiddle players have won hands-down.
Degrading: One of the images of U.S. soldier Lynndie England at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. Six years on a defiant England claims she was just doing her duty
When the shop closes, two hours later, Lynndie England has autographed barely two dozen copies, mostly for acquaintances such as her old schoolteacher.
For even on her home territory, few people are willing to line the pockets of this fallen girl soldier; who posed for a stomach-churning series of ’souvenir’ photographs that cost countless American lives and brought shame on the nation.
Five years have passed since a U.S. TV station first broadcast those pictures, staged to humiliate and dehumanise Iraqi prisoners – and provide warped amusement for their U.S. Army guards – at Abu Ghraib prison, near Baghdad.
They caused universal outrage, ending any lingering pretence that President George W. Bush was on some moral crusade in Iraq, and sparking a wave of retaliatory beheadings; many of which were videoed to reciprocate the horror and degradation meted out to the Muslim detainees.
Such was their impact that they are still said to be used as recruitment propaganda for Islamic terror groups.
After all, what better way to incite a young fanatic than by showing him a photo of a female American soldier nonchalantly holding a leash, tightened around the neck of a naked and hooded Iraqi prisoner, as he squirms on the floor of his cell?
In another photograph, the waif-like Military Police private casually inspects a line of terrified Iraqi prisoners – again stripped and wearing sandbags over their heads – as they are forced to masturbate.
Grinning broadly with a cigarette clamped in her mouth, England, then just 21 and weighing less than seven stone, added to their humiliation by pointing mockingly at their genitals and giving the thumbs-up sign; a gesture now known as the ‘Lynndie salute’.
One of seven U.S. Army reserves jailed for mistreating prisoners at Abu Ghraib – including her former lover Corporal Charles Graner, a sadistic, camera-obsessed bully who orchestrated the photo sessions – she has served three years in detention and is now on parole.
With a new book to peddle and her appeal against the conviction due to be heard next month, one might have expected the 26-year-old England to express some remorse.
Following Barack Obama’s release of CIA torture files which lend credence to her claim that the ritual humiliation of prisoners was a White House sanctioned tactic during the Bush regime, she even consulted her local senator about petitioning for a Presidential pardon
But ’sorry’, it becomes clear, is not in Lynndie England’s vocabulary.
When we speak, three things strike me: her breathtaking lack of contrition; her unsuitability to have been a serving soldier and her utter indifference towards the horrifically abused prisoners at Abu Ghraib, 90 per cent of whom were later released without charge.
Since no established biographer would touch her life story (it was even dropped by the literary agent who handled O.J. Simpson’s widely reviled book, If I Did It) her biography has been penned by a greenhorn local author, Gary Winkler.
For a man whose two previous works were lilting chronicles of Appalachian life, it has proved a chastening experience. Not only has he fallen out bitterly with his subject and her agent-cum-lawyer and confidant, Roy T. Hardy, but he has patently struggled to get the characteristically withdrawn England to open up.
‘I just don’t think she’s a very deep person,’ Winkler, a white-bearded former musician in his late 50s, concludes miserably.
Disgrace: Iraq detainees appear to be surrounded by U.S. military personnel at the Abu Ghraib prison
‘Lynndie only has two moods: bored and p****d off.’
During our first meeting, when she yawns through my questions, I see what he means.
Two days later, however, perhaps enlivened by the anti-depressant tablets upon which she relies, England is more animated and opens up to describe the background to the photographs in more detail than ever before.
They were taken on three separate nights in late October and early November 2003. At the time, her job was to process the detainees’ admission and release forms.
As a clerical support worker, she had no business in the so-called Hard Site at Abu Ghraib, a block of some 40 cells where the supposedly most dangerous inmates were held.
But she routinely sneaked in late at night to sleep with Graner, a hulking 6ft 3in ex-Marine in charge of the night patrol.
After their arrest, she discovered he had also been having sex with another female soldier who worked on the block, Megan Ambuhl, whom he has married while in prison.
At the time of their affair, England was also married, to childhood sweetheart James Fike, so their relationship was against U.S. military rules.
Even after being repeatedly warned, she refused to break off with Graner and was eventually demoted.
She says she was mesmerised by Graner, who worked in civilian life as a prison corrections officer and had an appalling record for abusing prisoners – one claimed he hid razor blades in the prison food.
‘I was blinded by a fool’s love,’ England says in her cigarette-coarsened south-country drawl, as if this explains and excuses her participation in the pictures.
‘I know now that Graner was manipulating me, but at that point I would have done anything he told me.’
I ask her about one of the most chilling pictures, in which seven naked detainees, brought to the block after allegedly taking part in a riot elsewhere in the prison, were forced to form a ‘human pyramid’.
After instructing the men to pile up on top of one another, Graner proudly draped his arm around England, and the smiling couple posed beside the grotesque tangle of human flesh.
Looking at the image now, it appears that the detainees could not have remained in this painful position for very long; yet England says quite matter-of-factly that they were forced to stay fixed in position for ‘20 minutes or something’.
When I suggest that this must have been excruciatingly painful, she shrugs and replies: ‘Probably.’
So why hadn’t she asked Graner to call a halt? A grin and another shrug: ‘I’m pretty sure he’d have said “No”.
‘There were only three of us and seven of them, and he wanted to contain them by keeping them connected and concentrating on not falling – so they wouldn’t overpower us. That’s how he explained it.’
But surely she must have felt some pity for them? As often, she takes an eternity to reply, then says: ‘In my eyes they were the enemy; the other side. What happens in war happens. They would have done 20 times worse to us.’
Five years on: Lynndie England with her authorised biography
We move on to another hideous image, in which the same group of prisoners – one of whom Graner had punched full in the face – were lined up and ordered to masturbate.
How long had this sick charade continued? ‘You are going to find this ridiculous,’ says England, half suppressing a snigger. ‘One guy did 45 minutes! Freddie [Graner's fellow prison guard, Ivan Frederick] just wanted to see if they would do it – and all seven of them lined up doing this.
‘Well, six stopped after a few minutes, but the seventh carried on.’
Hearing this account for the first time, even Roy T. Hardy, her lawyer, who had thought himself beyond shock after representing England for five years, is clearly taken aback.
‘But you were there the whole time?’ gasps bespectacled, roly-poly Hardy. ‘I’ve never heard this stuff before.’
‘Yes I was – unfortunately,’ England says, fixing him with her strange, lop-sided smile. ‘I was standing there, like, watching. I was there the whole four hours.’
Hardy, who doubles as a local assistant county prosecutor, clears his throat, as if about to address the bench. ‘Don’t mistake Lynndie’s grin for amusement,’ he implores me. ‘That’s just a nervous mannerism.’
Maybe so, I say, but she caused so much harm. What people want to hear is an apology.
‘Sorry? For what I did?’ she interjects, incredulous. ‘All I did was stand in the pictures. Saying sorry is admitting I was guilty and I’m not. I was just doing my duty.’
She recites her often-rehearsed argument: that the Abu Ghraib guards were tacitly encouraged to ’soften up’ the prisoners before they were interrogated by military intelligence officers.
Given all we know now, this sounds plausible. It is also easy to see how this gullible backwoods girl became the sociopathic Graner’s stooge; as Gary Winkler says: ‘She was his prop; all she was guilty of is stupidity.’
For all this, however, it is impossible to empathise with her, for she is such an unsympathetic character.
The daughter of a railway worker, Ken England, and his wife Terrie, she was two years old when her family moved from Kentucky to a trailer park in Fort Ashby, West Virginia.
There she grew into a tomboy and loner, never happier than when shooting squirrels in the woods. Until her wedding day, she had never owned a dress.
Teachers recall her for saying almost nothing during her school years, and her defence psychologist diagnosed her with speech-related learning difficulty called selective mutism.
However, she was bright enough to graduate from high school with good grades, and set her heart on becoming a meteorologist.
This ambition began, she says, after she saw the film Twister and became fascinated by tornadoes.
To pay her way through college, she took menial jobs, including processing chickens and serving in a supermarket, where she fell for the mild-mannered Fike.
They were divorced after she admitted her affair with Graner, although England insists she still loves Fike, and would like to get back together with him.
‘But I wouldn’t blame him if he hates me.’
They wed as teenagers, but soon afterwards she joined the local reserve regiment, the 372nd Military Police Company – partly because she needed the money, but mainly because she ‘always wanted to serve’, she says.
Never having travelled beyond the nearby states, and not even owning a passport, she hadn’t expected to be sent overseas.
But as operations in Afghanistan and Iraq stretched U.S. services to breaking point, the ‘weekend warriors’ were marched off to war.
By then her affair with Graner had already begun. Having pursued her for weeks at their U.S. base, Fort Lee, the 34-year-old divorce 14 years her senior, checked them into a seedy motel where the liaison was consummated.
She first discovered that Graner got a kick out of taking – and showing his friends – perverted photographs of her soon afterwards, when they holidayed in Virginia Beach.
This was in March 2003, more than six months before the Abu Ghraib pictures were taken.
While she performed a sex act on him, he reached for his Sony and started clicking away, she says.
‘Whoa! Hey, what are you doing? I don’t want pictures taken,’ England says she protested.
But when Graner insisted they were for his eyes only and just ‘harmless fun’, she relented.
She claims she had no idea he was emailing compromising pictures of her to fellow soldiers until after her arrest; hence her lack of caution when he asked her to pose with the prisoners.
However, as her boyfriend had maliciously shown the Virginia Beach photos to her mortified parents during a visit to her family in April 2003 – by ‘accidentally’ slipping them in among some other innocent snaps they were viewing – surely alarm bells should have rung?
Graner and England were deployed to Abu Ghraib in October 2003, and although nothing can excuse their subsequent behaviour, it is possible to see how things happened.
A few months earlier, the prison had held just 700 detainees, but when they arrived the numbers had swollen to 7,000.
Understaffed, undertrained and poorly led, the guards struggled to control this sweltering bedlam.
Though she insists that ‘everyone’ knew about the detainee photographs, a criminal investigation began only some three months after they were taken, when a soldier with a conscience, Sergeant Joseph Darby, handed in two CDs of photographs which Graner had boastfully shown to him.
Hastily airlifted out of Iraq for his own safety, Darby has lived in hiding ever since. Just as well, for England says she would ‘definitely beat the hell out of him if I saw him’, adding: ‘In war, you don’t rat on your buddies.’
Intriguingly, she claims to possess about 800 more unseen photographs from her time in Iraq, depicting scenes which would be highly damaging to the U.S. Army and the White House, if they were ever released.
Sick: Prisoners are made to lie on top of each other naked
Roy T. Hardy claims they include pictures of an Iraqi woman bearing her breasts and graphic images of wounded enemy combatants, but declines to go into more detail because, until her dishonorable discharge is finalised, England remains a serving soldier.
It is not clear whether these photographs, which are locked away in a vault, are among the hundreds which Obama is withholding – having reneged last month on his promise to release them when he came to power.
But their very existence constitutes a ticking time-bomb for the U.S. authorities, and biographer Gary Winkler believes she and Hardy will try to sell them to the highest bidder.
The author claims England is being manipulated by her lawyer-agent, and describes Hardy as ‘the new Charles Graner’.
Understandably, Hardy, 39, is incensed by this – though the happily married father-of-two hardly helps himself by constantly joking that he and England are having a secret fling.
Winkler is embittered, the lawyer says, because Hardy and England have criticised his book, which was supposed to have been her first-person story but has ended up an error-strewn exercise in vanity publishing. But she needs the money.
She has applied for countless jobs, she complains, but no one dares to employ her, and so, two years after her release she remains unemployed and has given up hope of working.
Reliant on food stamps and the charity of her family and friends, she lives with her parents and four-year-old Carter, the child she had with Graner, in the same cramped trailer where she was raised.
Her hatred for Graner, who is midway through his ten-year sentence, was compounded when he demanded a DNA test to prove Carter is really his child.
England was pregnant by the time she stood trial and maintains that only Graner could be the father.
The result is not back yet, but one look at the boy would be enough for Graner to realise he is wasting his time.
England, now 26 and without a boyfriend – though she receives marriage proposals from twisted internet admirers – says she is depressed because she feels trapped and has lost her independence.
‘I can’t even hunt squirrels no more, because I’m not permitted to own a firearm,’ she moans.
As a result of post-traumatic stress, she says, she also suffers flashbacks and horribly vivid nightmares.
Do they reawaken memories of those chilling photograph sessions at Abu Ghraib?
‘It’s a whole variety of stuff. You can’t hear somebody screaming their heads off and not dream about it,’ she drawls sardonically.
‘I’ll be watching a movie, or TV, and then something triggers it and, bam! I’m back there.’
This hardly sounds like contrition, but is probably as close as Private First Class Lynndie England will ever come to expressing regret for becoming the unacceptable face of the U.S. Army.
The gun-loving former New Yorker being sought Friday for threatening to kill President Obama was known in his old neighborhood as the “Cape Man” of Blue Jay Way.
Daniel James Murray, who sparked a nationwide federal manhunt by telling a Utah bank manager he was “on a mission to kill” Obama, used to amble through the streets of upstate Rexford, wearing a black cape and muttering to himself, his former neighbors said.
“Everybody started calling him ‘Cape Man,’ ” said Leighann Anastasia, who lives two doors down from the modest but nicely maintained house Murray once called home on Blue Jay Way.
“He was a little whacked out, it was obvious,” added another former neighbor, Sam Masrouri.
Murray, 36, lived with an elderly couple who the neighbors believe were his parents. They moved out last December to an unknown destination, the neighbors said.
The property used to be dotted with assorted religious statues, including a “glowing cross” in the back yard by the tool shed, Anastasia said.
Murray – last seen heading east and driving a blue 2001 Buick LeSabre with New York plates – purportedly threatened Obama on May 27 after withdrawing nearly $13,000 from a bank in the town of St. George, Utah, court papers say.
“We are on a mission to kill the President of the United States,” Murray reportedly said before he split.
Murray returned the next day and withdrew his remaining $72,000. He was spotted later that day at another bank in Cedar City, Utah.
Wearing glasses and a scraggly beard, Murray was dressed in a black T-shirt with the words, “My way is the highway— God” emblazoned across the chest with a Christian cross sprouting wings, sources said.
Murray’s pursuers are concerned because he has money to burn – and because he has at least eight registered semi-automatic pistols and revolvers. But they rate his threat to Obama “more aspirational than operational.”
“He’s obviously a little off his stride, which becomes more of a concern for police officers who might stop his car,” a federal law enforcement source told the Daily News.
While little is known about Murray, he apparently blames Obama for the economic meltdown that began under the Bush administration.
“With all this mess going on under President Obama with banks and the economy, I’m sure if citizens happen to lose their money, they will rise up and we could see killing and deaths,” he reportedly ranted on May 19, when he opened a savings account at the Utah bank with $85,000.
Eight days later, Murray returned and tried to withdraw $12,698. He flipped out when a teller turned him down because he lacked proper identification.
“Not to be disrespectful, but if I don’t get this money, someone is going to die,” he said, the court say.
The teller then fetched the bank manager, who okayed Murray’s withdrawal. He also agreed to Murray’s request for no bills larger than $50 – and in non-sequential order.
While the teller counted out the money, court paper say Murray declared:
“We are 94 million miles from the sun, and are in between the sun and moon, and the eagle that flies between them and it’s a giant step for mankind … I have traveled thousands of miles to be here and know things that are going to happen … The banking system will fail and people will die … There will be chaos in the world.”
Then Murray blurted out his assassination threat and left, authorities say.
Murray, who had recently been in California, Utah, Georgia, Oklahoma and possibly Texas, was born July 12, 1972, stands 6-foot-2, and weighs 250 pounds
The real reason behind Obama�s reversal of a decision to release the torture photos has been almost completely ignored by the corporate media – the fact that the photos show both US soldiers raping teenage boys in front of their mothers.
The Obama administration originally intended to release photos depicting torture and abuse of detainees in Afghanistan and Iraq by the end of May, following a court order arising out of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit first filed by the ACLU in 2004.
Practice makes perfect…
However, a reversal of Obama�s decision was announced this week, after he “changed his mind after viewing some of the images and hearing warnings from his generals in Iraq and in Afghanistan that such a move would endanger US troops deployed there,” according to a Washington Post report.
In response, the ACLU charged that Obama “has essentially become complicit with the torture that was rampant during the Bush years by being complicit in its coverup.” The Obama administration has also sought to protect intelligence officials involved in torture from prosecution at every turn.
The primary reason why Obama is now blocking the release of the photos is that some of the pictures, as well as video recordings, show prison guards sodomizing young boys in front of their mothers, both with objects as well as physical rape.
This horrific detail has been almost completely ignored by the establishment media in their coverage of the story this week, despite the fact that it�s been in the public domain for nearly five years, after it was first revealed by investigative Seymour Hersh during an ACLU conference in July 2004.
“Some of the worst things that happened you don�t know about, okay?” said Hersh. “Videos, there are women there. Some of you may have read that they were passing letters out, communications out to their men. This is at Abu Ghraib � The women were passing messages out saying ‘Please come and kill me, because of what�s happened� and basically what happened is that those women who were arrested with young boys, children in cases that have been recorded. The boys were sodomized with the cameras rolling. And the worst above all of that is the soundtrack of the boys shrieking that your government has. They are in total terror. It�s going to come out.”
Hersh�s contention that minors were raped by prison guards while others filmed the vulgar spectacle is backed up by a leaked Abu Ghraib memorandum highlighted in a 2004 London Guardian report, in which detainees Kasim Hilas describes “the rape of an Iraqi boy by a man in uniform”. The testimony was also part of the military�s official Taguba Report into the torture at Abu Ghraib.
“I saw name blacked out fucking a kid, his age would be about 15-18 years. The kid was hurting very bad and they covered all the doors with sheets. Then when I heard the screaming I climbed the door because on top it wasn�t covered and I saw blacked out, who was wearing the military uniform putting his dick in the little kid�s ass,” Mr Hilas told military investigators. “I couldn�t see the face of the kid because his face wasn�t in front of the door. And the female soldier was taking pictures.”
Another inmate, Thaar Dawod, described more abuse of teenage boys.
“They came with two boys naked and they were cuffed together face to face and Grainer Corporal Charles Graner, one of the military policemen facing court martial was beating them and a group of guards were watching and taking pictures from top and bottom and there was three female soldiers laughing at the prisoners,” he said.
A 2004 London Telegraph report also described photos which showed “US soldiers beating an Iraqi prisoner nearly to death and having sex with a female PoW,” as well as a videotape, apparently made by US personnel, which shows “Iraqi guards raping young boys”.
Former Governor Jesse Ventura today offered a solution to the controversy surrounding President Obama�s decision to reverse an earlier promise to release the torture photos – let Ventura see the photos on behalf of the American people and then decide if they should be released.
Ventura told the Alex Jones Show today, “How about if I step forward on behalf of the taxpayers and the citizens of the great United States of America – and I wanna go public with this – I will represent us, let me go where these photos are, let me go inside and see them and let me come out and report back as to what these photos are.”
“I think I have the right to do that, I think they have no right to keep me from doing that, you know why? I pay their salaries and I�m a governor, I�m a mayor, I�m a former Navy SEAL, I had a top secret security clearance – I think I�m fully qualified to walk in and view these photos,” said Ventura, adding, “I�ll report to the public, what it is why we shouldn�t be able to see them because I understand it could infuriate the enemy, but I�m not the enemy and therefore I think I have every right to see these photos in private.”
“Private remarks” on a public website? Not the brightest of whites is he?
A British National Party European elections candidate who set his Facebook status to, ‘W***s go home Gurkhas very welcome’, has denied being a racist.
Eddy O’Sullivan, who is standing for the Brussels parliament with BNP party leader Nick Griffin, posted a series of offensive comments on the website and even joined a group called F*** Islam.
But he left his Facebook profile public instead of setting it to private.
Mr O’Sullivan, 49, Salford organiser for the party, admitted posting the comments but denied they were racist.
However party bosses say he is facing an investigation and possible suspension from the BNP and deselection as a candidate.
In online Facebook conversations carried out over several days, Mr O’Sullivan made comments including:
‘They are nice people – oh yeah – but can they not be nice people in the ******* Congo or… bongo land or whatever?’
‘Life to British Culture . . . W** culture go home.’
‘People from other countries are just NOT on our wavelength… or am I wrong?’
To a friend’s comment that ‘they come to live in England so they should treat it like England or **** off, even better not come here in the first place!’ – ‘Oooh that is drastic… but you are right and you are not breaking any law when you say that.’
Mr O’Sullivan, 49, who is the BNP’s organiser for Salford, Manchester, today defended the postings.
He said: ‘It was supposed to be a private conversation between individuals. I also may have had a drink at the time.
‘I don’t believe those comments are racist. I’m not a racist and that is that. I don’t regret saying anything because it was a private conversation.’
His Facebook profile was publicly viewable, which meant it was accessible to anyone on the site, but it has since been taken down.
Last night Mr O’Sullivan’s details had been removed from the BNP’s website.
Clive Jefferson, North-West organiser of the BNP, said if the allegations were proved Mr O’Sullivan would be suspended from the party.
He added: ‘That is unacceptable and I’m going to suspend him from the party and from the European candidacy.
‘There’s freedom of speech and there is unacceptable language and I think this is unacceptable.’
Meanwhile, moves to stop the Queen being ‘embarrassed’ by BNP leader Nick Griffin attending a Buckingham Palace garden party intensified today.
Darren Johnson, chairman of the London Assembly, called on the Greater London Authority’s chief executive to withdraw BNP Assembly member Richard Barnbrook’s invitation to the summer event unless he agrees not to take Mr Griffin.
The move was prompted by a letter from London Mayor Boris Johnson who asked the chairman to make the ultimatum to the Far Right politician.
It emerged yesterday that as an Assembly member Mr Barnbrook had received a garden party invitation and intended taking his party leader.
The BNP remained defiant following today’s development and accused the three main political parties of attempting to subvert the democratic process.
Speaking earlier at the Mayor’s question time in City Hall Darren Johnson said: ‘I totally agree with the Mayor about this and ask him (GLA chief executive Leo Boland that) unless Mr Barnbrook brings a more acceptable guest along and doesn’t turn it into a political stunt the invitation will be rescinded.’
Mr Johnson wrote to the London Assembly chairman last night calling on him to intervene and withdraw Mr Barnbrook’s invitation unless he took an acceptable guest.
He said: ‘We cannot tolerate any such abuse of the invitation or any potential embarrassment to Her Majesty.
‘I am therefore writing to call on you to inform Mr Barnbrook – at the earliest opportunity – that he must either bring a guest who will not provoke political controversy, or consider his invitation rescinded.’
Mr Barnbrook’s office at the Assembly said as a member he had been nominated for the garden party through the GLA, had accepted the nomination, and as far as he was concerned had been invited to attend with Mr Griffin.
The event, on July 21, will come after the June local and Euro elections, which could see the BNP gaining more local council seats and their first MEPs.
Disillusionment with mainstream politicians over the MPs’ expenses scandal and fears over jobs and immigration could lead to a surge in support for the party, according to political experts.
A BNP spokesman said: ‘You can’t withdraw the invitation because you don’t agree with someone’s views.
‘How is it going to look if the three main political parties conspire to deny us our rights – and the people that voted for Richard.
‘They are seeking to subvert the democratic process.’
Racist foster parents…wow.Do these people have no feelings?
A Dutch couple has sparked outrage by giving up a seven-year-old South Korean girl they adopted as a baby ? after claiming she didn’t “fit in” with their life-style.
The diplomat and his wife, who had taken in the child after failing to conceive, handed her to social workers in Hong Kong after having two biological children.
They claimed the girl, who was adopted when four months old and has lived in the territory since she was three, was struggling to adapt to their culture, including food.
Now the Hong Kong’s Korean community is trying to find a home for the unnamed child who is currently in foster care after being given up last year.
The girl, who speaks English and Cantonese but not Korean, is neither a Dutch citizen nor a Hong Kong resident, so her future in the territory is uncertain.
In South Korea, parents cannot return adopted children, but no such law exists in Hong Kong.
The diplomat told reporters, who agreed to his anonymity, that his family was struggling to cope with their decision and said his wife was having therapy.
“It’s just a very terrible trauma that everyone’s experiencing,” he said.
“My foreign ministry knows about my situation.
“I have also been in touch with the Hong Kong Government and they have been very helpful to me and so has my own employer.”
But the plight of the girl has sparked anger among social workers and many of the seven million people living in the territory.
“It’s bizarre. I don’t think it has anything to do with cultural shock,” said Law Chi-kwong, an associate professor at the University of Hong Kong’s Social Work department.
“The child grew up with them. They adopted her when she was a baby; they are responsible for shaping the child’s mind and culture.
“How can you say the child cannot adapt to the culture in which she was raised? This is just ridiculous.”
Members of Hong Kong’s Korean community have flooded the country’s consulate with offers of help.
Mark Choi, a spokesman for the Korean Residents Association in Hong Kong, said: “Several families have come forward to offer to adopt or foster the girl.”
Hong Kong’s Social Welfare Department said it was working with the adoptive parents and relevant parties on the future care of the girl.
It refused to disclose any other details.
Peter Mollema, spokesman for the Dutch foreign ministry in The Hague, said: “These are personal, private matters not shared with everybody at the ministry.
“Right now, we’re trying to get the facts straight.”
A boy stripped naked, battered and left in a makeshift grave. Two little brothers sexually humiliated and tortured in a two-hour ordeal. And the attackers? Young children like themselves. DAVID JONES explores a chilling modern phenomenon…
The two attacks bore chilling similarities and they were carried out on grim Yorkshire council estates less than 30 miles apart. In both cases the victims were young and vulnerable, and an elaborate story was invented to lure them to a secluded place.
In both cases they were stripped, and saw their clothes ritually burnt before they were tortured and savagely beaten.
Most disturbingly of all, however, when police investigated these protracted and gratuitous acts of violence they discovered that the perpetrators were themselves no more than children, their ages ranging from just ten to 14 years old.
Savage: A scene from the 1963 film of William Golding’s book, Lord Of The Flies, which saw a group of children turn on each other with animalistic savagery
One of the attacks, which took place in Leeds – the other happened in nearby Doncaster – involved four children, who attacked a 15-year-old with a mental age of seven.
Such was the savagery of the assault that Judge Kerry Macgill described it in court as ‘almost like a scene out of Lord Of The Flies, where children are left to their own devices and do simply appalling things to other children’.
After talking to those involved, I have found this reference to William Golding’s disquieting novel, in which a group of schoolboys turn on one another with animalistic savagery after being stranded on a desert island, was no exaggeration.
These two cases come more than 40 years after another North Country child – 11-year-old Mary Bell – was convicted of strangling two little boys aged four and three ’solely for the pleasure and excitement of killing’, as the prosecutor phrased it. At the time, a horrified nation vowed that it must never be allowed to happen again.
The same was said in 1993, when Robert Thompson and Jon Venables, two ten-year-old Merseyside boys, abducted and murdered toddler James Bulger while he was out shopping with his mother.
Aeriel view of the police investigation in the Brick Ponds areas of Edlington in Doncaster last month
Yet barely a week seems to pass without news of a vicious assault by a young person, and those recent atrocities in Doncaster and Leeds – in which, as we will see, the victims were fortunate to escape with their lives – are only the latest reminder that such brutality is happening again, and with alarming regularity.
Inevitably, this raises disturbing questions. Are attacks by children really increasing, and are we correct to suppose the attackers are using ever more extreme and inventive forms of violence? If so, why?
More pressingly, what social factors are spawning this frightening new generation of potential Bells and Thompsons, and is enough being done to identify them and prevent them from developing into psychopaths?
During this investigation I have examined reams of statistics and reports, and spoken to leading experts, including two of Britain’s most eminent adolescent psychiatrists, Professor Susan Bailey and Dr Eileen Vizard, both of whom gave evidence at the Bulger trial.
The picture that emerges is surprising and illuminating. Before we study it, however, we should describe in more detail the two episodes in Yorkshire. For, extreme as they may have been, the background to these incidents appears to form part of an all-too-typical pattern.
‘They threatened to kill him, stripped him naked, made a bonfire of his shoes and coat, urinated on him, stuck lit cigarettes up his nose, punched and kicked him and lashed him with planks and branches’
_______________________________________
As Judge Macgill heard in court last week, the Leeds attack occurred on a sprawling red-brick council estate south of the city, where the four assailants – a girl of 14, two boys aged 11, and another boy of 13 – lived in close proximity to their 15-year-old victim.
Since the attackers all pleaded guilty to attempting to cause grievous bodily harm with intent, the full story was not told in court. But according to the 14-year-old girl’s mother, the attack was conceived after the victim became infatuated with her.
‘He stalked her for four months and would not leave her alone, spending hours standing outside her house,’ she told me. ‘He was constantly texting and telephoning her.’
She claims the attack happened one Sunday evening after the victim sent the 14-year-old girl – a pretty, popular teenager, who had hoped to become a nursery teacher – a particularly lewd message accompanied by a ‘pornographic’ image of himself.
But even supposing this story to be true – and the victim’s mother strongly disputes it – then it surely cannot excuse the calculating manner in which this mentally disabled boy (who attends a special needs school and cannot even tie his own shoelaces) was ensnared, nor the horrific torture inflicted on him.
According to his mother, a 55-year-old who has seven children by several fathers, he was lured to a stretch of waste ground, hidden from the estate by a ring of trees, after the girl asked him to help her look for a mobile phone she had supposedly lost there.
When he arrived, he was grabbed by the gang. They threatened to kill him, stripped him naked, made a bonfire of his shoes and coat, urinated on him, stuck lit cigarettes up his nose, punched and kicked him and lashed him with planks and branches.
Horrifying: Police pictures of Robert Thompson and Jon Venables who abducted and then murdered two-year-old James Bulger
When the onslaught was over, the boy was dumped in a ditch and covered with pieces of wood. It was described by the prosecutor as ‘perhaps a makeshift grave’.
The waste ground is only a few yards from a bus stop and a busy pub, so why no one heard his screams and came to his aid is anyone’s guess. He eventually crawled on to the road, and local shop assistants covered him with dustbin-liners and called 999.
When his mother arrived, he was being treated by paramedics, and she thought at first that he had been hit by a car. ‘He was unrecognisable,’ she told me. ‘His face was all bruised and swollen and he was covered in cuts and burns, and they had kicked him so hard between the legs that his private parts went black.
‘He was born with his left kidney attached to his bladder, and when they examined him they found that it was bleeding. Nine months later he still has terrible flashbacks and wakes up screaming, and I have to put my arms round him and reassure him that no one will ever get him again.
The front page of the Mail on Sunday on February 14, 1993
‘The children who did this are animals. But it’s happening every day now, isn’t it? There’s just a lack of discipline; they’ve taken all the power away from the parents. You can’t even chastise your own kids when they misbehave anymore, or more than likely it will be you who ends up in trouble.’
Ironically, the attackers’ families said precisely the same thing. ‘They’ve got no respect for anything,’ lamented the tattooed father of the girl, who was described as the ringleader and received the longest sentence – 15 months in detention.
Her grandfather concurred, adding that ‘they’ would benefit from ‘a good smack’. But whether he was referring to his granddaughter – and whether she has ever been smacked or otherwise disciplined – the family declined to say.
Instead, they retreated to a position that has become wearily par for the course in an era when so many parents have abdicated responsibility for their children’s behaviour and blame everyone else if something goes wrong.
Their daughter had only intended the boy to be thumped and warned off… she was a model pupil who had never been in trouble before, and her sentence was grossly unfair… the attack was unwarranted, of course, but the victim had brought it on himself.
For good measure, they pointed out that they had recently moved into a private house away from the roughest part of the estate, and had been trying to better themselves.
A female relative of one of the 11-year-old boys, who were both given two-year supervision orders, similarly defended him. ‘Yes the attack was ferocious – but when you listen to what the victim did, you can understand why it happened. It’s so unfair. They’ve been tarred as savages.’
She said the younger boys did not usually hang around with the 13-yearold boy (whom she claimed to be a habitual trouble-maker), nor with the girl. But they had been drawn into the attack because they happened to have been present when she was describing the lewd text messages.
Devastated: Murdered James Bulger and his mother Denise Fergus, pictured here in 2001
Significantly, perhaps, she said her young relative – who had ‘a bit of attitude’, but was otherwise polite and well-behaved – had been habitually bullied by the other 11-year-old. She depicted this other boy as a tearaway who had been suspended from school.
The clear suggestion was that he had been ‘led on’ and was trying to impress more dominant, aggressive boys.
It will come as no surprise that the 13-year-old’s family were also at pains to exonerate him. Rather belatedly, we might think, his 18-year-old sister reproached herself for teasing him relentlessly, making his life ‘hell’.
His mother, the wife of an unemployed builder, claimed that he had been born six weeks prematurely and suffered from learning difficulties. ‘He’s a victim, too,’ she said. ‘He’s a victim of society. It seems everybody was out to get him.’
As for the attack in neighbouring Doncaster, two brothers aged ten and 11 have been charged with the attempted murder so we can report little about this case.
‘Whereas in the past there was much more of a reason to commit violence, now it often starts over a trivial issue and it’s more likely to result in serious injury… and the culprits are also getting younger’
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Suffice it to say that the victims, one 11 years old and the other nine, were allegedly subjected to an even more sickening ordeal, which included sexual humiliation and other forms of torture, and is said to have lasted about two hours.
No one could possibly pretend that the accused boys were raised in favourable circumstances. Their home was a dilapidated semi shared with several brothers, and the front door bore a sign saying: ‘Beware of the kids.’
By all accounts, when their father left the family, their mother was unable to cope, so they were fostered by a couple in a former pit village in Yorkshire, where the alleged attack took place.
The prosecution claims that they persuaded the victims to accompany them to a secluded stream running through a copse by telling them that they had seen a dead animal there.
They were so badly beaten that the younger boy’s arm was cut to the bone, and the 11-year-old was placed on a life-support machine. The latter’s mother said last week that he is still not ready to return to school, five weeks after the attack.
So much for the depressing details; but are such incidents becoming more prevalent? The simple answer is that it depends on who you ask.
According to the Youth Justice Board, whose statistics are compiled simply by asking young people, in confidence, whether they have committed crimes, violence by under 17-year-olds has varied little year on year since the Bulger murder.
Many academics consider these numbers to be the most reliable because others are derived from court convictions, and only about 3 per cent of cases ever come before the courts.
Horror: A police tent marks the spot where James’s body was found on the embankment of the Edge Hill to Bootle freight line in Liverpool
However, Ministry of Justice figures released a few weeks ago show that the number of ten to 17-year-olds successfully prosecuted for violence has soared by 30 per cent in the decade since New Labour came to power.
Furthermore, according to researchers at the Centre for Social Justice, the independent think-tank set up by former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith, all the anecdotal evidence points to a significant rise, both in the frequency and seriousness of attacks committed by children.
But this likely rise is being obscured, according to the think-tank’s senior policy adviser Charlotte Pickles, by changes in government methods of recording violent crime.
‘When we look at the type and degree of violence among young people, we would certainly say it’s getting worse – and much more chaotic,’ she says.
‘Whereas in the past there was much more of a reason to commit violence, now it often starts over a trivial issue and it’s more likely to result in serious injury. The culprits are also getting younger, which would fit the pattern in these recent cases in Yorkshire.’
Shocking: Child murderer Mary Bell in a police issued picture in 1977
The CSJ is critical of the Government for failing to do more to identify potential problem children at a very young age, and Mr Duncan Smith believes they must be set on the right path before their third birthday if they are to have a realistic hope of growing into responsible adults.
He is convinced this can be done via voluntary ‘early intervention’ programmes targeted at the worst sink estates, and cites areas in America where they have transformed the outlook for children from unpromising family backgrounds.
Such programmes are expensive, of course, but U. S. research shows them to be 17 times more cost-effective than doing nothing and allowing these children to drift into a life of crime with all its associated costs. When we learn that British taxpayers shell out between £50,000 and £150,000 a year to keep young people in secure accommodation, the benefit becomes clear.
So how do we identify these children? At present the task falls to those who have regular access to the families: hard-pressed health visitors and social workers, for example, or primary school teachers.
But as Professor Bailey, who has studied more than 250 child murderers in her 30-year career, points out, teachers aren’t trained to detect the behavioural differences which mark out the abnormal child.
Professor Bailey says there are a number of factors which might cause children to behave aggressively. They include inconsistent parenting, being raised by a mother who suffers from depression during the child’s early years, and/or an aggressive father figure, and witnessing repeated domestic violence or sexual abuse at an early age. Such experiences can affect the physiology of a child’s brain, ‘programming’ them to act violently.
But, of course, a large number of children are nurtured amid these unfavourable conditions, and only a tiny percentage grow into violent criminals. One thing that may separate them is the absence of a positive influence, such as supportive teacher or relative, so that they do not build ‘resilience’ to their environment.
Professor Bailey is urging the Government to fund more extensive research in these areas, and calls for an end to politically expedient quickfixes, such as ASBOs which, she says, only shift a problem child on to someone else’s doorstep.
Dr Vizard, consultant child psychiatrist for an NSPCC national service for young offenders which was set up 20 years ago, agrees, saying that, given sufficient commitment, much could be done to prevent children becoming violent criminals.
Violent: Barely a week seems to pass without news of a vicious assault by a young person
Her Home Office research study into 280 children with abusive and violent behaviour shows that many potential psychopaths can be spotted by the time they enter primary school, where they can be very hard to handle and are often excluded.
Moreover, if they go on to commit aggressive crimes early in their lives – say between the ages of ten and 13 -they are far more likely to become hardened career criminals than those who don’t get into trouble for the first time until their mid-teens.
Dr Vizard wants the Government to fund research into new treatment approaches for these disturbed children which, she says, could save the public purse millions by keeping them out of the criminal justice system.
When treating this youngest group of offenders, Dr Vizard also tends to uncover more severe psychological disturbances than she finds in slightly older clients. ‘It’s as if they have not been able to develop a moral compass in the way that older adolescents have,’ she says.
From the expert who evaluated Robert Thompson, this is a sobering pronouncement indeed. And, while it is undoubtedly right that everything possible should be done to identify and help these children, there is a far wider problem.
In a society where family breakdown, lack of community, absent or feckless parents and ill-discipline have rapidly become the norm, we have created the very conditions which are more likely to produce the sort of troubled children who indulge in this horrific violence.
How dreadful it will be if one of the legacies of our supposedly ‘enlightened’ age is to create a generation of violent, alienated Lord Of The Flies children.
A former U.S. soldier on trial in the gang rape of an Iraqi girl and the murder of her and her family in the war zone in 2006 was caught in a “perfect storm of insanity,” his lawyer told a jury on Monday.
But government prosecutors in the same courtroom said former Private 1st Class Steven Green, alleged ringleader of the slayings, was only interested in killing Iraqis “non-stop” and bragged during a barbecue celebration later that what he had done was “awesome.”
Green, 23, is being tried in federal court as a civilian since his arrest came after he was discharged from the U.S. Army later in 2006 for a “personality disorder.”
He is the last of five men charged in the rape of Abeer Qassim Hamza al-Janabi, 14, and the slaying of her and her father, mother and six-year-old sister. The incident unfolded after the soldiers drank whisky, played cards, and plotted the attack in Mahmudiya, 30 kilometres south of Baghdad, prosecutors have said.
Three of the other soldiers pleaded guilty in the attack and the fourth was convicted, all in military courts-martial. They were given sentences of from five to 100 years, though they could be paroled much sooner. Prosecutors said they are seeking the death penalty for Green.
In opening statements at the trial, Patrick Bouldin, a public defender, said Green’s platoon had been decimated by deaths and injuries before the crime.
“You have to understand the background that leads up to this perfect storm of insanity,” Bouldin told the jury.
Bouldin said Green had sought help dealing with combat stress after the deaths of close colleagues and was unsure whether Iraqis he encountered were friend or foe.
“They couldn’t tell the village people and the farmers from the insurgents and the terrorists,” he said.
Green, from Midland, Texas, faces 17 charges including sexual assault, murder, and obstruction of justice.
Outlining the gruesome details of the crime, federal prosecutor Brian Skaret said: “Who could have done these things? It wasn’t done by insurgents or terrorists. It was the work of this man, Steven Green.”
He said Green took his turn raping the girl after he shot to death the girl’s mother, father and sister. He said Green was predisposed to the crime.
“Steven Green wanted to kill Iraqi civilians,” Skaret said. “He wanted to kill them all the time, non-stop.”
After the crime, Skaret said, the men celebrated with a barbecue, and Green was said to have commented “that was awesome.” He also told an Army investigator the day after, “I did that. I killed them,” Skaret said.
The family was chosen because the soldiers viewed them as an easy target, prosecutors have said.
Iraqis were horrified by the crime, one of a series of incidents involving U.S. soldiers that strained relations with the Iraqi government. But the onset of Green’s trial three years later is not resonating with most Iraqis, observers there say.
The incident was portrayed in the 2007 movie Redacted by director Brian De Palma, who complained the film was censored by the studio. Its graphic images shocked many viewers.
So white people have been hating themselves all this time? What do you think?
Dressed in a suit, this person would not look out of place in a busy street in a modern city.
The clay sculpture, however, portrays the face of the earliest known modern European – a man or woman who hunted deer and gathered fruit and herbs in ancient forests more than 35,000 years ago.
It was created by Richard Neave, one of Britain’s leading forensic scientists, using fossilised fragments of skull and jawbone found in a cave seven years ago.
His recreation offers a tantalising glimpse into life before the dawn of civilisation. It also shows the close links between the first European settlers and their immediate African ancestors.
To sculpt the head, Mr Neave called on his years of experience recreating the appearance of murder victims as well as using careful measurements of bone.
It was made for the BBC2 series The Incredible Human Journey. This will follow the evolution of humans from the cradle of Africa to the waves of migrations that saw Homo sapiens colonise the globe.
The head has taken pride of place on the desk of Alice Roberts, an anthropologist at Bristol University, who presents the programme.
‘It’s really quite bizarre,’ she told Radio Times. ‘I’m a scientist and objective but I look at that face and think “Gosh, I’m looking at the face of somebody from 40,000 years ago” and there’s something weirdly moving about that.
‘Richard creates skulls of much more recent humans and he’s used to looking at differences between populations.
‘He said the skull doesn’t look European or Asian or African. It looks like a mixture of all of them.
‘That’s probably what you’d expect of someone among the earliest populations to come to Europe.’
The head is based on remains of one of the earliest known anatomically modern Europeans.
The lower jawbone was discovered by potholers in the Carpathian mountains in Romania in 2002. The rest of the fragments were found the following year.
The bones were carbon-dated to between 34,000 and 36,000 years ago when Europe was occupied by two species of human.
They were the Neanderthals, who had arrived from Africa tens of thousands of years earlier, and the more recent modern humans, also known as Cro-Magnons.
Although the skull is similar to a modern human head, it has a larger cranium, is more robust and has larger molars. Although it is impossible to work out the skin colour of the prehistoric hunter, it is likely to have been darker than modern white Europeans.
Fossil experts are also unsure if the skull was male or female.
Many scientists believe that modern humans evolved in Africa 200,000 to 100,000 years ago. Our ancestors left Africa around 60,000 years ago and migrated around the world, replacing other branches of the family tree which had left the continent earlier.
The earliest modern Europeans were far from primitive. Living in huts and caves, they used stone tools and spears made from antlers, painted on the walls of their caves and made jewellery from shells.
The Army of Scum winning hearts and minds, as usual.
KABUL (AFP) – The US military in Afghanistan admitted Thursday that four people its troops killed in a raid were not “combatants”, after Afghans said they included a mother and her children, with a baby dying afterwards.
Afghan officials and witnesses earlier accused the forces of killing civilians in an overnight raid in the eastern province of Khost that the US military initially said killed “four combatants”.
“Further inquiries into the coalition and ANSF (Afghan National Security Force) operation in Khost earlier today suggest that the people killed and wounded were not enemy combatants as previously reported,” the military said.
“Coalition forces are working closely with local Afghan officials and family members to express condolences and provide assistance in the aftermath of this tragic event,” it said, adding that an investigation was continuing.
It is the latest in a series of incidents in which civilians have been killed or wounded by international forces, who are in Afghanistan to hunt down Taliban and Al-Qaeda-linked militants.
The Khost police chief in charge of counter-terrorism, who is named only Ghazuddin, told AFP that the soldiers had gone to a village outside of Khost city in search of a militant.
They climbed on the roofs of other houses to surround the targeted building, he told AFP.
The occupants of one of the homes, which belonged to a colonel in the Afghan National Army who was serving elsewhere, suspected they were thieves, came out with guns and opened fire, Ghazuddin said.
“The Americans shot them thinking they are insurgents,” he said.
The colonel’s wife and daughter, son and brother were killed, he said.
Two women and a baby boy were also wounded. “The coalition took the women and little boy to hospital for treatment. Later the boy died,” Ghazuddin said.
He was unable to say what injuries killed the baby, whom he said was nine months old.
However, the baby’s uncle, Janat Gul, said the child was seven days old.
The dead woman was a school teacher, the Afghan education ministry said in a statement. It added that the girl who died was in the fourth grade at school, which would make her about 10 years old, and the boy was in the ninth grade, making him around 15.
The US military gave a similar version of events.
“Coalition and Afghan forces do not believe that this family was involved with militant activities and that they were defending their home against an unknown threat,” its statement said.
The force said earlier that the raid targeted a militant linked to the radical Haqqani network and the Islamic Jihad Union, both associated with Al-Qaeda.
Three suspected militants were arrested at the compound that was initially targeted, it said. They included the targeted militant, the force told locals.
Civilian casualties caused by international forces in Afghanistan have sparked frequent anger and resentment, leading President Hamid Karzai to accuse them of not taking enough care.
Karzai has told the international forces to work in close consultation with the Afghan authorities to avoid harming civilians.
The United Nations said in February that a record 2,118 civilians were killed in the Afghan conflict in 2008, with nearly 40 percent of the deaths caused by pro-government forces, including US-led and NATO troops.
White anger issues…how can anyone trust the cops when they behave like animals?
The videotape of a King County sheriff’s deputy roughing up a 15-year-old girl in a holding cell has caught the attention of the Department of Justice, which “is definitely looking into the matter,” according to Assistant U.S. Attorney Kelly Harris, who heads the local office’s civil-rights division.
Harris said the U.S. Attorney’s Office had learned of the incident last month when the Sheriff’s Office announces criminal charges had been filed against the deputy. He said the office “just didn’t have enough to go on” at that point, but the release Friday of the video from a holding cell changed that.
“It is on our radar now,” Harris said. “That was the first time we’d seen in on Friday, and we’ve had a couple of days to talk about it. We are looking, yes.”
Deputy Paul Schene, 31, of Auburn, an eight-year department veteran, has been charged with misdemeanor assault in connection with the Nov. 29 incident. He’s accused of kicking Malika Calhoun in the abdomen, punching her in the head and pulling her hair in a sheriff’s holding cell after her arrest for car theft.
If the U.S. Attorney’s Office determines that he violated the girl’s civil rights, Schene could also face federal felony charges. Civil rights criminal charges, however, are rare. The only case ever filed in Western Washington involved another King County sheriff’s deputy, Brian Bonnar, and another case in which a deputy is supposed to have assaulted a person in custody.
A jury acquitted Bonnar following a trial last December, despite the testimony of several eyewitness deputies.
“I do wish I had had video in that trial,” said Kelly, who prosecuted the Bonnar case.
On the video, Calhoun is seen kicking her tennis shoe off at the deputy as he closes the holding cell door. Schene then charges into the holding cell, throwing Calhoun against a wall. He then knocks her to the floor and, with the help of another deputy, holds her down while he punches her. He then picks her up by the hair and marches her out of the cell. The deputy later says said the teen’s tennis shoe injured his shin.
The video was posted online, and has sparked outrage. Calhoun, who is now 16, and her father, appeared on CBS’s “The Early Show” on Monday.
She said she screamed at the deputy to stop.
“I was yelling. I was like, ‘This isn’t — I’m not resisting, I’m not resisting,’ and he said, ‘Whether you’re resisting or not, that was assault,’ ” Calhoun said. “Then he just kept doing it and kept going and going.”
A telephone message left with Schene’s attorney, Anne Bremner, was not immediately returned.
Schene was released on his own recognizance after he was charged. He’s currently on administrative leave from the Sheriff’s Office.
WASHINGTON – Eric Holder, the nation’s first black attorney general, said Wednesday the United States was “a nation of cowards” on matters of race, with most Americans avoiding candid discussions of racial issues. In a speech to Justice Department employees marking Black History Month, Holder said the workplace is largely integrated but Americans still self-segregate on the weekends and in their private lives.
“Though this nation has proudly thought of itself as an ethnic melting pot, in things racial we have always been and I believe continue to be, in too many ways, essentially a nation of cowards,” Holder said.
Race issues continue to be a topic of political discussion, but “we, as average Americans, simply do not talk enough with each other about race.”
Holder’s speech echoed President Barack Obama’s landmark address last year on race relations during the hotly contested Democratic primaries, when the then-candidate urged the nation to break “a racial stalemate we’ve been stuck in for years” and bemoaned the “chasm of misunderstanding that exists between the races.” Obama delivered the speech to try to distance himself from the angry rhetoric of his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.
Holder cited that speech by Obama as part of the motivation for his words Wednesday, saying Americans need to overcome an ingrained inhibition against talking about race.
“If we’re going to ever make progress, we’re going to have to have the guts, we have to have the determination, to be honest with each other. It also means we have to be able to accept criticism where that is justified,” Holder told reporters after the speech.
In the speech, Holder urged people of all races to use Black History Month as a chance for honest discussion of racial matters, including issues of health care, education and economic disparities.
Race, Holder said, “is an issue we have never been at ease with and, given our nation’s history, this is in some ways understandable… If we are to make progress in this area, we must feel comfortable enough with one another and tolerant enough of each other to have frank conversations about the racial matters that continue to divide us.”
In a country founded by slave owners, race has bedeviled the nation throughout its history, with blacks denied the right to vote just a few decades ago. Obama’s triumph last November as well as the nomination of Holder stand as historic achievements of two black Americans.
Holder told hundreds of Justice Department employees gathered for the event that they have a special responsibility to advance racial understanding.
Even when people mix at the workplace or afterwork social events, Holder argued, many Americans in their free time are still segregated inside what he called “race-protected cocoons.”
“Saturdays and Sundays, America in the year 2009 does not in some ways differ significantly from the country that existed almost 50 years ago. This is truly sad,” said Holder.
Matt Miller, a spokesman for Holder, said later the attorney general used “provocative words to be clear that Americans of all races should stop avoiding the difficult issues of race.”
Andrew Grant-Thomas, Deputy Director of the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity at Ohio State University, praised Holder’s general message but said the wording of the speech may alienate some.
“He’s right on the substance, but that’s probably not the most politic way of saying it. I’m certain there are people who will hear him and say, ‘That’s obnoxious,’” he said, adding that what was missing from Holder’s speech were specific examples of what painful subjects need to be addressed.
Hilary Shelton, vice president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, called the speech “constructively provocative.”
“Nobody wants to be considered a coward. We’ve learned to get along by exclusion and silence. We need to talk about it. People need to feel comfortable saying the wrong things,” said Shelton.
Holder is headed to Guantanamo Bay early next week to inspect the terrorist detention facility there. Obama has assigned Holder to lead a special task force aimed at closing the site within a year.
Holder’s Justice Department will have to decide which suspects to bring to U.S. courts for trial, which to prosecute through the military justice system, and which to send back to their home countries.
A U.S. soldier confessed to military investigators that he shot a bound and blindfolded Iraqi prisoner point-blank in the back of the head, according to a video played at his murder trial today.
Sgt Michael Leahy, 28, told the Germany-based investigators that after shooting the first prisoner, he turned his 9mm pistol on another captive.
‘The detainee I shot fell back on me,’ he said in the videotape of the January 2008 interrogation played at his trial in the Army’s Rose Barracks’ courtroom.
‘I turned to the right and saw the other detainee flinch, and turn his head after he heard the shot. My weapon was pointed toward him, my weapon was anywhere from a foot to a couple of inches away. I hit him in the side of the head, the face, anywhere from the ear forward.’
But the shot didn’t kill the second man, so Master Sgt John Hatley, 40, finished him off with a shot to the chest, Leahy said.
‘I’m ashamed of what I’ve done,’ he said in the video, occasionally wiping tears from his eyes and holding his face in his hands. ‘I don’t consider myself a murderer. I made a huge mistake. I’ll accept the consequences.’
Leahy has pleaded not guilty to charges of premeditated murder, conspiracy to commit premeditated murder and obstruction of justice in the deaths of a total of four Iraqi prisoners, who were dumped in a Baghdad canal in 2007 after they were killed.
Leahy is also being tried for the alleged murder of another Iraqi who was shot while in his care as a medic in January of 2007.
The Illinois man faces a possible life in prison and dishonourable discharge if convicted.
Six soldiers including Leahy are accused of involvement in the slaying of the four prisoners sometime between March 10 and April 16, 2007. All were with the 1st Battalion, 18th Infantry Regiment, 2nd Brigade of the 1st Infantry Division in Iraq, which is now part of the Germany-based 172nd Infantry Brigade.
Leahy, Hatley and Sgt 1st Class Joseph Mayo, 27, are accused of pulling the trigger.
According to testimony at the court-martial, which began Tuesday, at least four Iraqis were taken into custody in spring 2007 after a shootout with a patrol that included five other accused soldiers.
The prisoners were taken to the U.S. unit’s operating base in Baghdad for questioning and processing though there wasn’t enough evidence to hold them for attacking the unit.
Later that night patrol members took the Iraqis to a remote area and shot them in retribution for the attacks against the unit, according to testimony.
Three soldiers are scheduled for later courts-martial. Sgt Charles Quigley, 28, of Providence, Rhode Island, faces one charge of conspiracy to commit premeditated murder. Mayo and Hatley are charged with premeditated murder, conspiracy to commit premeditated murder, and obstruction of justice.
Two more soldiers – Spc (specialist) Steven Ribordy, 25, of Salina, Kansas, and Spc Belmor Ramos, 23, of Clearfield, Utah – pleaded guilty last year to conspiracy to commit premeditated murder.
Continuing the assault on indigenous peoples of the continent. Why do whites have so many “secret societies”?
HARTFORD, Conn. – Geronimo’s descendants have sued Skull and Bones — the secret society at Yale University linked to presidents and other powerful figures — claiming that its members stole the remains of the legendary Apache leader decades ago and have kept them ever since.
The federal lawsuit filed in Washington on Tuesday — the 100th anniversary of Geronimo’s death — also names the university and the federal government.
Geronimo’s great-grandson Harlyn Geronimo said his family believes Skull and Bones members took some of the remains in 1918 from a burial plot in Fort Sill, Okla., to keep in its New Haven clubhouse, a crypt. The alleged graverobbing is a longstanding legend that gained some validity in recent years with the discovery of a letter from a club member that described the theft.
“I believe strongly from my heart that his spirit was never released,” Harlyn Geronimo said.
Both Presidents Bush, Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry and many others in powerful government and industry positions are members of the society, which is not affiliated with the university.
After years of famously fighting the U.S. and Mexican armies, Geronimo and 35 warriors surrendered to Gen. Nelson A. Miles near the Arizona-New Mexico border in 1886. Geronimo was eventually sent to Fort Sill and died at the Army outpost of pneumonia in 1909.
According to lore, members of Skull and Bones — including former President George W. Bush’s grandfather, Prescott Bush — dug up his grave when a group of Army volunteers from Yale were stationed at the fort during World War I, taking his skull and some of his bones.
Harlyn Geronimo, 61, wants those remains and any held by the federal government turned over to the family so they can be reburied near the Indian leader’s birthplace in southern New Mexico’s Gila Wilderness.
Their lawsuit also names President Barack Obama, Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Army Secretary Pete Geren as defendants.
“I want them to understand we mean business,” said Harlyn Geronimo, who lives in New Mexico. “We’re very serious. We’re tired of waiting and we’re coming after them.”
Neither members of Skull and Bones, who closely guard their secrecy, nor the Russell Trust Association, the organization’s business arm for tax purposes, could not be reached for comment.
Justice Department spokesman Andrew Ames said the government will “review the complaint and respond in court at the appropriate time.”
Fort Sill spokeswoman Nancy Elliot declined to discuss the lawsuit, but said officials have always maintained there is no evidence supporting the descendants’ claims.
Yale officials declined to comment Wednesday, saying they had not yet seen the lawsuit. Spokesman Tom Conroy noted the Skull and Bones crypt is not on Yale property.
Membership into Skull and Bones marks the elite of the elite at the Ivy League school. Only 15 Yale seniors are asked to join each year.
Members swear an oath of secrecy about the group and its strange rituals, which include devotion to the number “322″ and initiation rites such as confessing sexual secrets and kissing a skull. The atmosphere makes Skull and Bones favorite fodder for conspiracy theorists.
Its most enduring story is the one concerning Geronimo’s remains, and in 2005, Yale historian Marc Wortman discovered a letter written in 1918 from one Skull and Bones member to another that seemed to lend validity to the tale.
The letter, sent to F. Trubee Davison by Winter Mead, said Geronimo’s skull and other remains were taken from the leader’s burial site, along with several pieces of tack for a horse.
“The skull of the worthy Geronimo the Terrible, exhumed from its tomb at Fort Sill by your club and Knight Haffuer, is now safe inside the T — together with is well worn femurs, bit and saddle horn,” Mead wrote.
Wortman, however, has said he is skeptical the bones are actually Geronimo’s.
Geronimo’s descendants say in their lawsuit that they want to uncover any information that people know, but have been keeping to themselves.
“To assure that all existing remains of Geronimo and funerary objects are recovered by Geronimo’s linear descendants, the Order of Skull and Bones and Yale University must account for any such articles that are or have been in their possession, or on their property, and persons with knowledge must provide any facts known to them concerning the claims,” the descendants’ lawsuit says.
If the bones at Yale aren’t those of Geronimo, Harlyn Geronimo believes they belonged to one of the Apache prisoners who died at Fort Sill. He said they should still be returned.
Harlyn Geronimo wrote to President George W. Bush in 2006, seeking his help in recovering the bones. He thought that since the president’s grandfather was allegedly one of those who helped steal the bones, the president would want to help return them.
“To serve and protect.” Nothing like beating up a middle aged woman.
From the video captured by two Millville Police car dashboard cameras, emerge two very different versions of what happened in the pre-dawn hours of February 3, 2008.
The just-released video (see left) is at the center of a lawsuit in which Sheila Stevenson, 42, claims she became the victim of excessive force, after then-Millville Police Officer Carlo Drogo pulled her over for illegally riding her bicycle on a sidewalk.
In the course of trying to handcuff Stevenson, the video shows Drogo as he sprays himself in the face with pepper spray and she appears to push him. Drogo then appears to knock Stevenson to the ground to subdue her. Drogo is seen, seemingly doubled over in pain, as other officers arrive.
“I am not doing nothing,” Stevenson screamed on the video.
“Put your hands behind your back,” one of the other officers ordered.
“Can you not do this? I’m not doing nothing! I’m not doing nothing,” she wailed.
Seconds later, Drogo approaches Stevenson again and appears to punch her four times.
“Why are you hitting me? You’re hitting me! Why are you hitting me?” Stevenson cried out. “Why did you hit me and I’m handcuffed?”
Stevenson was eventually led away by officers and put into a police cruiser. She was later convicted of resisting arrest.
Stevenson’s civil suit, filed in Cumberland County Superior Court in December, names Drogo, other Millville Police officers and the city of Millville as defendants.
READ: Stevenson’s Civil Suit Complaint
Stevenson’s lawyer would not comment on the case, nor would Millville’s Police chief, citing pending litigation.
Drogo resigned from the police department in October for undisclosed reasons. He would not talk with NBC 10 News on-camera, but issued a statement in which he stood by his actions and called Stevenson’s allegations a distortion of the facts.
READ: Drogo’s Statement to NBC10
Drogo also insisted the arrest was lawful and described Stevenson’s lawsuit as frivolous.
Meanwhile, there’s now a warrant out for Stevenson’s arrest on drug possession charges, stemming from her encounter with police that was caught on camera.
Standard white rules of engagement : target and kill woman and children and then call them militants.
MEHTAR LAM, Afghanistan (Reuters) – Thousands of Afghans protested against President Hamid Karzai and the United States on Sunday over reports of fresh civilian deaths caused by U.S.-led troops during a raid against Taliban militants.
The issue of civilian casualties is sensitive in Afghanistan and has eroded public support for Karzai’s government and the foreign troops backing it.
It has also caused a rift between Karzai and his Western allies more than seven years after U.S.-led and Afghan forces overthrew the Taliban’s government.
The operation causing the latest controversy happened this week in eastern Laghman province. The U.S. military said on Saturday that troops, backed by air support, had killed 15 militants in an overnight operation.
Assadullah Wafa, a Karzai adviser investigating the deaths, said on Sunday that “16 civilians, many of them children and women, were killed” in the operation.
“We strongly condemn it and want an end to it (civilian casualties),” he told reporters in Mehtar Lam, Laghman’s provincial capital, where the protest was held.
A statement from the presidential palace quoted Karzai as saying that bombing villages and causing civilian deaths “will not bear any progress in the war against terrorism.”
Karzai said failure to coordinate attacks with his government would weaken its sovereignty and bolster the militants, it added.
A spokesman for the U.S. military said it planned to jointly investigate the incident with the Afghan government this week.
Chanting slogans against Karzai and the United States, thousands of people took part in the protest despite heavy rain.
“If the foreign troops do not put an end to their operations, we will launch jihad,” said Malik Hazrat, a protest leader.
The provincial governor tried to calm the demonstrators and invited them for talks with representatives of the U.S.-led troops. But some protesters threw stones at him and he stopped his speech.
There was no report of injuries and by midday the protest had simmered down.
Nearly 700 civilians were killed in operations by foreign and Afghan forces against the militants until October last year, according to a national human rights body based on a U.N. estimate.
Karzai, who has repeatedly urged foreign troops to coordinate operations with his government, last week termed civilian deaths as a main source of Afghanistan’s instability.
Why would a man trying to save the “white race” rape a woman of color? Perhaps some good old fashioned prison rape will help him get his bearings straight.
BROCKTON – Had Brockton police not stopped an “evil plan of mass murder,” dozens of innocent people could have been massacred by a 22-year-old computer geek intent on stopping the “extinction” of the white race, police said.
“It really could have been a disaster,” said Joshua Cohen, rabbi of Temple Beth Emunah, where accused double-murderer Keith Luke told police he planned to end his hate-fueled rampage by spraying a bingo night crowd of hundreds with bullets. “Only through the good work of Brockton police were we able to avert a huge disaster and tragedy.”
Brockton Police Chief William Conlon said had Luke not been stopped, “it would have been much worse.
“I think it shook the whole community,” said Conlon, whose officers dodged bullets as they chased Luke through Brockton.
Prosecutors allege that Luke, 22, hatched his plan of racial vengeance months ago with the goal of slaughtering as many “Jews, blacks and Hispanics” as he could.
Wednesday morning, he left his mom’s house in Brockton in a black Ford van. He was strapped with a 9mm handgun and 200 rounds of ammunition he bought on the street, police said.
It’s unclear what triggered him to launch the attacks, Cruz said.
According to a chilling police report, Luke started the day at his old apartment, intent on killing his 20-year-old Cape Verdean neighbor, Selma Goncalves, then taking to the streets to kill as many “non-whites” as he could.
He planned to end the day precisely at 6:30 p.m. at Beth Emunah before shooting himself, but instead he led police on a wild car chase – at one point firing at officers – before surrendering.
He later told cops he was “fighting extinction” of the white race.
Luke was arraigned yesterday in Brockton District Court on murder, assault and rape charges, and civil rights violations. The 320-pound, 6-foot-tall defendant was ordered held without bail.
Killed in the attack were Arlindo Goncalves, 72, a homeless man who was blasted in the face and back as he pushed a carriage of cans, and Selma Goncalves, who was shot in the back as she fled her blood-splashed apartment, where Luke allegedly shot and raped her sister. The Goncalves sisters are not related to the third victim.
Anabela Fernandes, 24, described her uncle, Arlindo Goncalves, as a kind man who struggled with alcohol and got by collecting cans. “He never did nothing to nobody,” she said.
Luke lived with his mother on Pleasant Street, where he kept to himself, other than going to the gym. A law enforcement source called him a “recluse” who spent hours on his computer, and tooled around the neighborhood on his bicycle.
“He was my whole life,” Luke’s mother, Dara, cried to the Herald yesterday, adding that her son battled mental illness. “I swear, I never thought he’d be capable of something like this.”
Luke’s attorney did not deny the allegations in court, only saying that his client had a “history.”
“So far we’ve not had violations by militants of our facilities,” insists UN Relief and Works Agency Gaza Director John Grig, who added that those seeking shelter in the school were carefully vetted to ensure that no militants were allowed inside. Israel’s claims about the compound only came hours after the international community began to express outrage over the killings: initially they promised simply to “look into the incident.”
The outrage over the killings was so palpable, in fact, that even President-elect Barack Obama managed to find his voice to briefly speak on the Gaza conflict for the first time. Though he insisted he had “plenty to say on the matter,” he said little else, instead promising more elaborate comments after January 20th. Hopefully in another two weeks the president-elect will be able to decide if attacking a school full of civilians is a good thing, or a bad thing.
A column of Israeli tanks rolled into the northern Gaza Strip on Saturday in the start of a ground offensive against Hamas. The Israeli military confirmed that a force had entered the Gaza Strip to seize some areas used to fire rockets.
Israeli security officials said the operation is likely to go on, but the goal is not to reoccupy Gaza. The depth and intensity will depend on parallel diplomatic efforts, the officials said, according to the AP.
document.write(‘<SCR’+'IPT src=”http://ads.albawaba.com/advertpro/servlet/view/banner/javascript/zone?zid=287&pid=0&random=’ +
Math.floor(89999999*Math.random()+10000000)+’&millis=’+new Date().getTime()+’” language=”JavaScript” type=”text/javascript”></SCR’+'IPT>’Israel’s campaign “won’t be easy and it won’t be short,” Defense Minister Ehud Barak said in a televised address shortly after the ground invasion began. “We do not seek war but we will not abandon our citizens to the ongoing Hamas attacks. Maj. Avital Leibovich, an Israeli army spokeswoman, told CNN: “We have many, many targets. To my estimation, it will be a lengthy operation.”
Israel has ordered the call-up of tens of thousands of military reservists as part of the ground offensive, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s office said in a statement late Saturday. It said that, in accordance with a secret cabinet discussion on Friday, the government ordered the armed forces “to draft the necessary reservists, on a scale of tens of thousands of troops”.
A text message sent by Hamas’ military wing, Izzedine al-Qassam, said “the Zionists started approaching the trap which our fighters prepared for them.”
Hamas said it also broadcast a Hebrew message on Israeli military radio frequencies promising to kill and kidnap the Israeli soldiers. “Be prepared for a unique surprise, you will be either killed or kidnapped and will suffer mental illness from the horrors we will show you,” the message said.
Hamas spokesman Ismail Radwan said in a televised speech that Gaza will “become a graveyard” for Israeli soldiers. He appeared on Hamas’ Al Aqsa TV shortly after the ground offensive started. After the invasion, Hamas spokespeople and gunmen fired off fiery warnings to the Israeli forces. In another message, Hamas warned Israeli forces that “Gaza will not be paved with flowers for you, it will be paved with fire and hell.”
The attack, dubbed “Operation Cast Lead” by the Israeli military after a Hanukkah poem, targeted police stations across the strip, killing Hamas security officials (reportedly including police chief Major-General Tawfik Jaber) and nearby civilians. The toll at present count was 205 killed and 300 wounded, according to a Hamas spokesman.
The attacks are expected to continue, with Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak vowing “the operation will last as long as necessary” and promising to widen the campaign from its already enormous scale. Barak labeled the police stations hit “terrorism infrastructure” and claimed that over 150 of those killed were Hamas militants.
Hamas remained defiant after the killings, insisting “all options are open” for retaliation against Israel. Palestinian protesters staged demonstrations against the attacks in the West Bank, while Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas called for “this aggression to stop immediately.” There are also reports of protests from Arabs inside Israel. Hamas fired at least 25 rockets in retaliation for the attacks, killing one Israeli civilian and wounding four others.
Ok, so they’re not racist, they just name their kids after Nazi war criminals…
EASTON, Pa. – The father of 3-year-old Adolf Hitler Campbell, denied a birthday cake with the child’s full name on it by one New Jersey supermarket, is asking for a little tolerance. Heath Campbell and his wife, Deborah, are upset not only with the decision made by the Greenwich ShopRite, but with an outpouring of angry Internet postings in response to a local newspaper article over the weekend on their flare-up over frosting.
“I think people need to take their heads out of the cloud they’ve been in and start focusing on the future and not on the past,” Heath Campbell said Tuesday in an interview conducted in Easton, on the other side of the Delaware River from where the family lives in Hunterdon County, N.J.
“There’s a new president and he says it’s time for a change; well, then it’s time for a change,” the 35-year-old continued. “They need to accept a name. A name’s a name. The kid isn’t going to grow up and do what (Hitler) did.”
Deborah Campbell, 25, said she phoned in her order last week to the ShopRite. When she told the bakery department she wanted her son’s name spelled out, she was told to talk to a supervisor, who denied the request.
A store manager at ShopRite referred questions to a corporate spokeswoman who did not immediately return a phone message Tuesday. But spokeswoman Karen Meleta told The Easton Express-Times for Sunday’s editions that the store considered Campbell’s request inappropriate.
The Campbells ultimately got their cake decorated at a Wal-Mart in Pennsylvania, Deborah Campbell said. About 12 people attended the birthday party on Sunday, including several children who were of mixed race, according to Heath Campbell.
“If we’re so racist, then why would I have them come into my home?” he asked.
The Campbells’ other two children also have unusual names: JoyceLynn Aryan Nation Campbellturns 2 in a few months and Honszlynn Hinler Jeannie Campbellwill be 1 in April.
Heath Campbell said he named his son after Adolf Hitler because he liked the name and because “no one else in the world would have that name.” He sounded surprised by all the controversy the dispute had generated.
Campbell said his ancestors are German and that he has lived his entire life in Hunterdon County. On Tuesday he wore a pair of black boots he said were worn by a German soldier during World War II.
He said he was raised not to avoid people of other races but not to mix with them socially or romantically. But he said he would try to raise his children differently.
“Say he grows up and hangs out with black people. That’s fine, I don’t really care,” he said. “That’s his choice.”
Atlanta – In rural Georgia, a group of high-schoolers gets a visit from the Secret Service after posting “inappropriate” comments about President-electBarack Obama on the Web. In Raleigh, N.C., four college students admit to spraying race-tinged graffiti in a pedestrian tunnel after the election. On Nov. 6, a cross burns on the lawn of a biracial couple in Apolacon Township, Pa.
The election of America’s first black president has triggered more than 200 hate-related incidents, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center – a record in modern presidential elections. Moreover, the white nationalist movement, bemoaning an election that confirmed voters’ comfort with a multiracial demography, expects Mr. Obama’s election to be a potent recruiting tool – one that watchdog groups warn could give new impetus to a mostly defanged fringe element.
Most election-related threats have so far been little more than juvenile pranks. But the political marginalization of certain Southern whites, economic distress in rural areas, and a White House occupant who symbolizes a multiethnic United States could combine to produce a backlash against what some have heralded as the dawn of a postracial America. In some parts of the South, there’s even talk of secession.
“Most of this movement is not violent, but there is a substantive underbelly that is violent and does try to make a bridge to people who feel disenfranchised,” says Brian Levin of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino. “The question is: Will this swirl become a tornado or just an ill wind? We’re not there yet, but there’s dust on the horizon, a swirling of wind, and the atmospherics are getting put together for [conflict].”
Though postelection racist incidents haven’t posed any real danger to society or the president-elect, law enforcement is taking note.
“We’re trying to be out there at the cutting edge of this and trying to stay ahead of groups that are emerging,” says Special Agent Darrin Blackford, a spokesman for the Secret Service, which guards the US president.
“Anytime you start seeing [extremist propaganda] floating around, you have to be concerned,” adds Lt. Gary Thornberry of the Oklahoma Highway Patrol, a member of the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force. “As far as it being an alarmist situation, I don’t see that yet. From a law enforcement point of view, you have to be careful, because it’s not illegal to have an ideology.”
After sparking conflict and showdowns in the 1990s – think Ruby Ridge, Waco, the Oklahoma City bombing – white supremacist and nationalist groups began this century largely splintered and powerless. Though high immigration levels helped boost the number of hate groups from 602 in 2000 to 888 in 2007, key leaders of such groups had died, been imprisoned, or were otherwise marginalized.
But postelection, at least two white nationalist websites – Stormfront and the Council of Conservative Citizens – report their servers have crashed because of heavy traffic. The League of the South, a secessionist group, says Web hits jumped from 50,000 a month to 300,000 since Nov. 4, and its phones are ringing off the hook.
“The vitriol is flailing out shotgun-style,” says Mr. Levin. “They recognize Obama as a tipping point, the perfect storm in the narrative of the hate world – the apocalypse that they’ve been moaning about has come true.”
Supremacist propaganda is already on the upswing. In Oklahoma, fringe groups have distributed anti-Obama propaganda through newspapers and taped it to home mail boxes. Ugly incidents such as cross-burnings, assassination betting pools, and Obama effigies are also being reported from Maine to Alabama.
The Ku Klux Klan has been tied to recent news events, as well. Two Tennessee men implicated for plotting to kill 88 black men, including Obama, were tied to the KKK chapter whose leader was convicted in a civil trial in Brandenburg, Ky., last week, for inciting violence. The murder last week in Louisiana of a KKK initiate, allegedly killed after trying to back out of joining, came at the hands of a new group called Sons of Dixie, authorities say.
“We’re not looking at a race war or anything close to it, but … what we are seeing now is undeniably a fairly major backlash by some subset of the white population,” says Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Report in Montomgery, Ala. “Many whites feel that the country their forefathers built has been … stolen from them, so there’s in some places a real boiling rage, and that can only become worse as more people lose jobs.”
In an election in which barely 20 percent of native Southern whites in Deep South states voted for Obama, the newly apparent political clout of “outsiders” and people of color has been unnerving to some.
“In states like Mississippi, Louisiana, and Alabama, there was extraordinary racial polarization in the vote,” says Merle Black, a political scientist at Emory University in Atlanta. “Black Americans really do believe that Obama is going to represent their interests and views in ways that they haven’t been before, and, in the Deep South, whites feel exactly the opposite.”
But for nonviolent secessionist groups like the League of the South, the hope is for a more vigorous debate about the direction of the US and the South’s role in it, says Michael Tuggle, a League blogger in North Carolina.
Mr. Tuggle says his group isn’t looking for an 1860-style secession but, rather, a model that Spain, for one, is moving toward, in which “there’s a great deal of autonomy for constituent regions” – a foil to what is seen as unchecked, dangerous federal power in Washington.
“To a lot of people, the idea of secession doesn’t seem so crazy anymore,” says Tuggle. “People are talking about how left out they feel, … and they feel that something strange and radical has taken over our country.”
This photo provided by St. Tammany Parish Sheriff’s Office shows Raymond Foster, the head of a Ku Klux Klan chapter from Bogalusa, La. Foster was booked into St. Tammany Parish jail in Covington, La., with second-degree murder charges in the death of a woman in rural St. Tammany Parish on Monday after she tried to back out of a KKK initiation ritual. (AP Photo/St. Tammany Parish Sheriff’s Office)
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Authorities have identified an Oklahoma woman fatally shot in Louisiana after a Ku Klux Klan initiation. The St. Tammany Parish Coroner’s office said Wednesday that the woman was 43-year-old Cynthia C. Lynch of Tulsa.
Sheriff Jack Strain says Lynch had been recruited over the Internet to come to Louisiana, join a Klan faction, then return to Oklahoma to sign up more members.
But authorities say she asked to be taken back to town from the ritual site in a rural area.
Strain says a fight followed and Lynch was shot Sunday.
One person has been booked on a second-degree murder charge. Seven others face charges related to covering up the shooting.
How long before volatile, and violent whites eager for revenge target him? It is high time for white males to be kept an eye on given that Obama has been targeted in the past.
Was Austrian far-right leader Joerg Haider secretly gay?
Speculation that he led a double life raged this week after his political protege, Stefan Petzner, publicly called Haider “the man of my life” in a tearful tribute to the former Freedom Party boss killed in a car crash earlier this month.
Petzner, 27, did not say explicitly that he and Haider, a 58-year-old married father of two, were gay or had a sexual relationship.
But Petzner’s tears and the tone of his remarks — along with photographs purportedly showing Haider in a gay bar on the eve of his death — have raised questions about whether the ultraconservative nationalist had something to hide.
“This can’t go on,” said Michael Fleischhacker, editor-in-chief of the daily Die Presse.
“Stefan Petzner needs to make a decision: Either he describes what was so special about his relationship with Joerg Haider, or he stops publicly playing the role of Haider’s successor and widow,” Fleischhacker wrote in his blog.
Haider died Oct. 11 after crashing his car in the southern province of Carinthia, where he was governor. Investigators say he was drunk and speeding at twice the posted limit when the car plowed into a concrete post and flipped.
Haider was alone in the vehicle, and although authorities have said there is no evidence to suggest foul play, his widow has refused to have Haider’s body cremated until independent forensics experts take another look at the remains.
In death, as in life, Haider remains steeped in controversy.
When his Freedom Party won 27 percent of the vote in 1999 elections, and joined Austria’s coalition government early in 2000, the European Union slapped the country with months of diplomatic sanctions in protest of statements by Haider that came off sounding anti-Semitic.
Though Haider praised aspects of Hitler’s labor policies, criticized immigrants as lazy, criminal and corrupt, and seemed contemptuous of Jews, neither he nor his party ever said anything derogatory about homosexuals, or made traditional family values a key campaign theme.
Haider had left the Freedom Party to form the somewhat more moderate Alliance for the Future of Austria, and Petzner, his deputy, succeeded him as party chief after Haider’s death. Together, the two rightist parties won about 29 percent of the vote in last month’s parliamentary elections.
Within hours of the fatal crash, Petzner went on national television. Sobbing, he declared: “For us, it’s like the end of the world.”
That in itself struck some as a bit unusual. But late last week, in an emotional interview broadcast on Austrian radio, Petzner went further.
“We had a special relationship that went far beyond friendship,” he said. “Joerg and I were connected by something truly special. He was the man of my life … I loved him as a best friend.”
Petzner chose his words carefully, and what he really meant remains open to interpretation. He called Haider his “Lebensmensch” — a term in German that could suggest an intimate relationship, but also could be used to describe an icon or a mentor.
Calls by The Associated Press to Petzner’s cell phone seeking comment went unanswered Friday.
In recent days, several Austrian newspapers and the respected news weekly Profil have published grainy photos they say show Haider in the Stadtkraemer — a gay bar in Klagenfurt, the provincial capital of Carinthia.
Haider’s widow, Claudia, and two married daughters have refused to comment, and his party insists his relationship with Petzner was purely platonic. Petzner was passed over this week as the Alliance’s floor leader in parliament, but he remains the bloc’s boss.
Party officials said Friday the controversy was not a factor in the decision to snub him as floor leader, noting that Haider also didn’t serve in that capacity.
For decades, rumors had swirled that Haider might be gay. Some had even taken to calling his political bloc the “Boys’ Party” because Haider’s entourage often included a bevy of tanned young men.
Austrians, however, are fiercely protective of what they call the “sphere of privacy” — a no-go zone that many feel applies as much to public figures as to ordinary citizens.
Others, like businessman Thomas Neuhold, contend a politician’s sexual orientation is irrelevant.
“I believe it’s been well-known for a long time that Joerg Haider was gay, and to be honest, I’m completely OK with that. We’re living in 2008,” he said.
“If more homosexual politicians would out themselves, it would be a great thing for Austria.”
Why not just vote for McCain? I thought whites believed in the rule of law.
In court documents unsealed Monday, officials with the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives linked two men to the plot.
The men allegedly planned to kill 88 black people, 14 of them by decapitation, according to court documents. Earlier reports had mistakenly said the plot involved killing 102 people.
The numbers 88 and 14 are symbolic to neo-Nazi groups, referring to “Heil Hitler” and a 14-word slogan often citied in racist propaganda.
Jim Cavanaugh, special agent in charge of the Nashville field office for ATF, claimed that the two men planned to finish their killing spree by murdering Obama.
“They said that would be their last, final act — that they would attempt to kill Sen. Obama,” he told The Associated Press. “They didn’t believe they would be able to do it, but that they would get killed trying.”
Allegations against the two men — Daniel Cowart, 20, of Bells, Tenn., and Paul Schlesselman 18, of West Helena, Ark. — have not been proven in court.
Officials with ATF said they seized weapons from the pair, including a rifle, three pistols and a sawed-off shotgun.
Cowart and Schlesselman are charged with possessing an unregistered firearm and threatening a candidate for president. They are also accused planning to steal more weapons for the plot.
Agents with ATF said it appears the two men were acting alone. In court documents, it’s alleged Cowart and Schlesselman “planned to drive their vehicle as fast as they could toward Obama shooting at him from the windows.”
“Both individuals stated they would dress in all white tuxedos and wear top hats during the assassination attempt,” the court complaint states. “Both individuals further stated they knew they would and were willing to die during this attempt.”
Now where have heard this sort of false flag attack before? Why do white woman do such things? Notice the “b” scratch is backwards…
A John McCain campaign volunteer made up a story of being robbed, pinned to the ground and having the letter “B” scratched on her face in a politically inspired attack, police said Friday.
Ashley Todd, 20-year-old college student from College Station, Texas, admitted Friday that the story was false, police said.
Maurita Bryant, the assistant chief of the police department’s investigations division, said Todd is being charged with making a false police report.
Police doubted her story from the start, Bryant said.
“She just opened up and said she wanted to tell the truth,” Bryant said, according to the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. “She was upset with the media for blowing this into a political firestorm.”
Todd, who is white, initially told police she was attacked by a 6-foot-4 black man Wednesday night.
She told investigators she was attempting to use a bank branch ATM when the man approached her from behind, put a knife with a 4- to 5-inch blade to her throat and demanded money. She said she handed the assailant $60 and walked away.
Todd claimed that she suspected the man then noticed a McCain sticker on her car, became angry and punched her in the back of the head, knocking her to the ground and telling her “you are going to be a Barack supporter,” police said.
She said he continued to punch and kick her while threatening “to teach her a lesson for being a McCain supporter,” police said. She said he then sat on her chest, pinned her hands down with his knees and scratched a backward letter “B” into her face with a dull knife.
Todd also told police she didn’t seek medical attention, but instead went to a friend’s apartment nearby and called police about 45 minutes later.
On Friday, when she admitted the story was fabricated, Todd told police she believes she cut the backward “B” onto her own cheek, but she didn’t explain how or why, Bryant said.
“She said she doesn’t remember doing it but knows it must have been her who did it,” Bryant said, according to the Tribune-Review.
Todd reportedly said she thought of Barack Obama when she saw the “B” on her cheek and minutes later “came up what a plan” to manufacture the story, according to Bryant.
She now tells investigators she was neither robbed nor attacked.
“We had some serious cases going on, and this wasted so much time,” Bryant said. “Our detectives have been working through the night just to verify the information we suspected was false from the beginning.”
Bryant said somebody charged with making a false report would typically be cited and sent a summons. But because police have concerns about Todd’s mental health, they are consulting with the Allegheny County District Attorney. She remained in custody and was awaiting arraignment.
Todd worked in New York for the College Republican National Committee before moving two weeks ago to Pennsylvania, where her duties included recruiting college students, the committee’s executive director, Ethan Eilon, has said.
Eilon declined to comment on the investigation Friday or to help The Associated Press contact Todd.
Police investigating the alleged attack quickly noticed some inconsistencies in Todd’s story and administered a polygraph test, CBS station KDKAreports.
Authorities declined to release the results of that test, but investigators said they received photos from the ATM machine and “the photographs were verified as not being the victim making the transaction.”
Police say they do not believe any other people were involved. They said Todd’s friends believed the story about the attack.
Police suspected all along that Todd might not be telling the truth, starting with the fact that the “B” was backward, Bryant said.
“We have robbers here in Pittsburgh, but they don’t generally mutilate someone’s face like that,” Bryant said. “They just take the money and run.”
WASHINGTON (AP) — Deep-seated racial misgivings could cost Barack Obama the White House if the election is close, according to an AP-Yahoo News poll that found one-third of white Democrats harbor negative views toward blacks — many calling them “lazy,” “violent,” responsible for their own troubles.
The poll, conducted with Stanford University, suggests that the percentage of voters who may turn away from Obama because of his race could easily be larger than the final difference between the candidates in 2004 — about two and one-half percentage points.
Certainly, Republican John McCain has his own obstacles: He’s an ally of an unpopular president and would be the nation’s oldest first-term president. But Obama faces this: 40 percent of all white Americans hold at least a partly negative view toward blacks, and that includes many Democrats and independents.
More than a third of all white Democrats and independents — voters Obama can’t win the White House without — agreed with at least one negative adjective about blacks, according to the survey, and they are significantly less likely to vote for Obama than those who don’t have such views.
Such numbers are a harsh dose of reality in a campaign for the history books. Obama, the first black candidate with a serious shot at the presidency, accepted the Democratic nomination on the 45th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech, a seminal moment for a nation that enshrined slavery in its Constitution.
“There are a lot fewer bigots than there were 50 years ago, but that doesn’t mean there’s only a few bigots,” said Stanford political scientist Paul Sniderman who helped analyze the exhaustive survey.
The pollsters set out to determine why Obama is locked in a close race with McCain even as the political landscape seems to favor Democrats. President Bush’s unpopularity, the Iraq war and a national sense of economic hard times cut against GOP candidates, as does that fact that Democratic voters outnumber Republicans.
The findings suggest that Obama’s problem is close to home — among his fellow Democrats, particularly non-Hispanic white voters. Just seven in 10 people who call themselves Democrats support Obama, compared to the 85 percent of self-identified Republicans who back McCain.
The survey also focused on the racial attitudes of independent voters because they are likely to decide the election.
Lots of Republicans harbor prejudices, too, but the survey found they weren’t voting against Obama because of his race. Most Republicans wouldn’t vote for any Democrat for president — white, black or brown.
Not all whites are prejudiced. Indeed, more whites say good things about blacks than say bad things, the poll shows. And many whites who see blacks in a negative light are still willing or even eager to vote for Obama.
On the other side of the racial question, the Illinois Democrat is drawing almost unanimous support from blacks, the poll shows, though that probably wouldn’t be enough to counter the negative effect of some whites’ views.
Race is not the biggest factor driving Democrats and independents away from Obama. Doubts about his competency loom even larger, the poll indicates. More than a quarter of all Democrats expressed doubt that Obama can bring about the change they want, and they are likely to vote against him because of that.
Three in 10 of those Democrats who don’t trust Obama’s change-making credentials say they plan to vote for McCain.
Still, the effects of whites’ racial views are apparent in the polling.
Statistical models derived from the poll suggest that Obama’s support would be as much as 6 percentage points higher if there were no white racial prejudice.
But in an election without precedent, it’s hard to know if such models take into account all the possible factors at play.
The AP-Yahoo News poll used the unique methodology of Knowledge Networks, a Menlo Park, Calif., firm that interviews people online after randomly selecting and screening them over telephone. Numerous studies have shown that people are more likely to report embarrassing behavior and unpopular opinions when answering questions on a computer rather than talking to a stranger.
Other techniques used in the poll included recording people’s responses to black or white faces flashed on a computer screen, asking participants to rate how well certain adjectives apply to blacks, measuring whether people believe blacks’ troubles are their own fault, and simply asking people how much they like or dislike blacks.
“We still don’t like black people,” said John Clouse, 57, reflecting the sentiments of his pals gathered at a coffee shop in Somerset, Ohio.
Given a choice of several positive and negative adjectives that might describe blacks, 20 percent of all whites said the word “violent” strongly applied. Among other words, 22 percent agreed with “boastful,” 29 percent “complaining,” 13 percent “lazy” and 11 percent “irresponsible.” When asked about positive adjectives, whites were more likely to stay on the fence than give a strongly positive assessment.
Among white Democrats, one third cited a negative adjective and, of those, 58 percent said they planned to back Obama.
The poll sought to measure latent prejudices among whites by asking about factors contributing to the state of black America. One finding: More than a quarter of white Democrats agree that “if blacks would only try harder, they could be just as well off as whites.”
Those who agreed with that statement were much less likely to back Obama than those who didn’t.
Among white independents, racial stereotyping is not uncommon. For example, while about 20 percent of independent voters called blacks “intelligent” or “smart,” more than one third latched on the adjective “complaining” and 24 percent said blacks were “violent.”
Nearly four in 10 white independents agreed that blacks would be better off if they “try harder.”
The survey broke ground by incorporating images of black and white faces to measure implicit racial attitudes, or prejudices that are so deeply rooted that people may not realize they have them. That test suggested the incidence of racial prejudice is even higher, with more than half of whites revealing more negative feelings toward blacks than whites.
Researchers used mathematical modeling to sort out the relative impact of a huge swath of variables that might have an impact on people’s votes — including race, ideology, party identification, the hunger for change and the sentiments of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s backers.
Just 59 percent of her white Democratic supporters said they wanted Obama to be president. Nearly 17 percent of Clinton’s white backers plan to vote for McCain.
Among white Democrats, Clinton supporters were nearly twice as likely as Obama backers to say at least one negative adjective described blacks well, a finding that suggests many of her supporters in the primaries — particularly whites with high school education or less — were motivated in part by racial attitudes.
The survey of 2,227 adults was conducted Aug. 27 to Sept. 5. It has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 2.1 percentage points.
Early this morning US forces surrounded a home in a small village near the Iraqi town of Tikrit and destroyed it with an air strike, killing eight people. According to Iraqi police and neighbors, all those killed were civilians. One of the neighbors reported his home was also raided during the operation and that American forces “ordered people not to leave their homes” during the attack.
Large crowds of angry Iraqis reportedly marched through the streets after morning prayers, condemning the attacks and chanting “America is the enemy of God”. The new civilian deaths are likely to further complicate the already stalled Status of Forces Agreement with Iraq. The Iraqis have insisted on jurisdiction over US contractors and military personnel largely because of the number of civilians being killed by the forces.
The US forces issued a statement after the incident, and as is so often the case their story contradicts the reports from the scene. According to the US the raid targeted a “suspected al-Qaeda operative,” and he and three other militants were killed, along with three women. They also claimed to have rescued a child from the rubble.
Sad, but not shocking. Foreign students should strongly reconsider continuing their education elsewhere, away from volatile white nations. The suspects are out on bail already. Talk about hospitality.
A foreign student aged 16 was killed by a mob of drunken racist thugs in a sickening seaside attack outside a kebab shop.
Mohammed Al Majed, who was visiting the UK from Qatar to learn English died last night in hospital from severe head injuries two days after the savage gang beating in Hastings, East Sussex.
Mohammed – described by friends as ‘like a brother to everyone’ – is believed to be the son of a wealthy family in the oil-rich Gulf state.
He and his group were set upon – apparently for looking and sounding different – as they left a social club for foreign students shortly before midnight on Friday night.
The youngsters were beaten, kicked and pelted with glass bottles by the baying mob, who stamped repeatedly on Mohammed’s head before leaving him for dead and launching further assaults on his terrified pals.
Police are probing Mohammed’s death as a racially motivated murder.
Three men aged 17, 18 and 20 have been arrested and quizzed over the attack. The trio were later bailed.
Mohammed had been socialising at club run from the USA Fried Chicken and Kebab House.
At the back of the shop there is a large licensed bar area with pool tables, arcade machines and couches, which is used as a regular hangout by foreign students who study English each summer at the nearby EF Languages School.
Owner Remzi Tanriverdi, 43 said trouble started after a pair of local thugs aged between 19 and 22, who are well known to Mr Tanriverdi as regular troublemakers, turned up at the kebab shop and started drinking cans of lager at the picnic benches outside.
Murder hunt: The attack happened at the popular seaside resort of Hastings
They were soon joined by two more hoodie-wearing louts and two girls, all of whom were guzzling beer and bottles of alcopop.
Dr Tanriverdi, a doctor of political science with two degrees who moved to England from Turkey five years ago, asked them to leave but they refused and hurled abuse at him.
The former National Project Co-ordinator for the UN in Turkey said: ‘As soon as I saw them, I knew those boys would cause trouble. Whenever they turn up, trouble soon follows.
‘After I asked them to leave, I noticed a police car pull up outside, so I went over and spoke to the officers. I asked them to keep an eye on the boys, and they said they would – then left.
‘Less than an hour later, Mohammed – who was like a brother to everyone here – had been beaten to death by those boys.
‘It’s so sad, there are no words that can describe the horror of what happened – and for nothing. The attack was completely unprovoked and without reason.’
Dr Tanriverdi – known to the Arabic students as Uncle Remzi – has himself been physically attacked more than 25 times since he bought the kebab shop in 2005.
He added: ‘Those boys would never hurt a fly. They come from a culture where this sort of thing does not happen.
‘This incident will be disastrous for Britain’s relationship with the United Arab Emirates.
Shocked: Remzi Tanriverdi owns the kebab shop outside which Mohammed was beaten and left for dead
‘What parent will want to send their children here for the summer when they know things like this are happening?’
A Sussex Police spokesman said today: ‘Police are currently treating his death as a murder inquiry, and are investigating it as racially motivated at this time.’
CI Natalie Carron, from East Sussex Division, added: ‘The young man had spent about five weeks in Hastings and was due to return home next weekend. His death is incredibly sad.
‘We will have a uniformed presence in the area to reassure people and will continue to work with the language schools to address any issues.
‘Enormous numbers of foreign students come to Hastings and Rother each summer, in the region of 30,000 to 50,000.
‘The problems and issues they are involved in are very few in comparison to these large numbers.
‘Not withstanding this, no matter how rare an incident like this is, the effect on the young man’s family and tragic consequences can only be imagined.’
‘We will have a uniformed presence in the area to reassure people and will continue to work with the language schools to address any issues.
Hastings attracts up to 50,000 foreign students to its English summer schools each year.
‘The problems and issues they are involved in are very few in comparison to these large numbers,’ said Ms Carron.
‘Notwithstanding this, no matter how rare an incident like this is, the effect on the young man’s family and tragic consequences can only be imagined.’
GOLDEN, Colo. – The city manager of Golden, Colo., has decided to withdraw his invitation to let the Al-Jazeera news network broadcast from a barbecue in his backyard on the final night of the Democratic National Convention.
City manager Mike Bestor has apologized for any divisiveness he caused in the city of about 18,000, about 15 miles west of Denver.
Bestor made his decision after a City Council meeting Thursday at which residents complained the event with the English-language service of the Middle East news network would be disrespectful to veterans and active U.S. soldiers.
Al-Jazeera is based in Qatar and is funded by the royal family of the Persian Gulf nation. The network says its English service reaches at least 100 million households worldwide.
Why do whites behave like this? Is this how they behave on the international stage with China being the host of the Olympics?
Spain’s Olympic basketball team posed for an advertisement prior to the Games which appears to show all its players slanting their eyes, a move that could offend its Olympic hosts in Beijing. The ads, for a Spanish courier company, appeared in the Spanish-language newspaper La Marca.
As the uproar over the picture has grown today, more information about the advertising shot has come to light. The ad was sponsored by a Spanish courier company, Seur. Spain’s team, ironically, also is sponsored by Li-Ning Footwear, a Chinese company founded by Li Ning, the final torchbearer who was hoisted along the top of Beijing National Stadium during the Olympic Opening Ceremony finale.
The Spanish-language paper El Mundo has a piece debating whether the ad was racist that basically calls out the British press for trying to smear Spain’s good name. But they miss the point. Whether the picture was made in good fun is irrelevant. It was a ridiculous idea that was bound to upset a lot of people.
It’s baffling that nobody involved in the picture — from the photographers to the players — even seemed to consider that this ad would be looked at negatively. Did it not occur to somebody that it might not be a good idea to mock a large portion of the continent before the world’s largest athletic competition that, by the way, happens to take place on that continent. Were they not aware of an invention called “the Internet” that allo
Degrading: One of the images of U.S. soldier Lynndie England at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. Six years on a defiant England claims she was just doing her duty
Disgrace: Iraq detainees appear to be surrounded by U.S. military personnel at the Abu Ghraib prison
Five years on: Lynndie England with her authorised biography
Sick: Prisoners are made to lie on top of each other naked
