CNN.com – Iraq officials acknowledge new detainee abuse –

Tuesday, November 15, 2005; Posted: 2:04 p.m. EST (19:04 GMT)

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) — Many of the more than 160 detainees who were held at an Iraqi Interior Ministry building were physically abused, Iraq’s deputy interior minister said Tuesday.

“I saw signs of physical abuse by brutal beating — one or two cases were paralyzed, and some cases of skin peeled off various parts of the body,” the official, Hussein Kamal, told CNN.

“I have never seen such a situation like this during the past two years in Baghdad. This is the worst and cannot be denied.”

Kamal blamed a lack of jail cells in Iraq.

“A major problem we face is that there are not enough places to contain these detainees after the preliminary investigation is through with them,” he said.

The U.S. military found the detainees Sunday when they entered a building controlled by the ministry while looking for a missing 15-year-old boy.

Brig. Gen. Karl Horst of the U.S. 3rd Infantry Division said Monday the prisoners were found “in need of medical care — so I brought medics in.”

Kamal said the facility housed 161 detainees. “There were other registered names in that facility who were interrogated by the Special Investigation Unit, then sent to court,” he said.

The U.S. military did not confirm the condition in which they found the detainees, but Iraqi police said they had been tortured. Kamal confirmed human rights abuses had taken place.

He added that the ministry cannot deny “knowledge of previous abuse cases where human rights were broken during the past two years.”

The U.S. military has taken charge of the building and the detainees, he said.

Horst said Monday he had brought in a legal team to go through the detainees’ files and a joint U.S.-Iraqi investigation was under way.

Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari pledged a ministerial-level investigation.

The American Embassy said it welcomed al-Jaafari’s remarks and that Zalmay Khalilzad, U.S. ambassador to Iraq, and Gen. George Casey, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, had discussed the situation with Iraqi leaders.

“The Iraqi government has the lead to investigate, prosecute and bring to justice those who may be found responsible for any abuse of detainees,” the embassy said in a statement. ” … Together with the Iraqi authorities, we are committed to making sure that detainee mistreatment is not tolerated.”

President Bush has said his administration doesn’t condone torture.

But concerns that U.S. troops have tortured prisoners have dogged the Bush administration since April 2004, when graphic photographs of Army reservists mistreating prisoners at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad became public.

Recently, Democratic senators called for an independent probe into the treatment of prisoners in American custody in Iraq, Afghanistan and at the U.S. detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Sen. John Warner, R-Virginia, the Armed Services Committee’s chairman, said that Congress already has held dozens of open and closed hearings into allegations of abuse by U.S. troops and the CIA and that investigations have found no policy condoning the mistreatment of prisoners.

CNN.com – U.S. calls medics to Iraq police detention center – Nov 14, 2005

Scores of detainees found in poor health, officials say

Monday, November 14, 2005; Posted: 2:24 p.m. EST (19:24 GMT)

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) — The U.S. Army discovered scores of detainees in poor health at a building run by the Iraqi Interior Ministry during a search for a missing 15-year-old boy, a U.S. general said Monday.

Brig. Gen. Karl Horst of the 3rd Infantry Division said the prisoners were found Sunday “in need of medical care — so I brought medics in.”

Iraqi police went further, telling CNN that many detainees in the Baghdad building “had obviously endured torture” and were “detained in poor health conditions.”

The Iraqi Interior Ministry could not be reached for response.

Horst would not say whether the military found signs of torture among the approximately 175 detainees, who were taken into U.S. custody.

“I brought in a legal team to sort through their files,” Horst said by phone from the building, one day after the mission took place.

On Sunday afternoon, U.S. soldiers entered the building, looking for a teenager who had been missing since September 15, Horst said. The boy was not there.

Iraqi police said the U.S. military “raided” the building, arriving in about 20 vehicles. The building was run by police commandos who work for the Interior Ministry, police said.

Horst denied there was a raid. He said U.S. and Iraqis were working on a joint investigation into the detainees and into the whereabouts of the boy.

Asked what the original purpose of the facility was, Horst replied, “I don’t know — that’s part of the ongoing investigation.”

MES interview, 14 May 2004
C: I wondered if the song “Book of Lies” was a reference to Crowley, whether he’s a figure you’re interested in.
MES: Well I do, but I keep it at the end of my arm. I’ve seen too many people dabble in that shit, you know. Like Genesis, he was into all that wasn’t he. You’ve got to be very careful with that stuff. I do like his Tarot though, the Crowley one. I do still like that. The interpretations of the cards are so funny, some of them. The reverse one is like, you are a crawling cockroach of the worst order [laughter]. The normal one is, you’re blocked, you’re not doing the right thing, you should be a bit more open and think about what you want to do. And he says, you’re a crawling cockroach of the worst order. Hah! You are like a bluebottle in human form. Imagine reading that to somebody. They’d probably kill themselves. [laughter] You are an average person, you’ll never amount to anything. [more laughter]
TC: Do what thou wilt and those phrases.
MES: Oh that’s still good.

A bad contract tore New Orleans’ Meters apart, but they’re back and rebuilding after the storm

by Jeff Chang, Special to The Chronicle
Monday, November 14, 2005

On a good day in a little corner of West Oakland, over the crow of backyard roosters and the low whoosh of cars passing on Interstate 880, you might hear a little bit of New Orleans heaven. Drummer Joseph “Zigaboo” Modeliste is laying down that famous second-line beat with a smile on his face and an extra little snap on his rolls. His band, the Meters, one of the most celebrated in the Crescent City’s storied musical history, is finally back together.

“God gave us a gift,” Modeliste says, “and we should be doing it.”

For many hip-hop, funk and rock fans, the reappearance of Modeliste with his original bandmates — keyboardist Art Neville, guitarist Leo Nocentelli and bassist George Porter Jr. — at April’s New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival was a stunning moment.

It was billed as a farewell show. But after their set, Modeliste teased the crowd, saying, “We’ll see you again.” (They play two dates this weekend at the Fillmore.) As New Orleans tries to recover from Hurricane Katrina, many see the band’s return as a sign of hope for the suffering city’s cultural revival.

But bringing the beat back wasn’t easy.

Emerging in the late ’60s as the house band for producers Allen Toussaint and Marshall Sehorn, the Meters gave Labelle, Lee Dorsey and Dr. John their biggest hits. They cut their own strikingly original songs, including “Sophisticated Cissy,” “Thinking,” “Just Kissed My Baby” and “Fire on the Bayou.”

All were propelled by what hip-hop producer Lucas “Cut Chemist” MacFadden calls Modeliste’s “less is more” drumming. Public Enemy’s Hank Shocklee says, “That was the formula for funk and hip-hop as we know it.”

But after eight acclaimed albums, the Meters fell apart in 1977, and their albums went out of print. Modeliste, whom some called the best drummer of his generation, dropped out of the music biz and left for the West Coast.

“It’s a fact that when we got the instruments in our hands, everything is harmonious,” says Modeliste. “It’s when we put the instruments down, that’s when it got kind of hairy.”

Born in New Orleans, Modeliste moved into the music-filled 13th Ward when he was 12. People called it Neville-ville, after the uptown district’s most famous family.
While still precocious teens, Modeliste, Nocentelli and Porter were recruited to play in Art Neville’s band. They worked six nights a week at an integrated Bourbon Street club called the Ivanhoe. The hours were long, but Neville says, “What we didn’t know was that we were really getting a chance to tighten our thing up.”

Toussaint heard them one night and brought them in to record. In 1969, one of the Meters’ first songs, “Cissy Strut,” became a top five R&B hit. They quickly signed with Toussaint and Sehorn, who gained control of all of their sources of income in one fell swoop. That’s when the joy and the turmoil both began.

Toussaint and Sehorn allowed the band lots of time to experiment and jam alone in their studio. As a result, the Meters’ albums were full of funky masterpieces, featuring stupendous grooves and hairpin changes, performed with uncanny cohesion and rhythmic subtlety. “Each one of those songs we did had a thousand songs in them,” says Modeliste. “You could take off bits and pieces and make them into other songs.”

For the past two decades, that’s just what hip-hop producers have been doing. Early this year, a thundering sample of Modeliste’s drums powered Amerie’s “1 Thing” to No. 8 on the Billboard singles chart. The Meters’ Mardi Gras standard, “Hey Pocky A-Way,” is the rhythmic engine for Tweet’s salacious R&B song “Sports, Sex & Food” and the Diplomats’ hard-core rap track “Dutty Clap.” Hip-hop artist Zach “DJ Z-Trip” Sciacca says the Meters catalog remains required material for any aspiring turntablist. “They’re like DJing 101,” he says.

Sundazed Records’ sales and publicity director Tim Livingston, whose label reissued the band’s albums on CD and vinyl in 1999, says the Meters audience now includes “jam-band followers, hip-hoppers, R&B collectors, rock fans, soul-and-funksters and drum enthusiasts.” Neville jokes, “My son Ian, his classmates and his friends know more about me and the Meters than I do.”

According to Nocentelli, young fans have not only learned from the band’s music but from their business problems, too. “All these new rappers, they learn about the business before they even learn to do anything musically,” he says. “Basketball players now are getting paid 20 times what Julius Erving got. But in order for them to get that, there had to be a Julius Erving. In that essence, there had to be a Meters.”

In the early ’70s, Toussaint and Sehorn signed the band to Warner Bros.’ Reprise label, while retaining all the rights to the band. The band retooled itself into a rock-and-funk unit with Neville as the lead singer. They developed a fanatical following, including stars like Paul McCartney, Mick Jagger and Lowell George. Rickey Vincent, a KPFA DJ and author of “Funk,” says, “In and outside of New Orleans, people came to understand that they were the core of a revolution in rhythm.”
But by the mid-’70s, frustrated by their lack of commercial success, the band began to implode. The end came in 1977. “The story was never finished,” says Porter. “I thought there was a lot of music still left undone.”

Neville achieved success with the Neville Brothers. Nocentelli and Porter became in-demand session players and formed new bands. Modeliste toured with Keith Richards and Ron Wood.

He then began scrutinizing the group’s contracts. “When I found out how we was pillaged, how we was misused and abused, I couldn’t get over it,” Modeliste says. “I just completely put the drums in the closet.”

In 1984, he persuaded his former bandmates to join him in a lawsuit against Sehorn and Toussaint to void the contracts and regain control of their music. Nocentelli says, “We started looking at contracts about 15 years too late.”

But in 1989, Nocentelli, Neville and Porter settled out of court, winning back some of their publishing rights and masters, and received a small cash amount. Sehorn sold the Meters’ publishing and master rights to third-party companies.

At the time, the Meters’ music was becoming relevant to a new generation of hip-hop producers. “The settlement was very timely in a positive sense,” says Nocentelli. “If we didn’t settle, then we wouldn’t be in the position to gain some of the financial benefits.”

But Modeliste vowed to carry on the suit by himself. More than two decades later, he continues his litigation. Royalties and publishing moneys are stacking up under Modeliste’s name, but he says he will not accept them until the lawsuit is resolved.

“He’s been pretty beat up,” Porter says of Modeliste. “My heart goes out to him because I absolutely see the wear and tear that this event has taken. I’ve seen it make him so bitter that he just didn’t want to play no more. And Zigaboo should never, ever not play. If there is a 13th wonder, then he is it.”

When Modeliste first heard Amerie’s “1 Thing” on the radio, he chuckled to himself. “I said, ‘Wow! That sounds just like something I would do.’ ” By now, it has become a familiar experience for him.
After Modeliste moved to Los Angeles in the late ’80s, he began hearing himself on records by rappers like N.W.A., King Tee and Compton’s Most Wanted. “All of Compton,” Modeliste says, “seemed to know about the Meters.”

Around the same time, Porter convened the Funky Meters with drummer Russell Batiste and guitarist Brian Stoltz to play and update the band’s music. Neville and Nocentelli even joined the Funky Meters for some dates. But Zig was still missing from the picture.

He was donning a suit and tie every morning for his job as an assistant manager at Kinney’s Shoes. When his father developed cancer, Modeliste brought him from New Orleans to his small two-bedroom apartment in North Hollywood. But his father died soon after.

“That kind of really took it all out,” he sighs. “So I took my drums out of the closet.” He quit the Kinney’s job, joined bluesman Roy Gaines’ band and was soon gigging six nights a week again.

At one point, he was hired by Dr. Dre for a session with an Italian American saxophonist Eazy-E was interested in signing. “I went in, and all they had was double turntables, some Meters records and George Clinton records to sample,” Modeliste recalls. “I said, ‘This is weird.’ ” The recordings were never released, but he was impressed by the hip-hoppers’ interest in him.

After the Rodney King riots, he moved to Berkeley and worked full time at Stepping Stones Growth Center, a job-placement center for disabled adults. He was consumed by the lawsuit.

Yet he also found time to play with Los Lobos and Bill Laswell, even punk hero Richard Hell. He met his wife, Kathy Webster, who later became his manager. Together they bought and restored a railroad house in West Oakland. Soon he was leading his own bands, the Aahkestra and the Funk Revue.

Modeliste reconciled with Porter, Nocentelli and Neville, and even played with them in different settings. But they never all played together. Then in 2000, a big offer enticed the band to come together for a one-night stand at the SF Weekly Warfield. Hopes were raised for a more permanent reunion.
The other band members and their management teams were not interested. So Modeliste released an album, “Zigaboo.com,” on his own independent label, JZM, and another, “I’m on the Right Track,” last year. The latter featured guest appearances by Dr. John and Bernie Worrell, and became a critical favorite.

After seeing the 2002 film reunion of Motown’s house band, the Funk Brothers, in “Standing in the Shadows of Motown,” Modeliste says he and Webster tried to bring the original Meters back together but were thwarted by management problems. As late as last December, Modeliste was telling reporters he had given up hope the band would ever reunite again.

That’s when Quint Davis, producer and director of the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, stepped into the picture. Davis was an old friend of the Meters and had helped organize the first JazzFest in 1970 when the Meters played in Congo Square. In the wake of a disastrous 2004 JazzFest, which suffered a $1 million loss, Davis became convinced that a Meters reunion would reignite interest in the festival.

“I started out against all odds. Everybody associated with them told me, ‘It can’t be done,’ ” Davis says. But early this year, he had a long discussion with Modeliste. “Zig said, ‘You’re gonna open up Pandora’s Box,’ and then he said, ‘It’s gonna be like “Jurassic Park.” You’re gonna bring the old dinosaurs back to life.’ That talk was a key turning point.”

Davis, the musicians and their managers came to the table, put aside their differences and hammered out the details. “Magically,” Davis says, “the camaraderie came back.” Their headlining appearance at JazzFest overshadowed an appearance by Brian Wilson, and performances by platinum-selling artists like James Taylor and Nelly.

In June, Modeliste and Webster bought a shotgun house in New Orleans’ Garden District and feverishly made plans to move back to the Big Easy. “I could be closer to the Meters, work on some ideas and that kind of stuff,” he says. “And then the storm came, and that changed everything.”

Porter’s house in Gert Town was flooded. The Nevilles’ home was burglarized after they fled to Nashville. Nocentelli relocated 15 family members to Southern California, including his 86-year-old mother, who drove all the way from New Orleans. Modeliste’s family escaped to Texas. His new house was miraculously left untouched.

Davis says, “Does the Meters reunion take on a larger significance now? Yeah. They’re trying to survive. They’re victims of the storm, and they have to provide for their families and their relatives.

“But of all the things of New Orleans that have been destroyed, the spirit in the music is one of the things that must be carried on,” he adds, “and if there’s anyone that carries that spirit of New Orleans music, it’s the Meters.”

All of the band members insist that they are not symbols for the Big Easy’s renewal. They’re just four guys trying to put it all back together. But for Modeliste, the reunion offers him a kind of closure.

“It’s always good to go home,” he says. “I wish it could have been a lot sooner that we would have made this decision, but it wasn’t. Better late than never.”

Jeff Chang is the author of “Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation.”

Sunday Nov 13, 2005 Washington Post

Libby May Have Tried to Mask Cheney’s Role

By Carol D. Leonnig and Jim VandeHei
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, November 13, 2005; A06

In the opening days of the CIA leak investigation in early October 2003, FBI agents working the case already had in their possession a wealth of valuable evidence. There were White House phone and visitor logs, which clearly documented the administration’s contacts with reporters.

And they had something that law enforcement officials would later describe as their “guidebook” for the opening phase of the investigation: the daily, diary-like notes compiled by I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, then Vice President Cheney’s chief of staff, that chronicled crucial events inside the White House in the weeks before the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame was publicly disclosed.

The investigators had much of this information before they sat down with Libby on Oct. 14, 2003, and first heard from him what prosecutors now allege was a demonstrably false version of what happened. Libby said that, when he told other reporters about the CIA operative and her marriage to Iraq war critic Joseph C. Wilson IV, he believed he had first learned the information from Tim Russert of NBC News and was merely passing along journalistic hearsay. This was an explanation made dubious by Libby’s own notes, which showed that he previously had learned about Plame from his boss, Cheney.

In the aftermath of Libby’s recent five-count indictment, this curious sequence raises a question of motives that hangs over the investigation: Why would an experienced lawyer and government official such as Libby leave himself so exposed to prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald?

Libby, according to Fitzgerald’s indictment, gave a false story to agents and, later, to a grand jury, even though he knew investigators had his notes, and presumably knew that several of his White House colleagues had already provided testimony and documentary evidence that would undercut his own story. And his interviews with the FBI in October and two appearances before the grand jury in March 2004 came at a time when there were increasingly clear signs that some of the reporters with whom Libby discussed Plame could soon be freed to testify — and provide starkly different and damning accounts to the prosecutor.

To critics, the timing suggests an attempt to obscure Cheney’s role, and possibly his legal culpability. The vice president is shown by the indictment to be aware of and interested in Plame and her CIA status long before her cover was blown. Even some White House aides privately wonder whether Libby was seeking to protect Cheney from political embarrassment. One of them noted with resignation, “Obviously, the indictment speaks for itself.”

In addition, Cheney also advised Libby on a media strategy to counter Plame’s husband, former ambassador Wilson, according to a person familiar with the case.

“This story doesn’t end with Scooter Libby’s indictment,” said Senate Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.), giving voice to widespread Democratic hopes about the outcome of Fitzgerald’s case. “A lot more questions need to be answered by the White House about the actions of [Cheney] and his staff.”

But to Libby’s defenders, the timing of Libby’s alleged lies supports his claims of innocence. They say it would be supremely illogical for an intelligent and highly experienced lawyer to mislead the FBI or grand jury if he knew the jurors had evidence that would expose his falsehoods. Libby, they say, is guilty of nothing more than a foggy memory and recollections that differ, however dramatically, from those of several witnesses in the nearly two-year-old investigation.

“People have different memories,” said lawyer Victoria Toensing, a Justice Department official in the Reagan administration. She said the fact that Fitzgerald did not indict on the crime he set out to investigate — illegal disclosure of classified evidence — supports the conclusion that no such crime took place. Fitzgerald has said he could not make such a determination because his inquiry was obstructed by Libby’s deceptions.

Even if Fitzgerald shows beyond a reasonable doubt that Libby’s version of events is wrong, he also must prove the former Cheney aide lied on purpose. But many lawyers and several White House aides said the case against Libby appears strong — and has the potential to embarrass other administration officials if it goes to trial.

The case was prompted by Plame’s name being publicized by columnist Robert D. Novak on July 14, 2003. Eight days earlier, Wilson had publicly criticized the Bush administration for allegedly twisting intelligence to justify the Iraq war. Wilson and his allies claimed Bush officials publicly identified Plame as payback for his dissent.

Libby is the only White House official charged in the case. Karl Rove, the president’s deputy chief of staff and top political adviser, remains under investigation for providing misleading statements about his role in the leaking of Plame’s identity, and people close to the case said he could still be charged. A final decision is expected soon on Rove’s fate.

William Jeffress Jr., one of Libby’s lawyers, declined to comment on the case. So did Fitzgerald’s spokesman, Randall Samborn.

But the emerging case against Libby is bringing more about Fitzgerald’s investigation into public view. In October 2003, agents interviewed several administration officials, who described conversations they had with Libby about Plame in June and early July of 2003. Cumulatively during Fitzgerald’s probe, four officials said they mentioned Plame to Libby, investigators found; three others said Libby mentioned her to them.

This testimony makes the story Libby offered during his first FBI interview look suspicious. He said he believed that he first learned about Plame on July 10 or July 11, 2003, in a conversation with Russert. Libby said he was surprised to learn of Plame’s connection to Wilson. To Fitzgerald’s team, Libby did not seek to deny that he had learned about the Plame link from Cheney — as revealed by Libby’s own notes — but simply said it had slipped his mind that the vice president was an earlier source of the information than Russert, lawyers familiar with the case said.

Even early in the investigation, two key people were publicly known at the time to have been interviewed by the FBI: Ari Fleischer, then-White House press secretary, and Catherine Martin, a Cheney press aide. Martin had learned about Plame’s employment at the CIA from another senior government official, the indictment says, and told Libby sometime in late June or the first week of July. Fleischer reportedly told investigators that, at a lunch on Monday, July 7, Libby told him that Wilson’s wife worked at the CIA and confided that the information was not widely known.

Fitzgerald, in announcing the indictment two weeks ago, called attention to this conversation with Fleischer to show how improbable he regarded Libby’s account: “What’s important about that is that Mr. Libby . . . was telling Mr. Fleischer something on Monday that he claims to have learned on Thursday.”

Libby’s defense must also reckon with his own notes. Lawyers familiar with the case said in general his notes do not recount the details of conversations and do not specifically contradict his account to investigators. Usually the notes explain with whom he met each day. One remarkable exception was when he chronicled a meeting with his boss on or about June 12, in which Libby wrote that Cheney told him that he learned from the CIA that Wilson’s wife worked at the agency.

But when Libby was called to answer Fitzgerald’s questions under oath before the grand jury on March 5 and again on March 24, 2004, he stuck to the story he had given in October. He repeated that he believed he had learned the information from a reporter and had forgotten Cheney had told him about Plame. He explained that he had not thought the material was classified because reporters knew it. But Fitzgerald pressed Libby — and not so subtly raised the specter of a coverup. “And let me ask you this directly,” Fitzgerald said. “Did the fact that you knew that the law could . . . turn on where you learned the information from affect your account for the FBI — when you told them that you were telling reporters Wilson’s wife worked at the CIA but your source was a reporter rather than the vice president?” Libby denied it: “No, it’s a fact. It was a fact, that’s what I told the reporters.”

After lengthy court battles over journalists’ duty to testify in the case — including several contempt citations by a trial court judge, appeals to the Supreme Court and one reporter’s jailing — Fitzgerald got all the reporters’ testimony that he had sought. Russert, Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper and Judith Miller of the New York Times all testified about their conversations with Libby. All contradicted Libby.

‘We Do Not Torture’ and Other Funny Stories

By Frank Rich
Sunday 13 November 2005
New York Times

If it weren’t tragic it would be a New Yorker cartoon. The president of the United States, in the final stop of his forlorn Latin America tour last week, told the world, “We do not torture.” Even as he spoke, the administration’s flagrant embrace of torture was as hard to escape as publicity for Anderson Cooper.

The vice president, not satisfied that the C.I.A. had already been implicated in four detainee deaths, was busy lobbying Congress to give the agency a green light to commit torture in the future. Dana Priest of The Washington Post, having first uncovered secret C.I.A. prisons two years ago, was uncovering new “black sites” in Eastern Europe, where ghost detainees are subjected to unknown interrogation methods redolent of the region’s Stalinist past. Before heading south, Mr. Bush had been doing his own bit for torture by threatening to cast the first veto of his presidency if Congress didn’t scrap a spending bill amendment, written by John McCain and passed 90 to 9 by the Senate, banning the “cruel, inhuman or degrading” treatment of prisoners.

So when you watch the president stand there with a straight face and say, “We do not torture” – a full year and a half after the first photos from Abu Ghraib – you have to wonder how we arrived at this ludicrous moment. The answer is not complicated. When people in power get away with telling bigger and bigger lies, they naturally think they can keep getting away with it. And for a long time, Mr. Bush and his cronies did. Not anymore.

The fallout from the Scooter Libby indictment reveals that the administration’s credibility, having passed the tipping point with Katrina, is flat-lining. For two weeks, the White House’s talking-point monkeys in the press and Congress had been dismissing Patrick Fitzgerald’s leak investigation as much ado about nothing except politics and as an exoneration of everyone except Mr. Libby. Now the American people have rendered their verdict: they’re not buying it. Last week two major polls came up with the identical finding, that roughly 8 in 10 Americans regard the leak case as a serious matter. One of the polls (The Wall Street Journal/NBC News) also found that 57 percent of Americans believe that Mr. Bush deliberately misled the country into war in Iraq and that only 33 percent now find him “honest and straightforward,” down from 50 percent in January.

The Bush loyalists’ push to discredit the Libby indictment failed because Americans don’t see it as a stand-alone scandal but as the petri dish for a wider culture of lying that becomes more visible every day. The last-ditch argument rolled out by Mr. Bush on Veterans Day in his latest stay-the-course speech – that Democrats, too, endorsed dead-wrong W.M.D. intelligence – is more of the same. Sure, many Democrats (and others) did believe that Saddam had an arsenal before the war, but only the White House hyped selective evidence for nuclear weapons, the most ominous of all of Iraq’s supposed W.M.D.’s, to whip up public fears of an imminent doomsday.

There was also an entire other set of lies in the administration’s prewar propaganda blitzkrieg that had nothing to do with W.M.D.’s, African uranium or the Wilsons. To get the country to redirect its finite resources to wage war against Saddam Hussein rather than keep its focus on the war against radical Islamic terrorists, the White House had to cook up not only the fiction that Iraq was about to attack us, but also the fiction that Iraq had already attacked us, on 9/11. Thanks to the Michigan Democrat Carl Levin, who last weekend released a previously classified intelligence document, we now have conclusive evidence that the administration’s disinformation campaign implying a link connecting Saddam to Al Qaeda and 9/11 was even more duplicitous and manipulative than its relentless flogging of nuclear Armageddon.

Senator Levin’s smoking gun is a widely circulated Defense Intelligence Agency document from February 2002 that was probably seen by the National Security Council. It warned that a captured Qaeda terrorist in American custody was in all likelihood “intentionally misleading” interrogators when he claimed that Iraq had trained Qaeda members to use illicit weapons. The report also made the point that an Iraq-Qaeda collaboration was absurd on its face: “Saddam’s regime is intensely secular and is wary of Islamic revolutionary movements.” But just like any other evidence that disputed the administration’s fictional story lines, this intelligence was promptly disregarded.

So much so that eight months later – in October 2002, as the White House was officially rolling out its new war and Congress was on the eve of authorizing it – Mr. Bush gave a major address in Cincinnati intermingling the usual mushroom clouds with information from that discredited, “intentionally misleading” Qaeda informant. “We’ve learned that Iraq has trained Al Qaeda members in bomb-making and poisons and deadly gases,” he said. It was the most important, if hardly the only, example of repeated semantic sleights of hand that the administration used to conflate 9/11 with Iraq. Dick Cheney was fond of brandishing a nonexistent April 2001 “meeting” between Mohamed Atta and an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague long after Czech and American intelligence analysts had dismissed it.

The power of these lies was considerable. In a CBS News/New York Times poll released on Sept. 25, 2001, 60 percent of Americans thought Osama bin Laden had been the culprit in the attacks of two weeks earlier, either alone or in league with unnamed “others” or with the Taliban; only 6 percent thought bin Laden had collaborated with Saddam; and only 2 percent thought Saddam had been the sole instigator. By the time we invaded Iraq in 2003, however, CBS News found that 53 percent believed Saddam had been “personally involved” in 9/11; other polls showed that a similar percentage of Americans had even convinced themselves that the hijackers were Iraqis.

There is still much more to learn about our government’s duplicity in the run-up to the war, just as there is much more to learn about what has gone on since, whether with torture or billions of Iraq reconstruction dollars. That is why the White House and its allies, having failed to discredit the Fitzgerald investigation, are now so desperate to slow or block every other inquiry. Exhibit A is the Senate Intelligence Committee, whose Republican chairman, Pat Roberts, is proving a major farceur with his efforts to sidestep any serious investigation of White House prewar subterfuge. Last Sunday, the same day that newspapers reported Carl Levin’s revelation about the “intentionally misleading” Qaeda informant, Senator Roberts could be found on “Face the Nation” saying he had found no evidence of “political manipulation or pressure” in the use of prewar intelligence.

His brazenness is not anomalous. After more than two years of looking into the forged documents used by the White House to help support its bogus claims of Saddam’s Niger uranium, the F.B.I. ended its investigation without resolving the identity of the forgers. Last week, Jane Mayer of The New Yorker reported that an investigation into the November 2003 death of an Abu Ghraib detainee, labeled a homicide by the U.S. government, has been, in the words of a lawyer familiar with the case, “lying kind of fallow.” The Wall Street Journal similarly reported that 17 months after Condoleezza Rice promised a full investigation into Ahmad Chalabi’s alleged leaking of American intelligence to Iran, F.B.I. investigators had yet to interview Mr. Chalabi – who was being welcomed in Washington last week as an honored guest by none other than Ms. Rice.

The Times, meanwhile, discovered that Mr. Libby had set up a legal defense fund to be underwritten by donors who don’t have to be publicly disclosed but who may well have a vested interest in the direction of his defense. It’s all too eerily reminiscent of the secret fund set up by Richard Nixon’s personal lawyer, Herbert Kalmbach, to pay the legal fees of Watergate defendants.

There’s so much to stonewall at the White House that last week Scott McClellan was reduced to beating up on the octogenarian Helen Thomas. “You don’t want the American people to hear what the facts are, Helen,” he said, “and I’m going to tell them the facts.” Coming from the press secretary who vowed that neither Mr. Libby nor Karl Rove had any involvement in the C.I.A. leak, this scene was almost as funny as his boss’s “We do not torture” charade.

Not that it matters now. The facts the American people are listening to at this point come not from an administration that they no longer find credible, but from the far more reality-based theater of war. The Qaeda suicide bombings of three hotels in Amman on 11/9, like the terrorist attacks in Madrid and London before them, speak louder than anything else of the price we are paying for the lies that diverted us from the war against the suicide bombers of 9/11 to the war in Iraq.

…Probably the most unexpected character, Grant Morrison‚Äôs Frankenstein is based loosely on DC Comics’ “Spawn of Frankenstein,” which appearaed as a backup in the ‚Äò70s Phantom Stranger series. Able to ‚Äúregenerate‚Äù himself by adding on pieces of dead men, Frankenstein has the right arm of a black slave, and the left arm of the angel, Michael.

“Frankenstein is my own version of the Mary Shelley monster with only a slight nod in the direction of DC’s 70s Spawn of Frankenstein character,” says Morrison. “My Frankenstein is a nightmare executioner of evil, caught up in freakish tales of Martian slavery and poisoned nature.

“Since Frankenstein was created by Mary Shelley in 1818, I decided to reflect the general period in the character’s dress and put him in a decayed and tattered version of a Hussar guardsman’s outfit. It gives him a recognisable ‘costume’ and also the retro modern feel I liked. Big fuck-off boots with spurs, lots of electrical contact bolts up his spine and neck and arms.”

COURTESY LARIS K.!

Description
Baby caribou skull weather sculpted into form believed to possess numinous powers. Received for services rendered to Inuit sorcerer near Pelly Bay, Northwest Territories, Canada, February 1976.

Starting bid: US $20,000.00
Time left: 2 days 21 hours
7-day listing, Ends Nov-13-05 18:18:23 PST
Start time: Nov-06-05 18:18:23 PST
History: 0 bids

LINK COURTESY DAVID H.!

November 7, 2005
My Duty

Greetings People,

Thank you for buying my new CD Our Music.

Burning Spear say sometimes as an artist it is good if you can share some things with the people especially the fans so they can get some understanding about the things you been through coming up in the business. I man been in this business since 1969 and I man did have to deal with various booking agent, record company and promoters and it was in the 90’s when I man start earn something from what I been doing since 1969. I man rise up with my self confidence and my capabilities and I man just keep on moving forward for I man is moving in the right direction and the people knows that.

Sometimes I ask His Majesty when am I going to be discharged from this duty? Maybe I was wrong to ask His Majesty such question. I see myself as Mr. Music, JAH Music, Our Music, World Music, the Peoples Music. What so ever JAH has given to I man, I man earn it the hardest way.

So Keep the Spear Burning
One Love
Peace
Burning Spear
posted by Burning Spear @ 2:42 PM 3 comments links to this post
October 26, 2005
Unity Is Strength

First I would like to say greeting to all the people of the world. Big Up to the fans of Connecticut they have make Our Music the best sound Scans for Burning Spear music. Plenty respect for all the radio DJ in that area, they and the fans have proven that Our Music can become Everyone Music.

Unity is strength.

I would like to say Our Music is not a song against record company. I man have nothing against any record company. This was just I way of speaking out against the things that happen in this business. You have pirate companies like Clocktower that put out this CD call Traveling. I man have never given them any rights. I don’t even know them. I man call them modern day Music Slave Traders. Also the name Harry you are not selling comes from this producer that would call I man Jackson. And now claim I sold rights to them for $40.00 Jamaican Dollars in 1975.

A lot of people say they made Burning Spear. I say to them Jah made Burning Spear, I am a messenger of Jah, so Jah send all these people to support my live concerts. So while they are sleeping I am working on Our Music. A lot of my peer in this music business would go on I man website and see all these tour dates. They would say “how spear have so much tour dates?, where the people them come from to support him? Burning spear don’t even have a hit record.” I am a messenger of His Majesty so I don’t need a hit record to spread his Majesty message.

Plenty respect to Bill Bass/Larry Gold and the House Of Blues crew for all the tour support. Respect to all Burning Spear disciples…

Our Music touch I man so much based on what was going on in my life at the time this record was being made I have to speak about it. I have never put so much of myself in a CD since the 1970’s. I don’t sing to gain riches and buy fancy cars. I was chosen by the creator for this job. I am O’ Rastaman. You see I man over the past years so don’t bother I man with your disturbances. Marcus Garvey/Elijah Mohammed/Martin Luther King and Mr. Malcolm X they leave the instructions for I to follow through. So don’t mess with the O’ Rastaman.

Mistake carry no face. I man can see my exit I am more stronger than before. I man His little Garvey, And so his every brother or sisteren that will fight for there rights. So hold Them Little Garvey show Them that we can get tough. Who are them? Them are your friends or neighbor or enemies. I thought you were my neighbor, or friend but not my enemy. How may time we all think this about our friend.

Yes fans a support for Our Music is a support for Burning Spear, O Rastaman. Let the lyric of Our Music chain I and I together. Marcus Garvey say – self reliance. So lets do the Burning Spear walk right to the record store for a Copy Of Our Music.

Peace,
Burning Spear