Time Magazine†report fuels Guantanamo criticism – Jun 12, 2005

Sunday, June 12, 2005 Posted: 6:50 PM EDT (2250 GMT)

WASHINGTON (CNN) — The U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay drew fresh criticism Sunday following a Time magazine report on a logbook tracing the treatment of a detainee who officials believe was intended to take part in the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Time’s report on the treatment received by Mohammed al-Qahtani prompted a quick defense from the Pentagon along with outrage from several members of Congress.

Al-Qahtani was denied entry to the United States by an immigration officer in August 2001 and later captured in Afghanistan and sent to the detention camp at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The 84-page logbook obtained by Time and authenticated by Pentagon spokesman Larry Di Rita is the “kind of document that was never meant to leave Gitmo,” a senior Pentagon official told the magazine.

According to the logbook, which covers al-Qahtani’s interrogations from November 2002 to January 2003, the Time article reports that daily interviews began at 4 a.m. and sometimes continued until midnight.

The interrogation techniques included refusing al-Qahtani a bathroom break and forcing him to urinate in his pants.

“It’s not appropriate,” said Sen. Chuck Hagel on CNN’s “Late Edition.” “It’s not at all within the standards of who we are as a civilized people, what our laws are.

“If in fact we are treating prisoners this way, it’s not only wrong, it’s dangerous and very dumb and very shortsighted,” the Nebraska Republican said.

“This is not how you win the people of the world over to our side, especially the Muslim world.”

During the period covered by the logbook, Time reported, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld approved 16 additional interrogation techniques for use on certain detainees.

The magazine said the techniques approved by Rumsfeld included “standing for prolonged periods, isolation for as long as 30 days, removal of clothing, forced shaving of facial hair” and hanging “pictures of scantily clad women around his neck.”

Hagel said such treatment should offend the sensibilities of “any straight-thinking American, any straight-thinking citizen of the world.”

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat, said on the same program that the treatment outlined in the article presents “a kind of ludicrous view of the United States.”

“I don’t know what tree we’re barking up,” she said. “It is a terrible mistake.”

“I don’t know why we didn’t learn from Bagram,” she added, referring to a U.S. base in Afghanistan. “I don’t know why we didn’t learn from Abu Ghraib [prison in Iraq], but here we are in Guantanamo with many of the same things surfacing.”

Hagel raised questions about the quality of leadership that would allow such things to happen, drawing a comparison to his own experience fighting in Vietnam.

“We’ve been reassured for the last two years it’s not happening when in fact it is happening,” he said.

“There’s either a culture of leadership or there’s not,” he said. “This kind of stuff will fill the vacuum, and it needs to stop.”

Hagel and Feinstein said they weren’t sure whether the facility should be closed and were looking forward to Senate Judiciary Committee hearings this week on whether detainees had adequate legal protection.

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee is also planning hearings later this month.

Guantanamo defended

Others, however, said they did not see the treatment as abuse.

Rep. Duncan Hunter, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, defended the Guantanamo facility and flatly rejected suggestions that prisoners are mistreated.

“I think that’s accepting a falsehood and giving to the American people that somehow we don’t treat prisoners right,” said Hunter, a Republican from California.

Hunter cited a menu of food served to prisoners Sunday — including oven-fried chicken, rice pilaf, fruit and pita bread — as a sign that they are treated well.

“These are the people who tried to kill us,” he said. “It includes the guy — the 20th hijacker, that was Mr. Qahtani who was caught coming in — who didn’t make it to the planes that drove into New York,” Hunter said following an appearance on “Fox News Sunday.”

Earlier on the program, Hunter said the “legend” of Guantanamo Bay is “different than the fact” and repeatedly cited the menu.

“Here you have a guy who was on his way to kill 5,000 Americans,” he said. “And we have people complaining because he had a dog bark at him in Guantanamo.”

Nineteen hijackers commandeered four commercial airliners on September 11, 2001, piloting two into the World Trade Towers and one into the Pentagon. Another, United Airlines Flight 93, crashed in a Pennsylvania field. The death toll from the attacks was just under 3,000.

All the planes were hijacked by five men except Flight 93, which was commandeered by four. Some officials have speculated that al-Qahtani might have been the missing hijacker on Flight 93.

According to the Time article, lead hijacker Mohammed Atta was waiting for al-Qahtani outside the airport in Orlando, Florida, when he was detained by an immigration officer a month before the attacks.

Hunter defended the use of certain techniques as special to al-Qahtani.

“Secretary Rumsfeld for Mr. Qahtani — the hijacker who had important information on us, perhaps who was going to hit us next — approved for about two weeks the so-called new techniques for Mr. Qahtani,” he said.

The new techniques actually were in use from December 2, 2002, to January 15, 2003, when public outcry helped lead Rumsfeld to revoke them.

A senior Pentagon official told Time the Defense Department wasn’t sure how effective such treatment was. At times, the logbook notes that al-Qahtani was more cooperative when interrogators eased up on him, according to the Time report.

The Defense Department issued a news release Sunday touting the information gained from interrogating al-Qahtani.

According to the Pentagon, al-Qahtani told interrogators that he “had been sent to the U.S. by Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the lead architect of the 9/11 attack; that he had met Osama bin Laden on several occasions; that he had received terrorist training at two al Qaeda camps; that he had been in contact with many senior al Qaeda leaders.”

Additionally, the department said, al-Qahtani “clarified Jose Padilla’s and Richard Reid’s relationship with al Qaeda and their activities in Afghanistan, provided infiltration routes and methods used by al Qaeda to cross borders undetected, explained how Osama bin Laden evaded capture by U.S. forces, as well as provided important information on his health, [and] provided detailed information about 30 of Osama bin Laden’s bodyguards.”

Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said on CBS’s “Face the Nation” that none of the detainees at Guantanamo are entitled to treatment under the Geneva Conventions, which govern the treatment of prisoners of war, because these detainees did not follow rules of war.

Closing the facility — as suggested by Democrats including Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware and Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont — “would be an overreaction,” he said.

“We need a place like Guantanamo Bay to house people we take off the battlefield in the war on terror,” said Graham, who serves on the Senate’s Armed Services Committee. “We’ve had problems at Guantanamo Bay, but I don’t think we need to close it.”

Leahy said on the CBS program the United States has “created a legal black hole there.”

“Right now they have no particular legal framework with it,” he said. “We want other countries to adhere to the rule of law, and at Guantanamo, we are not.”

President Bush last week refused to rule out closing the prison, but Rumsfeld said there was no consideration of shutting it down.

The United States says detainees receive protections “consistent” with the Geneva Conventions, and the Red Cross visits regularly.

News reports have said the Red Cross told the United States in a 2004 report that some of its handling of detainees is “tantamount to torture,” but the organization does not publicly confirm or deny such information.

Last month, Amnesty International called Guantanamo “the gulag of our time,” sparking a storm of protests from administration supporters. (Full story)

This week, the Washington director of Human Rights Watch agreed with Leahy that “Guantanamo is a legal black hole,” but said it wasn’t necessary to shut it down.

“You can fix that problem by applying the Geneva Conventions, and the humane rules of interrogation there,” said Tim Malinowski. “But if you don’t mend it, people are going to increase their calls to end it.”

Guardian

Tate Liverpool
Dany Louise
Wednesday June 8, 2005
The Guardian

From the warm embrace of its orange and pink walls, to the exuberance and variety of the art, Summer of Love is both a testament to the right-on spirit of 1967 and a document of a complex period when “turn on, tune in, drop out” was a political mantra.

The Tate’s exhibition explores the two themes of 1960s idealism: seeking spiritual enlightenment through folklore and eastern mysticism, and the celebration of technology that heralded a brave new future. You see the former especially in Klarwein’s painting A Grain of Sand, which strives for cosmic profundity, and in the amorphous forms of the many mesmerising experimental films that anticipate the rave culture of the ecstasy generation. Streams of Day-Glo colour reveal the influence of LSD and marijuana – engines that drove psychedelic work, and this relationship is made explicit in Fahlstrom’s piece Esso-LSD. To look at this and the photograph Pot is Fun is to realise how times have changed.

It is impossible to escape a nostalgic reaction to this show. The works’ optimism and innocence seem staggering to our cynical eyes; uplifting yet bittersweet. Janis Joplin’s hand-painted Porsche signals the excess that eventually killed her; Yayoi Kusama’s Infinity Mirrored Room Love Forever can be read in the context of the 1987 Children’s Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem.

Tate Liverpool director Christoph Grunenberg argues in the catalogue that the psychedelic phenomena impacted beyond its weight in the fields of film, fashion, design and music. It has been marginalised as “anti-academic”, though, in other versions of art history. Summer of Love is an effort to re-evaluate this work. Its influence has underpinned so much of our culture over the past 35 years that we’ve forgotten to notice it, but this show provides a welcome reminder.

? Until September 25. Details: 0151-702 7400.

<a href="http://deuceofclubs.com/books/087mindfuckers.htm&quot;

New York Times

By ANDREW C. REVKIN

A White House official who once led the oil industry’s fight against limits on greenhouse gases has repeatedly edited government climate reports in ways that play down links between such emissions and global warming, according to internal documents.

In handwritten notes on drafts of several reports issued in 2002 and 2003, the official, Philip A. Cooney, removed or adjusted descriptions of climate research that government scientists and their supervisors, including some senior Bush administration officials, had already approved. In many cases, the changes appeared in the final reports.

The dozens of changes, while sometimes as subtle as the insertion of the phrase “significant and fundamental” before the word “uncertainties,” tend to produce an air of doubt about findings that most climate experts say are robust.

Mr. Cooney is chief of staff for the White House Council on Environmental Quality, the office that helps devise and promote administration policies on environmental issues.

Before going to the White House in 2001, he was the “climate team leader” and a lobbyist at the American Petroleum Institute, the largest trade group representing the interests of the oil industry. A lawyer with a bachelor’s degree in economics, he has no scientific training.

Chop, chop

Mourning the loss of two signature college coifs
Posted: Friday June 3, 2005 7:35PM; Updated: Friday June 3, 2005 8:16PM

While perusing reports from pre-NBA Draft workouts — mostly batches of unrevealing quotes from poker-faced personnel directors, or unequivocal optimism from the players themselves — I noticed one, troubling trend. While auditioning for the same league whose MVP, Steve Nash, wears his hair long, two of the NCAA’s hirsute icons felt compelled to chop it all off:

‚Ä¢ Arizona shooter extraordinaire Salim Stoudamire, whose ‘do was (shown at right) longer than the average hoopster’s during his senior season, arrived for his Denver Nuggets workout on May 31 with a buzzed-down look. “I had to clean up the image,” he told The Oregonian. “I’m in the big business now.” Stoudamire’s image issues, in actuality, had nothing to do with his hairstyle, and everything to do with his relationship with Wildcat coaches (tenuous, at times) and his on-court demeanor (often interpreted, or misinterpreted, as angry). But his hair was perceived to be a part of the problem.

‚Ä¢ Florida junior forward Matt Walsh, whose collegiate locks were of a curly, bouncy sort, shaved his head on the eve of his audition for the Memphis Grizzlies on May 25. Walsh is a hard-working player who, unlike Stoudamire, didn’t have a negative image in college. He did manage to irk a few opposing SEC fans, like¬†the absurd¬†Kentucky fanatic who told the Miami Herald in 2004, “I can’t stand the guy … Just look at him — the way he wears his hair.” Somehow, to a few informal background-checkers, the curls were also a cause for concern. Walsh told SI.com that his advisors would hear things like, “What’s the deal with his hair?,” or “Is this guy a pothead?” — “because of the way I looked,” he said. “So I just said, ‘Screw it — I’ll erase any thought of it’.” And out came the clippers.

Press release (?) from the Peoples’ Golfing Association (PGA):

“From July 6-8th, eight rulers plan to fortress themselves off from reality in the plush surroundings of Gleneagles. The luxurious club has long been the playground of the well-connected and privileged, and is widely viewed as an amusing and revealing location for the G8 summit. People from across the world are vowing that the well-tended lawns of Gleneagles will not be a protest-free zone. The surreal bubble in which the elite have retreated will be punctured.

“The PGA will be holding the Peoples’ Open Golfing Tournament which culminates on July 7th, and plan to be playing golf on the sumptuous greens of Gleneagles during the G8 schmooze-fest. The tournament is open to all freedom loving individuals who reject everything the G8 stands for (except golf). The golfing event promises the opportunity to brush shoulders with influential and dapper anarchists from around the world. It goes without saying that golf skills are not required. In fact, golf skills may even be frowned upon.

“We encourage the formation of autonomous golfing blocs for participation in the PGA Gleneagles tournament.”

New York Times
By DAVID CAY JOHNSTON

Published: June 5, 2005

When F. Scott Fitzgerald pronounced that the very rich “are different from you and me,” Ernest Hemingway’s famously dismissive response was: “Yes, they have more money.” Today he might well add: much, much, much more money.

The people at the top of America’s money pyramid have so prospered in recent years that they have pulled far ahead of the rest of the population, an analysis of tax records and other government data by The New York Times shows. They have even left behind people making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.

Call them the hyper-rich.

They are not just a few Croesus-like rarities. Draw a line under the top 0.1 percent of income earners – the top one-thousandth. Above that line are about 145,000 taxpayers, each with at least $1.6 million in income and often much more.

The average income for the top 0.1 percent was $3 million in 2002, the latest year for which averages are available. That number is two and a half times the $1.2 million, adjusted for inflation, that group reported in 1980. No other income group rose nearly as fast.

This huge 128 page issue features exclusive interviews with: Robert Wyatt and his wife, illustrator, lyricist, and muse Alfreda Benge, Masaki Batoh of legendary Japanese band Ghost, Tom Rapp of Pearls Before Swine, part two of our talk with Terry Riley, an extensive chat with Pat Thomas of San Francisco band Mushroom, the singular John Trubee, our pal Jose Marmeleira talks to Sun City Girls, we talk to Marissa Nadler, Elf Power, Bipolaroid, there’s a long lost phone call to the late great illustrator Rick Griffin, Jonny Trunk of Trunk Records, longtime contributor Sasa Rakezic aka Aleksandar Zograf talks to illustrating icon Gary Panter, Lee Jackson delivers his estimation of the most harrowing baker’s dozen recordings ever with his 13 Nightmares, we talk to Mats Gustafsson about the late lamented Swedish ‘zine The Broken Face, and he delivers a whole section of his inimitable record reviews, he also conducts interviews with Ed Hardy of Eclipse Records, Finnish explorers Kemialliset Ys‰v‰t, and Australian band the Lost Domain, our friend Nuno Robles talks to Donovan Quinn of Verdure, we also talk to Crashing Dreams, Swedish band Testbild!, Russian singer Julia Vorontsova, Tinsel, and as always there are an excess of record reviews, as well as DVD and publication reviews.

The complimentary CD included with issue #5 features excellent previously unreleased material by: Piano Magic, Volcano the Bear, Bipolaroid, Verdure, Mushroom, Julia Vorontsova, the Lost Domain, Jack Rose, AqPop, Testbild!, there’s also a great out of print John Trubee instrumental and Bob Moss lets us use a brilliant previously unrecorded Tom Rapp song from Bob’s album “Folknik II” on Soundcore/ Woods Cross.