The Defense Department, the nation’s [and the world’s] biggest polluter, is resisting orders from the Environmental Protection Agency to clean up Fort Meade and two other military bases where the EPA says dumped chemicals pose “imminent and substantial” dangers to public health and the environment.
The Pentagon has also declined to sign agreements required by law that cover 12 other military sites on the Superfund list of the most polluted places in the country. The contracts would spell out a remediation plan, set schedules, and allow the EPA to oversee the work and assess penalties if milestones are missed.
ISTANBUL - Four Iraqi men are suing U.S. military contractors who they say tortured them while they were detained in Abu Ghraib prison, according to lawsuits being filed at U.S. federal courts on Monday.
The lawsuits allege the contractors committed violations of U.S. law, including torture, war crimes and civil conspiracy.
The scandal over the treatment of detainees at Abu Ghraib unleashed a wave of global condemnation against the United States when images of abused prisoners surfaced in 2004.
The four plaintiffs, all later released without charge, described their experiences to Reuters on Monday at an Istanbul hotel, where they periodically meet their U.S. legal team. They gave accounts of beatings, electric shocks and mock executions.
Farmer Suhail Naim Abdullah Al-Shimari, 49, said he was caged, beaten, threatened with dogs and given electric shocks during more than four years in detention. He was released in March without being charged and without any judicial process.
“I lost my house, my family were made homeless and left without a breadwinner. I lost four-and-a-half years of my life and all they did was say sorry,” he told Reuters. …
“This litigation will contribute to the true history of Abu Ghraib. These innocent men were senselessly tortured by U.S. companies that profited from their misery,” said Susan L. Burke, one of the attorneys representing the detainees.
The lawsuits were being filed where the contractors reside. They named CACI International Inc, CACI Premier Technology, L-3 Services Inc and three individual contractors.
The first suit was filed on Monday in Seattle, Washington, and the others were being filed in Maryland, Ohio and Michigan.
CACI provided interrogators at Abu Ghraib and L-3 provided translators at the prison.
Sa’adoon Ali Hameed Al-Ogaidi, a 36-year-old shopkeeper and father of four, described being caged, abused and paraded naked as one of the unregistered “ghost” detainees, hidden for a time from the International Committee of the Red Cross.
“In our Arab culture being stripped naked is one of the worst rights violations. It made me feel ashamed and it has left a deep scar in me,” he told Reuters.
“What I want is for the perpetrators to be brought to justice and punished for what they have done,” he said.
JOHN GREEN reviews Diarmuid Jeffrey’s meticulous narrative on the rise of Hitler-supporting chemical cartel IG Farben.
The Anglo-Saxon world has a morbid fascination with all things to do with Hitler and nazism. Analyses or clarifications about how fascism comes about, though, are few and far between.
In his book Hell’s Cartel, Diarmuid Jeffreys attempts to clarify the central role played by the giant chemical conglomerate IG Farben in financially supporting Hitler and fuelling his war machine.
He argues that he is “filling a gap” in the literature on this subject, ignoring the fact that the socialist countries dealt with this in detail. The renowned GDR feature film Council of the Gods provides a vivid account of the role of IG Farben in Hitler’s rise to power, but gets no mention. Jeffreys’s sources are virtually all Western.
At Nuremberg, for the first time in history, not only were chief nazis on trial but also some of the top managers of German industry. This sent shockwaves through the boardrooms of capitalist companies everywhere and raised the question of where culpability begins and ends.
The trial of the IG Farben and Krupp managers was the last of its kind. They ceased abruptly as the cold war against Bolshevism took centre stage and former nazis were transformed into useful allies.
IG Farben was allowed to remain as a holding company, but those formerly under its wing, such as Bosch, Bayer and Hoechst, again became powerful chemical companies on the world stage.
In this book, Jeffreys takes us back to the 1850s to give us a potted history of the German chemical industry. Bayer, for instance, began as a small dye-making company in Engels [see also here] ’s home town of Barmen on the Rhine.
Journalists, academics and activists said on Monday they had been detained and questioned at airports in Japan, sometimes for more than 10 hours, in a sign of growing security jitters ahead of next week’s G8 summit.
The Japanese G8 Media Network said six journalists from independent or alternative media invited by the group and 10 academics participating in an anti-G8 university conference had been detained by immigration officials.
These included three journalists from Hong Kong In-media who were questioned for three hours, held for a night in a detention centre and then questioned for another half day before being allowed into the country.
“Why did they pick us out and detain us for 17 hours? They never told us,” Chu Hoi Dick told a news conference.
“They only said: ‘you know at this time, the Japanese government is a little nervous’.”
An immigration official confirmed some people had been detained but declined to comment on their cases or the reasons for the hold ups.
Japan has implemented heavy security ahead of this year’s July 7-9 Group of Eight summit in Hokkaido, northern Japan with police presence increasingly visible in major cities like Tokyo and up to 21,000 police mobilised.
Its security budget is some 30 billion yen ($283 million), topping the 113 million euros ($186 million) spent at the last summit in Germany.
Anti-G8 protests have become a fixture of G8 summits. On Sunday, two rallies in Tokyo gathered over 1,000 people, including anti-capitalists, labour union members and protesters from abroad, such as Spain and South Korea. Eight men were arrested after scuffling with police at one of the rallies.
But tight security and the sheer cost of travel to the remote site of the summit, at a hilltop luxury hotel near a hot spring resort in rural Hokkaido, is expected to dampen turnout compared to previous summits.
Demonstrations are expected near the summit venue — where some 1,000-plus protesters are expected to gather in three camp sites — and organisers of a peace rally in Sapporo, capital of Hokkaido, ahead of the summit hope to draw 10,000 participants.
The journalists and academics said they had been repeatedly quizzed about their schedules and where they would be staying and in many cases were not given food.
Four academics had their visas cut short although one has since won an appeal to have it extended, organisers of the anti-G8 conference said.
“They gave me no food, coffee, water — nothing for more than 12 hours,” Andrej Grubacic, a sociology professor who teaches at the University of San Francisco, told a separate news conference.
“So while ‘Welcome to Japan’ was plastered all over the airport, the feeling in the interrogation room was very different,” he added.
BAGHDAD — Iraqi government officials on Sunday criticized the American military for two recent attacks in which soldiers killed people who the government said were civilians.
One death occurred during a raid by American soldiers on Friday near Karbala; two days earlier, three people described by the Interior Ministry as bank employees on their way to work were shot and killed near the Baghdad airport when they tried to pass an American convoy.
An Iraqi government statement demanded that the soldiers be held accountable in Iraq. The issue is particularly delicate now because the two countries are negotiating a long-term security agreement and among the chief points of disagreement are whether the American military will be free to conduct operations and detain suspects and whether, if its soldiers kill civilians, they will have immunity from Iraqi law.
Currently soldiers can only be tried under American military law. However, there have been many shootings of Iraqi civilians by American soldiers and contractors, prompting Iraqi politicians to demand that they have a right to prosecute soldiers and contractors in their courts.
The reaction to the latest deaths signals that the Iraqi government is likely to push hard on the issue in the negotiations. These two shootings “are a violation of the law and an encroachment on Iraqi sovereignty,” said a statement from the General Command of the Iraqi armed forces. “We demand the coalition force to arrest their employees and refer them to the judiciary because their crimes were committed in cold blood.”
An underwater robot will be used to search for the sarcophagus of ancient Egyptian Pharaoh Menkaure of more than 4,500 years ago off the Spanish coasts, the Egyptian MENA news agency reported on Saturday.
Egyptian and Spanish archeologists will launch the search in the historical city of Cartagena at the depths of the sea with the help of the hi-tech equipped robot, Egyptian Secretary General of Egyptian Supreme Council for Antiquities, Zahi Hawwas, was quoted by MENA as saying.
The merchant ship Beatrice carrying the sarcophagus of the ancient Egyptian king along with other antiquities sank off Cartagena in the early 19th century en route from Egypt to Britain, where some scientific studies were supposed to be conducted on them, Hawwas said.
Egypt and Spain will cooperate in a joint venture to locate the sarcophagus of Menkaure, the 5th king of the 4th Dynasty of Egypt who ruled from 2,551 BC to 2,523 BC.
The families of wounded soldiers released from active duty due to severe disabilities are poorer, less healthy and less socially active, says a study prepared for Veterans Affairs Canada.
U.S.-led coalition troops, backed by air strikes, killed 28 Taliban insurgents in southwestern Afghanistan, but six to eight civilians were also killed in the operation, the provincial governor said on Monday.
Civilian and military deaths at new highs in Afghan war: here.
OTTAWA — Canadians are solidly opposed to the war in Iraq and most Americans now believe that our decision not to join that prolonged and unpopular conflict was a good one, a new poll suggests.
A wide-ranging public opinion survey conducted earlier this month by the Strategic Counsel for The Globe and Mail and CTV explored the beliefs that Canadians and Americans hold about national security, the U.S. election, health care, gay marriage, the Iraqi conflict – and each other.
While the world views in both countries differ, the poll suggests there is considerable common ground when it comes to Iraq.
Opposition to the war is huge in Canada, where 82 per cent of respondents said the invasion was the wrong decision. That’s a major reversal from five years ago, during the early days of the conflict, when 51 per cent of poll respondents said Canadian troops should jump to the aid of the United States.
It’s also a change that is being reflected south of the border where 54 per cent of American respondents to this month’s survey said their country never should have become involved militarily in Iraq.
And an even greater number – 59 per cent – of Americans surveyed applaud Canada’s decision to stay home.
Hersh: Bush has escalated the secret war inside Iran: here.
Nearly half of British troops regularly consider quitting the army and navy because of plummeting morale, poor equipment and low pay, a Ministry of Defence survey of more than 24,000 military personnel has found.
It must count as one of the most expensive stag-do taxis in history. Prince William’s Chinook flight to attend his cousin’s pre-wedding celebrations on the Isle of Wight cost the taxpayer £8,716, the Ministry of Defence has disclosed.
The prince’s use of the twin-rotored helicopter became the focus of RAF ire after it emerged that he had dropped in at a wedding in Hexham, flown over his relatives’ homes and landed in his girlfriend’s parents’ garden.
Now the MoD has disclosed that five flights which have been the focus of the criticism cost the taxpayer more than £50,000. The ministry has revealed the price of each flight after a freedom of information request from the Guardian.
The RAF and royal aides initially sought to justify them as legitimate training flights, but later admitted that they were a “naive” public relations disaster and a “collective error of judgment”.
The first sortie took place on April 2 when Prince William flew the helicopter over his father’s country home in Highgrove, Gloucestershire. The flight, which lasted nearly three hours, cost the taxpayer £ 11,985, according to the MoD.
The following day, the prince once again got behind the controls of the helicopter and this time headed off to Bucklebury, Reading. The MoD says he landed the helicopter on “private land” during what it described as a “general handling” training flight. That private land belonged to the parents of his girlfriend, Kate Middleton. The second in line to the throne is understood to have circled around the house at 300ft before touching down next to the house while Middleton and her parents watched.
At the time, the MOD defended the decision to land in the Middletons’ field, saying: “Battlefield helicopter crews routinely practise landing in fields and confined spaces away from their airfields as a vital part of their training for operations. These highly-honed skills are used daily in conflict zones such as Iraq and Afghanistan“.
But others criticised it as a frivolous waste of money at a time when the armed forces’ budget is stretched and questioned why a relative novice was allowed to fly a Chinook.
The MoD calculated the cost of the flight to be £ 8,716.
The next controversial flight took place a day later when he flew to Hexham in Northumberland. Conveniently, this was where he was a guest at a wedding. The four-hour flight - described by the MoD as “general handling and low level” training - cost £18,522.
His flight over the Queen’s Sandringham home on April 9 cost £ 4,358. His trip to the Isle of Wight on April 11 to attend the pre-wedding celebrations of his cousin, Peter Phillips, after stopping off in London to collect Prince Harry also cost £8,716, for the two hours he was on board the Chinook.
Prince William, an officer in the Household Cavalry Regiment, was on a four-month attachment with the RAF as part of a “familiarisation” exercise to understand all the military services as he will head the armed forces on becoming king. He spent 10 days learning how to fly a Chinook and was awarded his wings by his father in a ceremony at RAF Cranwell, Lincolnshire.
However wasteful of taxpayers’ money and of fuel all this is: contrary to flights in Iraq and Afghanistan, in this case there was no bloody waste of human lives.
British armed forces survey reveals morale crisis: here.
This exhibition shows beautiful 17th, 18th and 19th century plaster casts of the finest sculptures of Antiquity. The timeless beauty of classical sculpture is the focal point of this exhibition. Further attention is paid to the role played by plaster casts in science, art criticism and art education in the past four hundred years.
He started with talking about Rome, as in that city, in the sixteenth century, were the origins of copying sculptures from antiquity. When, early in that century, visitors came to Rome, they might know from writings that during antiquity, there had been many sculptures in public places. However, when they visited the city, they saw only a few sculptures said to have survived from the Roman empire or earlier: the she-wolf of Capitol hill; the Marcus Aurelius statue; Trajan’s Column.
When, while building churches or other buildings in medieval Rome, sculptures or parts of them from antiquity had been found, they had been recycled as building material. After 1500, however, people found out that discoveries like these might add to knowledge about antique art. In this way, new sculptures which became famous, were found, like the Laocoön group and the Apollo of the Belvedere. They attracted many artists and other visitors from many European countries to Rome.
The popes and other elite people from the papal state sometimes, as a favour, started giving plaster copies of antique sculptures to princes in other countries. One example was Trajan’s column, a copy of which was given to King Louis XIV of France. In 1824, these plaster copies were found in a windmill in Leiden. the Netherlands. It is not known how they had ended up there. As, since the seventeenth century, in the open air of Rome, the original Trajan’s column has suffered much from pollution, these plaster copies are today valuable, as they show details which are no longer clear in the original.
In the exhibition are also cork models of ancient Roman buildings, which used to be sold to tourists. And reproductions of idealized paintings of ancient Roman remains, by the neo-classicist Giovanni Paolo Panini (1692 - 1765).
During the eighteenth century, drawing academies, based on neo-classicist views, arose in many countries. First, the students had to learn to draw skeletons and muscles for human anatomy. Then, they had to make drawings of Greek and Roman sculptures, considered as models of perfect human bodies. Only after that did they draw nude human models, with bodies not as perfect as antique sculptures.
Among the plaster copies often found in drawing academies were the Venus of Arles. And the “Borghese gladiator” which does not really depicts a gladiator, as gladiators did not fight while naked. The nude statue probably depicts a hero.
The Venus of Arles was considered the ideal female form, until 1820, when the Venus de Milo was discovered in Greece.
One of the drawings, depicting a statue of the Greek god Apollo, at the exhibition, is by nineteenth century drawing academy student, later famous painter, George Hendrik Breitner.
When female students had to draw plaster copies of statues, fig leaves were attached to prevent the women from seeing male genitalia.
Certainly since the 1960s in the Netherlands, neo-classicist ideas in art education became weaker. For the plaster copies, that often meant they were hidden away or even destroyed.
In the sixteenth century, mainly Roman sculpture and Roman copies of Greek sculpture had become known in western Europe. In the early nineteenth century, for the first time, classical Greek sculpture became widely known. Eg, after the Parthenon marbles arrived in London. People had difficulty in getting used to them. The poet John Keats was one of not very many people admiring the Marbles right from the start. While fellow poet Lord Byron attacked Lord Elgin for taking the sculpture from Athens.
When sculpture from the Aegina temple, still older than the Parthenon, became first known in Germany, famous author Goethe did not like it, as it did not conform to his preconceived ideas of what Greek art should be.
As these 102 newly carved names are weathered by the years’ march, their childhood, youthful hopes and dreams will be forgotten by all but their close family.
In time, their sacrifice will be recalled only through photographs, remembered only in the form of distant memories of a conflict in which their life’s potential was stopped dead in its tracks.
And, for each British death that is marked with misplaced pomp and circumstance, hundreds more British soldiers must face the indignity of life after war, broken and forgotten shadows of a conflict which few people at home understand or even care to think about.
And, for each British family mourning its own loss, seeking solace for the untimely death of their beloved, thousands of their human brothers and sisters weep in Afghanistan and Iraq - or plot their revenge.
For many in Britain, the ongoing wars in foreign lands are treated with the detachment afforded by distance, aided and abetted by a media world confidently asserting the validity of the West’s civilising mission.
People living in these damned countries do not have such luxury. The nameless victims, collateral damage of the West’s overwhelming firepower, cannot turn the other cheek.
But what a fine lesson in “advanced” civilisation they are receiving.
It’s a lesson taught with bullets and missiles, a blood-strewn syllabus that points to one certain conclusion - that the self-anointed civilisers are, in fact, barbarians who understand only the language of violence.
And so more names are carved on the memorial to the fallen. And more footsoldiers of resistance are born amid the aftermath of battle.
That we, as nations, have yet to understand the inevitable bankruptcy of imperial invasion speaks volumes for our immaturity.
That lesson will, tragically and inevitably, have to be learnt.
As the death toll rises and the cost spirals ever upwards, the day when it is draws closer and a vibrant peace movement will have a key role as teacher.
In the meantime, the rising blood price to which our former prime minister so callously committed stands as testament to this barbarous age. It is an era which history will rightly condemn.
PIPELINE POLITICS Wars About Oil, Not Democracy Compiled By Janet M Eaton: here.
UN official: 62 percent more Afghan civilians killed in fighting: here.
