Cultural Differences Complicate a Georgia Drug Sting Operation

ROME, Ga., July 29 - When they charged 49 convenience store clerks and owners in rural northwest Georgia with selling materials used to make methamphetamine, federal prosecutors declared that they had conclusive evidence. Hidden microphones and cameras, they said, had caught the workers acknowledging that the products would be used to make the drug. But weeks of court motions have produced many questions. Forty-four of the defendants are Indian immigrants - 32, mostly unrelated, are named Patel - and many spoke little more than the kind of transactional English mocked in sitcoms. So when a government informant told store clerks that he needed the cold medicine, matches and camping fuel to "finish up a cook," some of them said they figured he must have meant something about barbecue.

Malvika Patel, left, and her husband, Chirag, in Ringgold, Ga. Ms. Patel spent three days in jail in a drug case before being cleared. The authorities had accused her of selling a medicine used to make methamphetamine.

The case of Operation Meth Merchant illustrates another difficulty for law enforcement officials fighting methamphetamine, a highly addictive drug that can be made with ordinary grocery store items.

Many states, including Georgia, have recently enacted laws restricting the sale of common cold medicines like Sudafed, and nationwide, the police are telling merchants to be suspicious of sales of charcoal, coffee filters, aluminum foil and Kitty Litter. Walgreens agreed this week to pay $1.3 million for failing to monitor the sale of over-the-counter cold medicine that was bought by a methamphetamine dealer in Texas.

But the case here is also complicated by culture. Prosecutors have had to drop charges against one defendant they misidentified, presuming that the Indian woman inside the store must be the same Indian woman whose name appeared on the registration for a van parked outside, and lawyers have gathered evidence arguing that another defendant is the wrong Patel.

The biggest problem, defense lawyers say, is the language barrier between an immigrant store clerk and the undercover informants who used drug slang or quick asides to convey that they were planning to make methamphetamine.

"They're not really paying attention to what they're being told," said Steve Sadow, one of the lawyers. "Their business is: I ring it up, you leave, I've done my job. Call it language or idiom or culture, I'm not sure you're able to show they know there's anything wrong with what they're doing."

For the Indians, their lives largely limited to store and home, it is as if they have fallen through a looking glass into a world they were content to keep on the other side of the cash register.

"This is the first time I heard this - I don't know how to pronounce - this meta-meta something," said Hajira Ahmed, whose husband is in jail pending charges that he sold cold medicine and antifreeze at their convenience store on a winding road near the Tennessee border.

But David Nahmias, the United States attorney for the Northern District of Georgia, said the evidence showed that the clerks knew that the informants posing as customers planned to make drugs. Federal law makes it illegal to sell products knowing, or with reason to believe, that they will be used to produce drugs. In these cases, lawyers say, defendants face up to 20 years in prison and $250,000 in fines.

In one instance, Mr. Nahmias said, a store owner in Whitfield County pulled out a business card from a Georgia Bureau of Investigation agent and told the informant that he was supposed to contact the agent if someone requested large amounts of the materials. When the informant asked if he would call, Mr. Nahmias said, the owner replied, "No, you are my customer."

"It's not that they should have known," Mr. Nahmias said. "In virtually or maybe all of the cases, they did know."

Like many prosecutors, Mr. Nahmias describes methamphetamine, a highly potent drug that can be injected, ingested or inhaled, as the biggest drug problem in his district. While only about a third of the meth here is made in small labs - the majority of the drug used in this country comes from so-called superlabs in Mexico - those small labs can be highly explosive, posing a danger to children, the environment and the police departments that are forced to clean them up. Their sources, he said, are local convenience stores.

read more > > >

Former U.S. Detainee in Iraq Recalls Torment

American guards arrived at the man’s cell periodically over the next several days, shackled his hands and feet, blindfolded him and took him to a padded room for interrogation, the detainee said. After an hour or two, he was returned to his cell, fatigued but unable to sleep.

The fluorescent lights in his cell were never turned off, he said. At most hours, heavy metal or country music blared in the corridor. He said he was rousted at random times without explanation and made to stand in his cell. Even lying down, he said, he was kept from covering his face to block out the light, noise and cold. And when he was released after 97 days he was exhausted, depressed and scared.

Detainee 200343 was among thousands of people who have been held and released by the American military in Iraq, and his account of his ordeal has provided one of the few detailed views of the Pentagon’s detention operations since the abuse scandals at Abu Ghraib. Yet in many respects his case is unusual.

The detainee was Donald Vance, a 29-year-old Navy veteran from Chicago who went to Iraq as a security contractor. He wound up as a whistle-blower, passing information to the F.B.I. about suspicious activities at the Iraqi security firm where he worked, including what he said was possible illegal weapons trading.

But when American soldiers raided the company at his urging, Mr. Vance and another American who worked there were detained as suspects by the military, which was unaware that Mr. Vance was an informer, according to officials and military documents.

At Camp Cropper, he took notes on his imprisonment and smuggled them out in a Bible.

“Sick, very. Vomited,” he wrote July 3. The next day: “Told no more phone calls til leave.”

Nathan Ertel, the American held with Mr. Vance, brought away military records that shed further light on the detention camp and its secretive tribunals. Those records include a legal memorandum explicitly denying detainees the right to a lawyer at detention hearings to determine whether they should be released or held indefinitely, perhaps for prosecution.

The story told through those records and interviews illuminates the haphazard system of detention and prosecution that has evolved in Iraq, where detainees are often held for long periods without charges or legal representation, and where the authorities struggle to sort through the endless stream of detainees to identify those who pose real threats.

“Even Saddam Hussein had more legal counsel than I ever had,” said Mr. Vance, who said he planned to sue the former defense secretary, Donald H. Rumsfeld, on grounds that his constitutional rights had been violated. “While we were detained, we wrote a letter to the camp commandant stating that the same democratic ideals we are trying to instill in the fledgling democratic country of Iraq, from simple due process to the Magna Carta, we are absolutely, positively refusing to follow ourselves.”

A spokeswoman for the Pentagon’s detention operations in Iraq, First Lt. Lea Ann Fracasso, said in written answers to questions that the men had been “treated fair and humanely,” and that there was no record of either man complaining about their treatment.

Held as ‘a Threat’

She said officials did not reach Mr. Vance’s contact at the F.B.I. until he had been in custody for three weeks. Even so, she said, officials determined that he “posed a threat” and decided to continue holding him. He was released two months later, Lieutenant Fracasso said, based on a “subsequent re-examination of his case,” and his stated plans to leave Iraq.

Mr. Ertel, 30, a contract manager who knew Mr. Vance from an earlier job in Iraq, was released more quickly.

Mr. Vance went to Iraq in 2004, first to work for a Washington-based company. He later joined a small Baghdad-based security company where, he said, “things started looking weird to me.” He said that the company, which was protecting American reconstruction organizations, had hired guards from a sheik in Basra and that many of them turned out to be members of militias whom the clients did not want around.

Mr. Vance said the company had a growing cache of weapons it was selling to suspicious customers, including a steady flow of officials from the Iraqi Interior Ministry. The ministry had ties to violent militias and death squads. He said he had also witnessed another employee giving American soldiers liquor in exchange for bullets and weapon repairs.

Read more

Do you know what 'inalienable rights' are?

If you can't, bang go your hopes of living the American dream. You will never become a US citizen.

At least, you are going to find it harder to do so, since Thursday. Those three brainteasers appear on a new list of 144 sample questions put out by the federal government that will form the basis of a revised test for anyone seeking to turn themselves into naturalised Americans.

It is the culmination of a five-year struggle to update the citizenship test, which was laid down in 1986 and has remained virtually untouched since. That exam contains 96 questions, mostly of a more amenable nature, such as: What are the colours of our flag? Who was Martin Luther King Jnr? When was the Declaration of Independence adopted?

The new list has provoked a heated debate about the nature of citizenship exams and what they are seeking to achieve. Immigrants' rights groups fear that by adding a raft of about 80 new questions, including sections on geography (What is the longest river in the US?), more probing questions on key historical periods (Name one war fought by the US in the 1800s) and highly conceptual queries (What is the rule of law?), will merely erect a new barrier to participation.

Daunting
About 600 000 people become naturalised US citizens every year, but the worry is that many could be put off by the new questions. "Our main concern is that the test does not become even more daunting an obstacle to citizenship than it is right now," said Fred Tsao, of the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights.

Tsao pointed out that in addition to the stress of having to pass the exam, there is the financial hurdle: naturalisation currently costs $400 to complete, and may rise to $800 under current proposals.

His group and other immigration organisations like it have taken to calling the citizenship test "the second wall". The first wall is the physical structure being erected along 1 120km of Mexican border, to keep out illegal immigrants. This second wall, the groups contend, is a barrier to full participation by legal immigrants who have lived and worked in the US for at least five years.

But the phrase is disputed by the US citizenship and immigration service. "I absolutely hate that term," said Chris Ratigan, an official within the service. "We are trying to build a wider bridge to citizenship. When someone decides to become an American citizen -- and what a wonderful decision that is -- we want them to feel that after they raise their hand and take the oath to America they are fully ready to participate in this country."

Under the old test, Ratigan said, there was great inequality about how it was administered. One state might ask only easy questions such as "Who is the president of the US today?", while other states would set the harder ones such as "Who said, 'Give me liberty or give me death?'" (Answer: Patrick Henry in 1775.) The pass rate -- running at present at 84% on the first sitting of the test and 95% in second and third sittings -- would show large local fluctuations as a result.

Under the new system, questions will be weighted according to their difficulty, so that no matter where in the country one is taking the test, one's chances of success would be equal.

So how will the new test go down? It will be piloted next year on 5 000 volunteers going for citizenship in 10 states across the country, to reflect the range of likely applicants. After feedback, the list will be whittled down to the best 100. Applicants will have to answer correctly six out of 10 randomly selected questions.

On the streets of New York, the pilot questions received a varied response. Josh, a businessman, found several questions easy. He knew the president has to be older than 35, that the tallest mountain is Mount McKinley, that the Mississippi is the longest river and that the early 19th-century war was the Spanish-American war of 1812. However, he was stumped by the question "What group of essays supported passage of the US Constitution?" (Answer: the Federalist papers.)

Edwin, a security guard from Puerto Rico, was stumped by several questions. Asked "What does 'We the people' mean in the Constitution?", he replied: "You got me, man. We never learnt that stuff in school."

If Edwin is remotely representative of the nation -- and he was just one man plucked from a New York street -- then the immigration service appears to be pitching its exam beyond its reach. However, he did get one question almost right. Asked "Who is the speaker-elect of the House of Representatives?", he said: "I know somebody was elected from California. Can't remember her name, but I know Bush ain't too happy about it."

The questions and help for those who need it

The questions
1. What does "we the people" mean in the Constitution?
2. Name one example of checks and balances.
3. How old must a president be?
4. What territory did the US buy from France in 1803?
5. Name one thing only the federal government can do.
6. What is the current minimum wage in the US?
7. Who is the Attorney General now?
8. Who governs the people in a self-governed country?
9. What is the "rule of law"?
10. What are "inalienable rights"?
11. Name one responsibility that is only for US citizens.
12. When is the last day you can send in federal income-tax forms?
13. Name one thing Benjamin Franklin is famous for.
14. Name one famous battle from the Revolutionary War.
15. Name one of the writers of the Federalist papers.
16. What group of essays supported the passage of the US Constitution?
17. What did Susan B Anthony do?
18. Who was president during World War I?
19. Where is the Grand Canyon?
20. What is the tallest mountain in the US?

Acceptable answers
1. The power of government comes from the people.
2. The president vetoes a Bill; Congress can confirm or not confirm a president's nomination; Congress approves the president's budget; the Supreme Court strikes down a law.
3. 35.
4. West of the Mississippi; the western US; the Louisiana territory.
5. Print money; declare war; create an army; make treaties.
6. $5.15.
7. Alberto Gonzales.
8. The people govern themselves; the government elected by the people.
9. Everyone must obey the law; leaders must obey the law; the government must obey the law.
10. Individual rights with which people are born.
11. Vote; serve on a jury.
12. By April 15 of every year; by April 15; April 15.
13. US diplomat; oldest member of the Constitutional Convention; first Postmaster General of the United States; writer of Poor Richard's Almanac.
14. Lexington and Concord; Trenton; Princeton; Saratoga; Cowpens; Yorktown; Bunker Hill.
15. James Madison; Alexander Hamilton; John Jay.
16. The Federalist papers
17. She fought for women's rights.
18. Woodrow Wilson.
19 Arizona; the Southwest; along on the Colorado River.
20. Mount McKinley or Denali

Source

Zombies arrested in downtown Minneapolis (July 25)

Jamie Lee Jones

Jessica Rae Baribeau

Jake Benjamin Sternberg

Christian Alexander Utne

Marie Katyanne Kibbe

Raphi Rechitsky

'Zombies' file lawsuit against city of Minneapolis

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) - A group of zombies have risen up to claim the city of Minneapolis and Hennepin County violated their free rights and discriminated against them.

The six adults and one juvenile who were arrested while impersonating the undead in July filed their lawsuit Thursday.

The ragged group were arrested for "simulating weapons of mass destruction" during a dance party near the Minneapolis entertainment district.

Police alleged that wires protruding from the zombie's backpacks could have been bombs or were meant to imitate bombs. It was later learned the wires were actually radios.

The adult zombies were jailed for two days before police and city attorneys said there was not enough evidence to charge them.

The lawsuit claims the zombie event was intended to "satirize contemporary commercial culture" and the arrests violated the partygoers rights to free speech.

City officials did not return a call to the St. Paul Pioneer Press seeking comment on Wednesday. City offices were closed on Thanksgiving.

Source

Gingrich raises alarm at event honoring those who stand up for freedom of speech

MANCHESTER – Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich yesterday said the country will be forced to reexamine freedom of speech to meet the threat of terrorism.

Gingrich, speaking at a Manchester awards banquet, said a "different set of rules" may be needed to reduce terrorists' ability to use the Internet and free speech to recruit and get out their message.

"We need to get ahead of the curve before we actually lose a city, which I think could happen in the next decade," said Gingrich, a Republican who helped engineer the GOP's takeover of Congress in 1994.

Gingrich spoke to about 400 state and local power brokers last night at the annual Nackey S. Loeb First Amendment award dinner, which fetes people and organizations that stand up for freedom of speech.

Gingrich sharply criticized campaign finance laws he charged were reducing free speech and doing little to fight attack advertising. He also said court rulings over separation of church and state have hurt citizens' ability to express themselves and their faith.

Last night's event, held at the Radisson Hotel-Center of New Hampshire, honored a Lakes Region newspaper and a former speaker of the House for work in favor of free expression.

The Citizen of Laconia was given the Nackey S. Loeb First Amendment Award, which is named after the longtime President and Publisher of the Union Leader Corporation, owner of New Hampshire's statewide newspaper.

The Citizen scrutinized the Newfound Area School Board beginning last year over a series of e-mail discussions held before public meetings. It also used the right-to-know law to uncover costly decisions by the town of Tilton this year.

Executive Editor John Howe said the decision to pursue the stories led to at least one advertiser canceling its business with the paper.

"We try to practice what we preach, even if it costs us business," Howe said. "And it has and it will in the future.

Also honored was Marshall Cobleigh, former House speaker and a longtime aide to former Gov. Meldrim Thomson.

Cobleigh introduced an amendment to the state Constitution defending free speech. He also helped shepherd the state's 1967 right-to-know law through the Legislature.

Gingrich's speech focused on the First Amendment, but in an interview beforehand, he also hit upon wide-ranging topics.

• Gingrich said America has "failed" in Iraq over the past three years and urged a new approach to winning the conflict. The U.S. needs to engage Syria and Iran and increase investment to train the Iraqi army and a national police force, he said. "How does a defeat for America make us safer?" Gingrich said. "I would look at an entirely new strategy." He added: "We have clearly failed in the last three years to achieve the kind of outcome we want."
• Political parties in Presidential primary states should host events that invite candidates from both parties to discuss issues, said Gingrich, who criticized the sharpness of today's politics.
• Gingrich said voters unhappy with the war, the response to Hurricane Katrina and pork barrel spending were the main drive behind the GOP's rejection at the polls. But he argued Republicans would have retained the Senate and just narrowly lost the House if President Bush had announced the departure of embattled Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld before, instead of after, the election.
• Gingrich said he will not decide whether he is running for President until September 2007.

The event last night was sponsored by the Nackey S. Loeb School of Communications. The school was founded in 1999 to promote journalism and other forms of communication.

Minnesota voters send first Muslim to Capitol Hill

MINNEAPOLIS, Minnesota
(CNN) -- In a political first, a Muslim has been elected to serve in the U.S. Congress.

Keith Ellison, a Minnesota state legislator and lawyer, reached the political milestone by defeating two other candidates in Minnesota's 5th Congressional District, which covers the Minneapolis area.

His victory was part of the Democratic wave that seized control of the House of Representatives from the Republicans.

Ellison won 56 percent of the vote, defeating Republican Alan Fine and the Independence Party's Tammy Lee, both of whom garnered 21 percent of the vote. A Green Party candidate received 2 percent.

With 99 percent of the precincts reporting, Ellison received 135,519 votes, Fine 51,896, and Lee, 51,250.

Ellison is also the first African-American from Minnesota to be elected to the U.S. House. He ran on the Democratic-Farmer-Labor ticket in a district that is heavily liberal.

Members of that party, a uniquely Minnesotan movement, describe the DFL as the state chapter of the Democratic Party.

Ellison's winning platform

Ellison's views reflect Democratic ideals and discontent. (Watch what Ellison said about Katrina victims, abortion and insurance for the poor -- 2:38)

He is opposed to the war in Iraq and on his Web site, he has called "for an immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq."

"I opposed the war before it began. I was against this war once it started and I am the only candidate calling for an immediate withdrawal of troops."

His religious message is one of inclusiveness.

Regarding his Muslim faith, he said, "people draw strength and moral courage from a variety of religious traditions."

"Mine have come from both Catholicism and Islam. I was raised Catholic and later became a Muslim while attending Wayne State University. I am inspired by the Quran's message of an encompassing divine love, and a deep faith guides my life every day."

Ellison's position on the Israeli-Palestinian issue is supportive of the two-state solution and the road map to peace process. He has been critical of the Hamas movement.

"Peace is necessary for both Israeli and Palestinian people, and I wholeheartedly support peace movements in Israel and throughout the region," he said in a statement on his Web site.

He was endorsed by the Twin Cities newspaper, the American Jewish World, which said, "In Ellison, we have a moderate Muslim who extends his hand in friendship to the Jewish community and supports the security of the State of Israel."

Ellison is pro-choice and pro-labor, and supports "universal single payer health care" -- long popular stances among liberals.

The seat Ellison won had been held by Rep. Martin Olav Sabo, the longtime Democratic incumbent, whose retirement sparked a wide-open race. Sabo won 70 percent of the vote for the House seat in 2004.

Source

The Votes Are In! And I Didn't Win. :(

BUT, I got 11.4% of the vote. Not so bad, considering I barely campaigned. Something about breaking up with a husband and having the previous husband die that just takes the thrill out of it. LOL And, I didn't believe I would win. Between my late entry into the race and the local papers hatred of Libertarians that turned the race into "the evil Libertarians against the good Dems/Reps", there was little chance of my swaying the majority.

Here are the results:

NP - Michael J. Wallace	26340	27.42
NP - Bernard L. Stewart	24264	25.26
NP - Jacob Eapen	24096	25.08
NP - Gwen S Todd	10795	11.24
NP - Steve Strayer	10228	10.65
Write-in	335	0.35

Stay tuned. I already have my candidate info site for the next run and have learned a lot about what to expect. Watch this space for me to be the WINNER of the race next time around.

Not Child Left Behind . . .just suspended and humiliated

Fourth Grader Suspended After Refusing to Answer Exam Question

By David Evans

Nov. 3 (Bloomberg) -- Tyler Stoken was a well-behaved fourth grader who enjoyed school, earned A's and B's and performed well on standardized tests.

In May 2005, he'd completed five of the six days of the Washington State Assessment of Student Learning exam, called WASL, part of the state's No Child Left Behind test.

Then Tyler came upon this question: ``While looking out the window one day at school, you notice the principal flying in the air. In several paragraphs, write a story telling what happens.''

The nine-year-old was afraid to answer the question about his principal, Olivia McCarthy. ``I didn't want to make fun of her,'' he says, explaining he was taught to write the first thing that entered his mind on the state writing test.

In this case, Tyler's initial thoughts would have been embarrassing and mean. So even after repeated requests by school personnel, and ultimately the principal herself, Tyler left the answer space blank. ``He didn't want them to know what he was thinking, that she was a witch on a broomstick,'' says Tyler's mother, Amanda Wolfe, sitting next to her son in the family's ranch home three blocks from Central Park Elementary School in Aberdeen, Washington.

Because Tyler didn't answer the question, McCarthy suspended him for five days. He recalls the principal reprimanding him by saying his test score could bring down the entire school's performance.

``Good job, bud, you've ruined it for everyone in the school, the teachers and the school,'' Tyler says McCarthy told him.

`He Cried'

Aberdeen School District Superintendent Martin Kay ordered an investigation. ``My suspension was for refusal to comply with a reasonable request, and to teach Tyler that that could harm him in the future,'' McCarthy told an investigator. ``I never, for a second, questioned my actions.''

Tyler, who's 4 feet (1.2 meters) tall and weighs 70 pounds (32 kilograms), hasn't been the same since, his mother says.

``He liked the principal before this,'' she says. ``He cried. He didn't understand why she'd done this to him.''

Now, Tyler blows up at the drop of a hat, his mother says. ``They created a monster. He'll never take that test again, even if I have to take him to another state,'' she says.

Tyler's attitude about school changed. He became shyer. He's afraid of all tests and doesn't do as well in classes anymore, his mother says.

`Blatant Defiance'

McCarthy's May 6, 2005, letter to Tyler's mother detailed her son's suspension. ``The fact that Tyler chose to simply refuse to work on the WASL after many reasonable requests is none other than blatant defiance and insubordination,'' McCarthy wrote.

In the letter, she accused Tyler of bringing down the average score of the other 10 students in his class. ``As we have worked so hard this year to improve our writing skills, this is a particularly egregious wound,'' McCarthy wrote.

Her accusation was wrong, state regulations show. There is no averaging of the writing scores. Each student either meets or fails the state standard.

Tita Mallory, director of curriculum and assessment for the Aberdeen School District, says school officials feel tremendous pressure because of the high-stakes tests.

While there's no academic effect on elementary school children taking the exams, there can be repercussions for school administrators. When schools repeatedly fail to show adequate yearly progress, as defined by No Child, the principal can be fired.

``In many ways, there's too much emphasis on the test,'' Mallory says. ``I don't want that kind of pressure on our kids.''

Out of 74,184 fourth graders taking the WASL test last year, 42.3 percent failed to meet the state standard for writing.

Juanita Doyon, director of Mothers Against WASL and author of, ``Not With Our Kids You Don't! Ten Strategies to Save Our Schools'' (Heinemann, 144 pages, $14.95), says Tyler's experience is representative of what's wrong with tests like the WASL.

``They took a student who loved his school and crushed his spirit,'' Doyon, 46, says.

``We've elevated test scores to be the most important part of school. The principal and teachers are so pressured by the test that they've lost good sense in dealing with children.''

To contact the reporter for this story: David Evans in Los Angeles at davidevans@bloomberg.net

From Swami Beyondananda's Newsletter 11-2-06

No Story, No World ...New Story, New World

~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~ ~~~

In her book, Butterfly, Norie Huddle offers a powerful biological metaphor about the caterpillar' s metamorphosis into a butterfly. Inside the cocoon, new cells -- called, appropriately "imaginal cells" -- begin to pop up. Initially, these cells are recognized as "not the caterpillar" and are attacked. At some point, there are enough imaginal cells that they begin to communicate with each other and cluster together in communities. Although the caterpillar organism is still attacking these cells, the new cells become stronger and eventually and inevitably, the imaginal cells become the butterfly. So, you may be asking as you read or watch the news, where's the butterfly? Or, as the Swami has said, "Will the new age get here before old age does?"

And certainly, on the surface it's all caterpillar out there. But just as there is a moment where the field shifts from caterpillar to butterfly, I can assure you that the imaginal cells are popping up everywhere and beginning to cluster and communicate. And just as sure as a caterpillar never says, "You know, I'm not sure about this flying butterfly thing so I think I'll just go back to being a crawly caterpillar, " the process of evolution is a one-way street leading onward and upward.

In my travels to just about every region in the country over the past two years, I've seen this awakening and "up-wising." On one hand, those who allow themselves to see are facing the awful truth of how we've been betrayed by our leaders and institutions. On the other, people are also embracing the awesome opportunity as they see things as they can be, were we to actualize our human potential. It can be an emotional roller coaster to go from one extreme to the other, wondering how long it will take for a critical mass of citizens to awaken to the "critical mess." One thing is for certain, though. We can't get there from "here" when "here" means continuing to do what we've always done.

We Can't Get There From Here Unless We Find a New "Here"

To paraphrase Albert Einstein, a problem can never be solved at the level it was created. So it should come as no surprise as we shift from the Newtonian world view of force vs. opposing force, that we recognize that the dualistic political parties and cultural forces will only keep us stuck doing what we've been doing. Neither of the dominant dominator stories -- dogmatic religion or cynical materialism -- will be able to help us achieve this new emergent phase. A new story is needed, one that encompasses the spiritual and the material, that celebrates the individual and yet honors community, that anchors us with all that is precious in the past and also points us where none have gone before.

Thanks to a combination of intention and graceful good fortune, I am working with cellular biologist Bruce Lipton (The Biology of Belief) on a book that offers a new story based on the latest understandings of biology and quantum physics, and -- not coincidentally -- consistent with the teachings of the great spiritual masters. Boiled down, the message is this: "Just as our body is a harmonious community of 50 trillion cells, we humans are a 6.5 billion cell community on the surface of the earth. Since nature tells us that patterns repeat at higher levels of complexity -- from cell to organ to organism to planet -- what works under our skin is very likely to work in our human community as well."

On a purely biochemical level, the cell, the organism and the planet all need the same things: Clean water, nutrients and oxygen. Should any of these be compromised on any level, from cellular to planetary, life itself is threatened. On the psychological, social and spiritual level, harmony works better than disharmony. Throughout the recorded history of civilization, we have suspected this is true. It's what just about every religion or spiritual path has at its root, some version of the Golden Rule. Over millennia, we humans have been "content" to -- in the words of Alan Watts -- worship the finger instead of noting where the finger is pointing. But now, the dysfunctionality has gotten so profound and destructive to the entire planet, that we must finally turn to living those truths our teachers have been patiently trying to teach us for centuries. Put bluntly, unless we consciously choose to play "the world game," the "end-of-the- world" game will play itself out.

And the Good News Is ... the Bad News IS The Good News This bad news is good news indeed. It means we humans can no longer survive at this level of consciousness, and must metamorphose into something greater. The good news is that "truth" is inclusive, that Jesus and Einstein were both right, that we are indeed "all in this together, here to re-grow the Garden and have a heaven of a time doing it." Yes, it is easier said than done. However, we must say it before we can do it. And instead of the stories we've been telling ourselves -- either we are helpless children who can only be saved by divine intervention, or that we're even more helpless isolated entities stuck in an uncaring and random universe -- we need an empowering and enlightening story that encompasses science and spirit.

Getting back to those imaginal cells, what finally brings forth the new organism is the growing coherence of a new field. On the human level, the foundation of that coherence is a new story. Think about all the good work and well-intentioned organizations in this country and around the world. Consider those who understand and are working for environmental health, personal wellness, universal spiritual awareness without dogma, social and economic justice, sustainable business, enlightened education of our children, non lethal forms of problem-solving, etc., etc., etc. All of these great causes ...

And yet, it seems like so many of these well-meaning organizations are overworked and underfunded, seemingly in competition with one another for limited resource, and far too often disheartened and discouraged. A coherent and unifying story of what the "butterfly" looks like when it's up and flying can help us see how all of this work fits together, and how we can prioritize and move forward. It's my profound hope and intention that this book, The American Evolution, and the accompanying website will help transform the imaginal field of dreams into reality.

Army monitors soldiers' blogs, Web sites
Oversight operation checks for anything that may compromise security

RICHMOND, Va. - From the front lines of Iraq and Afghanistan to here at home, soldiers blogging about military life are under the watchful eye of some of their own.

A Virginia-based operation, the Army Web Risk Assessment Cell, monitors official and unofficial blogs and other Web sites for anything that may compromise security. The team scans for official documents, personal contact information and pictures of weapons or entrances to camps.

In some cases, that information can be detrimental, said Lt. Col. Stephen Warnock, team leader and battalion commander of a Manassas-based Virginia National Guard unit working on the operation.

In one incident, a blogger was describing his duties as a guard, providing pictures of his post and discussing how to exploit its vulnerabilities. Other soldiers posted photos of an Army weapons system that was damaged by enemy attack, and another showed personal information that could have endangered his family.

"We are a nation at war," Warnock said by e-mail. "The less the enemy knows, the better it is for our soldiers."

In the early years of operations in the Middle East, no official oversight governed Web sites that sprung up to keep the families of those deployed informed about their daily lives.

The oversight mission, made up of active-duty soldiers and contractors, as well as Guard and Reserve members from Maryland, Texas and Washington state, began in 2002 and was expanded in August 2005 to include sites in the public domain, including blogs.

The Army will not disclose the methods or tools being used to find and monitor the sites. Nor will it reveal the size of the operation or the contractors involved. The Defense Department has a similar program, the Joint Web Risk Assessment Cell, but the Army program is apparently the only operation that monitors nonmilitary sites.

Now soldiers wishing to blog while deployed are required to register their sites with their commanding officers, who monitor the sites quarterly, according to a four-page document of guidelines published in April 2005 by Multi-National Corps-Iraq.

Spc. Jean-Paul Borda, who has indexed thousands of military blogs for a site called Milblogging.com, said in an e-mail interview that the military still is adapting to changing technology.

"This is a new media — Blogging. Podcasting. Online videos," wrote Borda, 32, of Dallas, who kept a blog while he was deployed in Afghanistan with the Virginia National Guard. "The military is doing what it feels necessary to ensure the safety of the troops."

Warnock said the Web risk assessment team has reviewed hundreds of thousands of sites every month, sometimes e-mailing or calling soldiers asking them to take material down. If the blogger doesn't comply with the request, the team can work with the soldier's commanders to fix the problem — that is, if the blogger doesn't post anonymously.

"We are not a law enforcement or intelligence agency. Nor are we political correctness enforcers," Warnock said. "We are simply trying to identify harmful Internet content and make the authors aware of the possible misuse of the information by groups who may want to damage United States interests."

Some bloggers say the guidelines are too ambiguous — a sentiment that has led others to pre-emptively shut down or alter their blogs.

"It's impossible to determine when something crosses the line from not a violation to a violation. It's like trying to define what pornography is or bad taste in music," said Spc. Jason Hartley, 32, who says he was demoted from sergeant and fined for reposting a blog he created while deployed to Iraq with the New York Army National Guard.

According to Hartley, the Army had forced him to stop the blog even before the oversight operation existed, citing pictures he had posted of Iraqi detainees and discussions of how he loaded a weapon and the route his unit took to get to Iraq.

Warnock contended that soldiers should not be discouraged from blogging altogether.

Military bloggers "are simply expressing themselves in a wide open forum and want to share their life-changing experiences with the rest of the world," Warnock said. "Giving soldiers an outlet for free expression is good. American soldiers are not shy about giving their opinions and nothing the Web Risk Cell does dampens that trait."

Matthew Currier Burden, 39, a former intelligence officer who wrote "The Blog of War," a collection of entries from bloggers who served in the war, said soldiers' Web sites can go a long way toward portraying positive aspects of the war and other "stories that need to get told."

But he said it's legitimate to fear that some information could be used the wrong way.

"The enemy knows the value of the blogs," Burden said. "The biggest thing that we fear is battle damage assessment from the enemy. We want to deny them that."

Source: msnbc.msn.com

I got a call from the newspaper reporter, Angela Woodall, who is covering the election for the Argus. She wanted to know why I hadn't filed a financial statement. Well, because I didn't raise any money and I haven't spent any money. It isn't a crime, in fact the guy who registered me explained that I didn't need to spend a lot of money. I've campaign word of mouth, but I don't hold any real illusions about my chances. She pointed out that two of the incumbants had raised large sums for publicity. Well good on them. I guess having a couple of challengers has helped the local economy. LOL

But I also got an answer to a question that had been bothering me and which I had posted in my column last week. Why did she make such a big deal of my political party when it's for a non-partisan position. Well, the answer friends is that she doesn't like Libertarians and felt that the public knowing I am Libertarian was more important than their knowing any thing else. She doesn't even know what party the other candidates are, that didn't matter to her. As long as she could expose me and the other challenger as Libertarian and expose the Libertarian Party for trying to take over.

So much for unbiased reporting, my loves. Don't know what her issue is, but she came out and admitted she "outed" me on purpose. It wasn't my imagination. And she admitted that she knew that identifying me as a Libertarian (California has a few Greens they tolerate, but has no use for Libertarians, to hear her tell it.) damaged me more than her revealing my religious background. (former Mormon, former Wiccan)

As I told her in the original interview, I have no illusions about winning. This is a test run. I've been interested in running for office for years and the time was right for a tryout. I think I would be an excellent asset the hospital and a chance for the public to actually know what goes on there behind the closed doors where all the decisions are illegally made and I know that I'm new and, as if that weren't enough, the local reporter covering doesn't want the party I am affliated to to win.

Just thought you all might like to know that you can count on your local paper to protect you.

Cheney confirms that detainees were subjected to water-boarding

WASHINGTON - Vice President Dick Cheney has confirmed that U.S. interrogators subjected captured senior al-Qaida suspects to a controversial interrogation technique called "water-boarding," which creates a sensation of drowning.

Cheney indicated that the Bush administration doesn't regard water-boarding as torture and allows the CIA to use it. "It's a no-brainer for me," Cheney said at one point in an interview.

Cheney's comments, in a White House interview on Tuesday with a conservative radio talk show host, appeared to reflect the Bush administration's view that the president has the constitutional power to do whatever he deems necessary to fight terrorism.

The U.S. Army, senior Republican lawmakers, human rights experts and many experts on the laws of war, however, consider water-boarding cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment that's banned by U.S. law and by international treaties that prohibit torture. Some intelligence professionals argue that it often provides false or misleading information because many subjects will tell their interrogators what they think they want to hear to make the water-boarding stop.

Republican Sens. John Warner of Virginia, John McCain of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina have said that a law Bush signed last month prohibits water-boarding. The three are the sponsors of the Military Commissions Act, which authorized the administration to continue its interrogations of enemy combatants.

The radio interview Tuesday was the first time that a senior Bush administration official has confirmed that U.S. interrogators used water-boarding against important al-Qaida suspects, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged chief architect of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Mohammad was captured in Pakistan on March 1, 2003, and turned over to the CIA.

Water-boarding means holding a person's head under water or pouring water on cloth or cellophane placed over the nose and mouth to simulate drowning until the subject agrees to talk or confess.

Lee Ann McBride, a spokeswoman for Cheney, denied that Cheney confirmed that U.S. interrogators used water-boarding or endorsed the technique.

"What the vice president was referring to was an interrogation program without torture," she said. "The vice president never goes into what may or may not be techniques or methods of questioning."

In the interview on Tuesday, Scott Hennen of WDAY Radio in Fargo, N.D., told Cheney that listeners had asked him to "let the vice president know that if it takes dunking a terrorist in water, we're all for it, if it saves American lives."

"Again, this debate seems a little silly given the threat we face, would you agree?" Hennen said.

"I do agree," Cheney replied, according to a transcript of the interview released Wednesday. "And I think the terrorist threat, for example, with respect to our ability to interrogate high-value detainees like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, that's been a very important tool that we've had to be able to secure the nation."

Cheney added that Mohammed had provided "enormously valuable information about how many (al-Qaida members) there are, about how they plan, what their training processes are and so forth. We've learned a lot. We need to be able to continue that."

"Would you agree that a dunk in water is a no-brainer if it can save lives?" asked Hennen.

"It's a no-brainer for me, but for a while there, I was criticized as being the vice president `for torture.' We don't torture. That's not what we're involved in," Cheney replied. "We live up to our obligations in international treaties that we're party to and so forth. But the fact is, you can have a fairly robust interrogation program without torture, and we need to be able to do that."

The interview transcript was posted on the White House Web site. Interview of the Vice President by Scott Hennen, WDAY.

CIA spokeswoman Michelle Neff said, "While we do not discuss specific interrogation methods, the techniques we use have been reviewed by the Department of Justice and are in keeping with our laws and treaty obligations. We neither conduct nor condone torture."

Barack Obama: 'I Inhaled — That Was The Point'

"I inhaled — that was the point."

That was what Illinois Senator Barack Obama, currently on a book tour that may or may not segue into a run for the 2008 presidency, said to New Yorker editor David Remnick this afternoon at the American Magazine Conference, after Remnick asked Obama whether or not his admission of drug use in the book would become problematic if he does, if fact, run for president.

The softspoken Obama, who during an appearance on Meet The Press yesterday admitted he would consider a run for the White House, openly criticized the Bush administration in front of 500 or so magazine executives during a wide-ranging, 45-minute discussion, occasionally with Remnick's prodding. "This is the most ideologically driven administration in my memory, so obstinate in resisting facts, dissenting opinions ... [They entered the White House] with a set of preconcieved notions." Obama said. "I think this administration has done great damage to this country."

"I wouldn't fit in with this administration [because I think] actually being informed is a good basis for policy," Obama said to laughter. "OK, that's a low-blow."

Obama was particularly critical of the war in Iraq. "We've used up so much political capital [in Iraq]," adding that it is "going to take the current military the same amount of time it took the military to recover from Vietnam."

After some lighthearted grilling, Obama said Remnick "sounds nicer in his columns, but turns out to be somewhat of a prickly guy."

Remnick, who at this point could be considered the President of the United States of Magazines, forced Obama to address the topic of religion. "It's not 'faith' if you are absolutely certain," Obama said, noting that he didn't believe his lack of "faith" would hurt him a national election. "Evolution is more grounded in my experience than angels."

Throughout the interview, Obama expressed doubt about his willingness to put his family through the scrutiny of a presidential race. "My wife would be leading the bandwagon for me to be running for president ... if I was married to someone else."

When asked if the White House would be a plac e worth inheriting in 2009, Obama said, "There are a lot of problems to clean up, and nopt a lot of resources to work with." He added that the first agenda of a new president should be to "stabilize and extricate ourselves" from Iraq.

FishbowlNY will be blogging live this week from the American Magazine Conference — the annual pow-wow of high-powered magazine executives — at the Arizona Biltmore Resort & Spa in Phoenix. Check back often for our extended coverage.

US govt bans Vegemite
The US has banned importation of icky Australian delicacy Vegemite (a brown gunky spread that is simultaneously delicious and grody), enraging Aussie expats in the US, who require a steady supply of Vegemite in order to remain functional.

The bizarre crackdown was prompted because Vegemite contains folate, which in the US can be added only to breads and cereals.

Expatriates say that enforcement of the ban has been stepped up recently and is ruining lifelong traditions of having Vegemite on toast for breakfast.

Former Geelong man Daniel Fogarty, who now lives in Calgary, Canada, said he was stunned when searched while crossing the US border recently.

"The border guard asked us if we were carrying any Vegemite," Mr Fogarty said.

Source: boingboing

Bush Urges Nation To Be Quiet For A Minute While He Tries To Think

WASHINGTON, DC­—While acknowledging every American's inalienable right to free speech, the president asked citizens to "hold off on it for, say, 60 seconds."

Nine ex-Republicans run as Dems in Kansas

Political crossover striking in bedrock Bush territory

By Peter Slevin

The Washington Post

Updated: 3:54 a.m. MT Oct 19, 2006

WICHITA - Paul Morrison, a career prosecutor who specializes in putting killers behind bars, has the bulletproof résumé and the rugged looks of a law-and-order Republican, which is what he was until last year. That was when he announced he would run for attorney general -- as a Democrat.

He is now running neck-and-neck with Republican Phill Kline, an iconic social conservative who made headlines by seeking the names of abortion-clinic patients and vowing to defend science-teaching standards that challenge Darwinian evolution. What's more, Morrison is raising money faster than Kline and pulling more cash from Republicans than Democrats.

Nor is Morrison alone. In a state that voted nearly 2 to 1 for President Bush in 2004, nine former Republicans will be on the November ballot as Democrats. Among them is Mark Parkinson, a former chairman of the Kansas Republican Party, who changed parties to run for lieutenant governor with the popular Democratic governor, Kathleen Sebelius.

"I'd reached a breaking point," Parkinson said, preparing for a rally in Wichita alongside Sebelius. "I want to work on relevant issues and not on a lot of things that don't matter."

The Kansas developments coincide with efforts by Democrats across the country to capture moderate Republican and independent voters dismayed with partisan bickering from both parties, particularly from the Republican right. The spirit of the attempted Democratic comeback in Kansas, set by Sebelius, is a search for the workable political center.

Though yet untested in the election booth, the Democratic developments in Kansas reflect polls in many parts of the country. As elsewhere, Democrats and moderate Republicans say they are frustrated with policies and practices they trace to Republican leadership, including the Iraq war, ballooning government spending, ethics violations and the influence of social conservatives.

A long-standing split among Kansas Republicans has deepened in recent years. One fresh sign came from the Johnson County Sun, which said it would endorse virtually the entire Democratic ticket, including Morrison and Parkinson, after endorsing fewer than a dozen Democrats in the past half-century.

‘The Republican Party has changed’
"So what in the world has happened?" publisher Steve Rose asked in a recent column. "The Republican Party has changed, and it has changed monumentally. You almost cannot be a victorious traditional Republican candidate with mainstream values in Johnson County or in Kansas anymore." Ron Freeman, executive director of the Kansas GOP, called the migrating candidates -- Parkinson, Morrison and seven state House candidates, including one party-switching incumbent -- "a simple case of political opportunism."

"It's really more about them than it is about the party," Freeman said. "They obviously feel the Democratic Party is weak enough that, without any history in the party, they can be front-runners in the party."

Republicans control three-quarters of the state Senate and two-thirds of the House. The state has not elected a Democratic U.S. senator since the 1930s, although voters have been more willing to put Democrats in the governor's mansion. Rep. Dennis Moore became the lone Kansas Democrat in Congress in 1998 by appealing to crossover moderates -- the heart of this year's strategy.

Democrats consider it significant that 58 GOP incumbents in the state House drew Democratic opposition this year, compared with 39 in 2004. In the September primary, moderates mobilized to carry two Board of Education seats held by conservatives who had embarrassed many Kansans by endorsing a fundamentalist-Christian critique of evolution.

The recruiter-in-chief is Sebelius, who persuaded Republican Cessna executive John E. Moore to switch parties in 2002 and run to be her lieutenant governor.

"These are people who felt banished," Sebelius said in an interview before crowing to Democratic campaign workers: "We have some remarkable conversions. My favorite kind of revival is going to a place where someone says, 'I've been a Republican all my life, and I've seen the light.' " Sebelius, who has a solid lead over Republican challenger Jim Barnett, is the daughter-in-law of a Republican former member of Congress, and she likes to say the first Republican she converted was her husband. She has shown, notably in debates over school funding and the state budget, that she can negotiate compromises acceptable to both parties. Kansas has had a balanced budget for four straight years after six years of deficits.

This year, with Moore stepping aside, Sebelius recruited Parkinson, who views himself as squarely in the mainstream, talking up fiscal responsibility and a favorable business climate. He favors embryonic stem cell research, a woman's right to choose abortion and the teaching of evolution as settled scientific theory.

It was also the governor who sold Morrison on the attorney general's race. "She said what I'd been thinking for three years," Morrison said.

In a Morrison radio ad, John Walsh of "America's Most Wanted" introduces the Johnson County district attorney as "one of the toughest prosecutors Kansas has ever seen" and names two of Morrison's best-known murder cases. Walsh asserts, in a dig at Kline, that after 26 years as a prosecutor, Morrison has the "right priorities."

Kline is a confident politician who has buoyed the Republican right and disturbed his opponents. He drafted a law restricting late-term abortion and won a recent Supreme Court case reinstating the death penalty. His most controversial moves were subpoenaing the medical records of more than 80 women and girls who received abortions in 2003 and seeking to require health workers to report the sexual activities of girls under 16.

‘Fairly moderate’
"The office has become much more political under his leadership," Morrison said in an interview in his Olathe office. Morrison says his political hero is former U.S. senator John C. Danforth, the Missourian who recently published a rebuke of the GOP that contends the national party is beholden to the Christian right.

"Most Kansas Republicans are fairly moderate," Morrison said. "They're like most Kansas Democrats."

Kline spokeswoman Sherriene Jones denied Morrison's contention that the Kansas GOP has moved too far to the right: "The Republican Party reflects Kansas values, reflects loyalty and reflects family," she said. "It's Mr. Morrison who has changed."

The Democratic National Committee is spending money and sending staff to Kansas as part of Chairman Howard Dean's much-debated 50-state strategy of extending the party's influence in unlikely places. The DNC will not reveal its spending or the size of the staff, but a spokesman said the infusion permits a statewide organizing effort not possible before.

With Sebelius and Parkinson so far ahead in the gubernatorial race, attention has shifted to the competition for attorney general, considered too close to call. As Parkinson, who describes Morrison as his best friend, puts it, "It's going to say a whole lot about what the state of Kansas is right now."

‘Temporary setback’
Whatever happens, Kansas State University political scientist Joseph A. Aistrup said, the duel between Republican moderates and conservatives will no doubt continue. He said the party switchers represent a "temporary setback" for the state GOP.

"The cultural conservatives have lost before, and they just keep on coming back," Aistrup said. "They don't pick up their marbles and go home."

© 2006 The Washington Post Company

Never Underestimate The Power of Makeup

1 Man Still Locked Up From 9/11 Sweeps
By Martha Mendoza
The Associated Press Saturday 14 October 2006

>In a jail cell at an immigration detention center in Arizona sits a man who is not charged with a crime, not suspected of a crime, not considered a danger to society.

But he has been in custody for five years.

His name is Ali Partovi. And according to the Department of Homeland Security, he is the last to be held of about 1,200 Arab and Muslim men swept up by authorities in the United States after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.

There has been no full accounting of all of these individuals. Nor has a promised federal policy to protect against unrestricted sweeps been produced.

Human rights groups tried to track the detainees; members of Congress denounced the arrests. They all believed that all of those who had been arrested had been deported, released or processed through the criminal justice system.

Just this summer, it was reported that an Algerian man, Benemar "Ben" Benatta, was the last detainee, and that his transfer to Canada had closed the book on the post-9/11 sweeps.

But now The Associated Press has learned that at least one person - Partovi - is still being held. The Department of Homeland Security insists he really is the last one in custody.

"Certainly it's not our goal as an agency to keep anyone detained indefinitely," said DHS spokesman Dean Boyd. Boyd said the department would like to remove Partovi from the United States but that he refuses to return to his homeland of Iran.

And so he remains, a curious remnant of a desperate time.

Within hours of the Sept. 11 attacks - before it was even clear if they were over - the FBI was ordered to identify the terrorists who had managed to slip so smoothly into American society and to catch anyone who might have been working with them. The FBI operation was called PENTTBOM; it was swift and fierce, and the stakes couldn't have been higher.

When in doubt, the orders came, arrest now and ask questions later. To make this easier, law enforcement officials were authorized to use immigration charges as needed. The risk of allowing terrorists to slip away just because there wasn't ample evidence to hold them on terror charges could not be tolerated. And thus hundreds of individuals who were not terrorists, nor associated with terrorists, were temporarily taken into city, county and federal custody.

They were caught in their bedrooms while they slept, pulled from the restaurant kitchens where they worked, stopped at the border, even federal offices where they had gone to seek help. In the end, then-Attorney General John Ashcroft's call for "aggressive detentions" in the unprecedented sweeps netted more than 1,200 individuals in less than two months.

The initial reaction to the sweeps was confusion. Members of Congress, leading civil rights organizations, Arab and Muslim activists, even the Justice Department's internal watchdogs, didn't know how to react.

"After 9/11, everyone was caught off guard. There was so much secrecy surrounding the government's policies that it took a number of months before the public and civil-liberties groups began unraveling what the government was doing," said Lee Gelernt, an American Civil Liberties Union attorney.

Then came demands, from Congress, from the Justice Department's Inspector General, from the ACLU and Human Rights Watch and from Arab and Muslim activists, that these individuals must be accounted for.

To date that hasn't occurred.

"The fact is the United States has not come forward with information on what happened to these people, or released their names," said Rachel Meeropol, a staff attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights, an advocacy organization that represents several detainees being held in Guantanamo. "Our understanding is that the majority of these people who were swept up on immigration violations were then held in detention until they were cleared of any connection to terrorism. We believe that accounts for the vast majority of people who were swept up."

Here's what is known: 762 of the 1,200 PENTTBOM arrestees were charged with immigration violations at the behest of the FBI because agents thought they might be associated with terrorism. Partovi was one of these 762. Much as Partovi used a false passport, nearly all of these detainees had violated immigration laws, either by overstaying their visas, entering the country illegally, or violating some other immigration law.

Unlike Partovi, almost everyone was either deported or released within a few months.

There were still at least 438 other individuals who were not accounted for. Most of those individuals, said Justice Department officials, were released within days. But at least 93 were charged with federal crimes and processed through the courts, and an unknown number were deemed material witnesses.

As the years passed, said the ACLU's Gelernt, public concern faded.

"Initially there was a lot of attention on the 1,200 people, but we're still not sure exactly what happened to all of them," said the ACLU's Gelernt.

The repercussions are still being felt, say advocates.

"Those 1,200 were taken in on pseudo-immigration charges," said Jennifer Daskal of Human Rights Watch. "It really is a black mark on the U.S. and it undermines our intelligence gathering because it creates distrust between law enforcement officials and communities where those officials should be building rapport and trust."

"People lost years of their lives and families were ripped apart in the frenzy of fear," said Kerri Sherlock, director of policy and planning at the Rights Working Group, an advocacy organization in Washington D.C. "Do we really want to be a country that locks people up without guaranteeing their basic constitutional rights?"

In June 2003, the Justice Department's inspector general, an in-house auditor, found widespread abuses in the way immigration laws were used to hold people suspected of terrorism in the months following 9/11. The inspector general made 21 recommendations aimed at protecting individuals' civil rights. Twenty of those recommendations have been adopted.

The last recommendation calls for the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security to formalize policies, responsibilities, and procedures for managing a national emergency that involves alien detainees. After the inspector general's report, the Justice and Homeland Security departments agreed with the recommendation and began negotiating over language. Officials at both departments say those negotiations are still going on.

"The Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice continue to work toward the development of formal joint policies and approaches for the handling of such national security cases during periods of national impact," said Homeland Security Department spokesman Dean Boyd.

However, Boyd stressed that guidelines were set up in 2004 to make sure detainees' rights are being protected on a case-by-case basis.

"We learned from the past," he said. "We evaluate each situation to make sure it's being handled fairly."

Tim Lynch, a lawyer with the libertarian think tank Cato Institute, said guidelines are not enough.

"I don't think the guidelines will mean very much in an emergency if they don't have the binding force of law," he said. "We shouldn't be surprised if those guidelines aren't followed if there's another massive attack."

When the AP wrote Ali Partovi to ask for an interview, he called collect from the Florence Correctional Center, a privately run detention center in Arizona where he is held. Adamantly, he said he did not want to be interviewed and that he wanted to remain private, even though he said understood his case files, including litigation he files himself, are part of the public record.

He later reportedly told a public affairs officer at the facility that he is too busy for an interview - perhaps preparing his many legal appeals.

In his lawsuits - there have been seven so far - Partovi claims he is a victim of civil rights abuses and demands between $5 million and $10 million in restitution. The most recent was filed in July.

The staff at the jail where he was first held "poured hot coffee on my body, they also poured cold ice water on my body," he wrote in one, claiming that staffers also cuffed his hands and feet, which caused "my ankle and lower extremities to swell abnormally."

"It is my firm belief that I am constantly subjected to physical abuse (because) of my ethnicity, I am Iranian of Persian birth," he wrote in another, filed this summer. In that lawsuit he claimed that immigration officers forced him to kneel while handcuffed, and then kicked and punched his stomach and kidneys.

"As you can imagine, this is very, very painful when you are cuffed from behind," he wrote.

A spokesman for the U.S. Attorney said that office was aware of the lawsuits but could not comment on them. A detention center spokesman said he was not aware of any lawsuits and could not respond.

Partovi doesn't have a lawyer, and he told the AP he doesn't want one, choosing instead to represent himself, gleaning expertise from the prison library.

He did have a lawyer once, when he was arrested in Guam in the fall of 2001, trying to enter the country on a fraudulent Italian passport.

"Mr. Partovi came into Guam International Airport using a false passport. He explained about having been married to a Japanese women and the arrangement wasn't working out. He applied for political asylum, and I believe the federal government thought he might be a terror suspect," said Curtis Charles Van de Veld, who was hired by the federal government to represent him.

Partovi was sentenced to 175 days in custody, which he had already served by the time he pleaded guilty in 2002. Then he was turned over to the Department of Homeland Security.

Until the AP contacted him, Van de Veld didn't realize his former client was still in custody.

"I'm surprised he hasn't contacted me," he said.

Libertarians after Washington Hospital old guard
Two challengers run against three incumbents for spots on board

It's David meets Goliath this year on the Washington Hospital Board of Directors, with two Libertarian would-be reformers — Gwen Todd and Steve Strayer — running against three incumbents.

The longest-serving board member, Michael Wallace, wants to preserve Washington's independence from chains such as Sutter, and to oversee the hospital's seismic upgrades and expansion of its emergency room, 40 percent of which is being paid for by a $190 million bond voters approved in 2004.

The vice chairman of Fremont Bank, Wallace would focus on keeping the hospital competitive financially by attracting patients with cutting-edge medical techniques.

That would allow Washington to generate funds to offset the money it loses on treating uninsured patients and through sinking Medicare reimbursement rates, said Wallace, who was first elected 16 years ago.

Likewise, incumbent Bernard Stewart supports keeping the hospital financially strong and independent, making sure the bond construction projects are completed on time and within budget, and providing state-of-the-art medical care.

Washington's ability to remain profitable while many other hospitals in the state are losing money is a result of good management, said Stewart, elected to the board in 2002. He said he would look for alternative sources of funding to deal with the declining Medicare and Medi-Cal reimbursement rates.

"It is a tremendous challenge," he said.

Jacob Eapen, thenewest board member, wants to improve access to health care and transparency of government, and to promote public health issues. The Fremont resident favors expanding health care for the uninsured.

"People sensitive to these issues have to be at the helm, or they will only get worse," said Eapen, elected to the board in 2004.

Challenger Todd, a Fremont office manager and political novice, acknowledges that her chances are slim.

However, Todd is determined to be a public advocate because "one of the most important issues facing us is our health care," she said.

Having been uninsured herself, Todd said she wants an insider's perspective on the health care system to find out why it is not providing adequate help to the public.

"In order for a society to be healthy, individuals must be healthy," she said.

Her fellow Libertarian Party member, Strayer, decided to run for a board seat to make the hospital accountable to the public.

Strayer said he would actively seek out people who have had a bad experience at Washington and try to keep such things from happening again.

"Few people want to hear about problems, but I do," he said. However, he would reject a universal health care plan, he said, calling the concern for the rising number of uninsured Americans "overblown."

Strayer said the strongest quality he would bring to the board is common sense.

"I would ask how something benefits customers," he said. "I want to make this hospital function for the people."

Washington Hospital Board of Directors

Jacob Eapen
Age: 54
City of residence: Fremont

Education: Master's degree in public health, University of California, Berkeley; residency at Stanford University

Background: Pediatrician, Alameda County Health Services; public health commissioner, Alameda County; adviser to "Every Child Counts" Commission, Alameda County; elected to the board of the Association of California Healthcare Districts.

Position: Improve access to health care; invest in preventative health care through outreach and education; reduce disparities in the rates of immunization, obesity, diabetes and hypertension.

Bernard L. Stewart
Age: 64
City of residence: Fremont

Education: Bachelor's degree, San Jose State University; Doctor of Dental Surgery, Northwestern University Dental School

Background: Private dentistry practice in Fremont

Position: Keep the hospital financially strong and independent; make sure the bond construction projects are completed on time and within budget; and provide state-of-the-art medical care.

Steve Strayer
Age: 63

City of residence: Fremont

Education: Bachelor's degree in aerospace engineering, University of Kansas

Background: Engineering consultant

Position: Favors the interests of taxpayers and patients above the medical establishment; seeks feedback from patients who have experienced problems while seeking care at Washington.

*Gwen Todd
Age: 49

City of residence: Fremont

Education: Theater studies, Marietta College, Ohio

Background: Office manager, Realty World-Viking Realty

Position: Increase transparency of governance; be a public advocate for patients; direct resources to benefit the community.

Michael Wallace
Age: 58

City of residence: Fremont

Education: Bachelor's degree, Ohio State University; master of business administration, University of Santa Clara

Background: Vice chairman, Fremont Bank

Position: Safeguarding hospital independence; rebuilding Washington Hospital to comply with new, strict California seismic standards.

Source: The Argus

U.S. Says Blacks in Mississippi Suppress White Vote

Kate Medley for The New York Times

Ike Brown, chairman of the Democratic Executive Committee of Noxubee County, Miss., faces a federal suit.

MACON, Miss., Oct. 5 — The Justice Department has chosen this no-stoplight, courthouse town buried in the eastern Mississippi prairie for an unusual civil rights test: the first federal lawsuit under the Voting Rights Act accusing blacks of suppressing the rights of whites.

Kate Medley for The New York Times

Roderick Walker, county prosecutor, says the lawsuit is about “fair play.”

The action represents a sharp shift, and it has raised eyebrows outside the state. The government is charging blacks with voting fraud in a state whose violent rejection of blacks’ right to vote, over generations, helped give birth to the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Yet within Mississippi the case has provoked knowing nods rather than cries of outrage, even among liberal Democrats.

The Justice Department’s main focus is Ike Brown, a local power broker whose imaginative electoral tactics have for 20 years caused whisperings from here to the state capital in Jackson, 100 miles to the southwest. Mr. Brown, tall, thin, a twice-convicted felon, the chairman of the Noxubee County Democratic Executive Committee and its undisputed political boss, is accused by the federal government of orchestrating — with the help of others — “relentless voting-related racial discrimination” against whites, whom blacks outnumber by more than 3 to 1 in the county.

His goal, according to the government: keeping black politicians — ones supported by Mr. Brown, that is — in office.

To do that, the department says, he and his allies devised a watertight system for controlling the all-determining Democratic primary, much as segregationists did decades ago.

Mr. Brown is accused in the lawsuit and in supporting documents of paying and organizing notaries, some of whom illegally marked absentee ballots or influenced how the ballots were voted; of publishing a list of voters, all white, accompanied by a warning that they would be challenged at the polls; of importing black voters into the county; and of altering racial percentages in districts by manipulating the registration rolls.

To run against the county prosecutor — one of two white officeholders in Noxubee — Mr. Brown brought in a black lawyer from outside the county, according to the supporting documents, who never even bothered to turn on the gas or electricity at his rented apartment. That candidate was disqualified.Whites, who make up just under 30 percent of the population here, are circumspect when discussing Mr. Brown, though he remains a hero to many blacks. When he drove off to federal prison to serve a sentence for tax fraud in 1995, he received a grand farewell from his political supporters and friends, including local elected officials; whites, on the other hand, for years have seen him as a kind of occult force in determining the affairs of the county.

Still, many whites said privately they welcomed the Justice Department’s lawsuit, which is scheduled for trial early next year.

“In my opinion, it puts the focus on fair play,” said Roderick Walker, the county prosecutor Mr. Brown tried to oust, in 2003. “They were doing something wrong.”

Up and down South Jefferson Street, though, in the old brick commercial district, the white merchants refused to be quoted, for fear of alienating black customers. “There’s a lot of voting irregularities, but that’s all I’m going to say,” one woman said, ending the conversation abruptly.

The Justice Department’s voting rights expert is less reserved. “Virtually every election provides a multitude of examples of these illegal activities organized by Ike Brown and other defendants, and those who act in concert with them,” the expert, Theodore S. Arrington, chairman of the political science department at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, wrote in a report filed with the court.

Mr. Brown is coolly dismissive of the case against him. He has no office at the white-columned Noxubee County Courthouse, but that is where he casually greets visitors, in a chair near the entrance. A loquacious man, he both minimizes his own role and portrays himself as a central target. Far from being the vital orchestrator portrayed by the government, “when I was in Maxwell prison in ’95 and ’96, the show went right on,” he said.

There are so few whites in the county, Mr. Brown suggests, that the tactics he is accused of are unnecessary to keep blacks in office.

“They can’t win anyway unless we choose to vote for them,” he said with a smile. “If I was doing something wrong — that’s like closing the barn door when the horse is already gone.”

He sees the lawsuit against him as merely the embittered reaction of whites who feel disenfranchised, and he scoffs at a consent decree signed last year in which county officials agreed not to harass or intimidate white candidates or voters, manipulate absentee ballots, or let poll workers coach voters, among other things. “I wouldn’t sign my name,” Mr. Brown said.

But the Justice Department is pressing ahead with its suit, and wants to force Mr. Brown to agree to the same cease-and-desist conditions as his fellow county officials.

The state’s Democratic establishment has hardly rallied around Mr. Brown; privately some Democrats here express disdain for his tactics. Instead, he is being defended by a maverick Republican lawyer who sees the suit as an example of undue interference in the affairs of a political party.

“To do what they want to do, they would virtually have to take over the Democratic Party,” said the lawyer, Wilbur Colom, adding that Mr. Brown’s notoriety had made him the focus of the investigation. “I believe they were under so much pressure because of Ike’s very sophisticated election operation. He is a Karl Rove genius on the Noxubee County level.”

In Jackson, though, a leading light in Mr. Brown’s own party, Mississippi Secretary of State Eric Clark, a longtime moderate in state politics, refused to endorse him.

“Anybody who tries to prevent people from voting is breaking the law,” Mr. Clark said. “I certainly suspect some of that has been going on.”

Back in Macon, in the shadow of the courthouse green’s standard-issue Confederate monument, Mr. Brown spoke of history: “They had their way all the time. They no longer have their way. That’s what it’s all about.” The case is “all about politics,” he said, “all about them trying to keep me from picking the lock.”

But Mr. Walker, the county prosecutor, insisted the past had nothing to do with the case against Mr. Brown. “I wouldn’t sit here and pretend black people haven’t been mistreated,” he said. “I hate what happened in the past. But I can’t do anything about it.”

Source