Hal Fishman, 75; revered award-winning KTLA news anchor

Hal Fishman, 75

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The dead child she is weeping over is her son. He was killed by a
roadside bomb this morning east of Baqubah. The photograph was taken at
Baqubah city morgue.

Leave.

What you are looking at is what the American invasion has brought to Irak’s children.

• Starvation
• Disease
• Sudden Violent Death.

Gorilla’s Guides

City Is Rebuffed on the Release of ’04 Records

A federal judge yesterday
rejected New York City’s efforts to prevent the release of nearly
2,000 pages of raw intelligence reports and other documents detailing
the Police Department’s covert surveillance of protest groups and
individual activists before the Republican National Convention in 2004.

In a 20-page ruling, Magistrate Judge James C. Francis IV ordered
the disclosure of hundreds of field intelligence reports by undercover
investigators who infiltrated and compiled dossiers on protest groups
in a huge operation that the police said was needed to head off
violence and disruptions at the convention.

But at the behest of the city and with the concurrence of civil
liberties lawyers representing plaintiffs swept up in mass arrests
during the convention, the judge agreed to the deletion of sensitive
information in the documents to protect the identities of undercover
officers and confidential informants and to safeguard police
investigative methods and the privacy of individuals caught up in
investigations.

The city had largely based its bid for nondisclosure on the need to
protect those identities and methods, and argued that the public might
misinterpret the documents or the news media sensationalize them. But
the civil liberties lawyers insisted that the documents — even
without the sensitive materials — were needed to show in court
that the police had overstepped legal boundaries in arresting,
detaining and fingerprinting hundreds of people instead of handing out
summonses for minor offenses.

The order was the latest development in the long-running case, which
posed thorny questions about the free speech rights of protesters and
the means used by law enforcement officials to maintain public order.

It appeared that the plaintiffs, who had denounced the police for
trampling on the civil liberties of protesters who were fingerprinted
and detained at length for minor offenses, had largely won the day,
while the city had achieved a more limited objective.

Christopher Dunn, the associate legal director of the New York Civil Liberties Union,
which represents the lead defendants in a barrage of more than 80
lawsuits, said of the judge’s ruling: “He’s given us
everything we asked for. He has redacted the names of undercover agents
and the particulars of surveillance techniques. We agreed to that. But
he has said the city cannot withhold the information it gathered in
these operations.”

Peter Farrell, the city’s senior lawyer in the case, offered a
narrower interpretation of the disclosure order. “Judge Francis
held that the city properly invoked the law enforcement privilege in a
document-by-document review,” he said in a statement released by
the Law Department. “While he has ordered some limited
information disclosed, he has also provided for restricted
access.”

As for a possible appeal, Mr. Farrell said: “We are in the
process of reviewing the information the judge has ordered produced to
determine whether the disclosure will compromise the programs or
personnel of the N.Y.P.D. Intelligence Division. Once we have completed that review, we’ll make a determination on appealing.”

The city and the Police Department have come under intense scrutiny
over the surveillance tactics, in which for more than a year before the
convention undercover officers traveled to cities across the country,
and to Canada and Europe, to conduct covert observations of people who
planned to attend. But beyond potential troublemakers, those placed
under surveillance included street theater companies, church groups,
antiwar activists, environmentalists, and people opposed to the death
penalty, globalization and other government policies.

And as the convention unfolded, more than 1,800 people were
arrested, mostly for minor violations, and many were herded into pens
at a Hudson River pier and fingerprinted instead of being released on
summonses or desk appearance tickets, which are more customary for
charges that amount to little more than a traffic ticket.

As scores of federal lawsuits challenging the mass arrests on Aug.
31, 2004, were filed in Federal District Court in Manhattan, with
plaintiffs claiming wrongful detentions of up to two days and other
violations by the police to keep protesters off the streets, the
outlines of the extensive covert surveillance operation began to emerge
from court records.

In March, The New York Times disclosed details of the sweeping
operation, including a sample of raw intelligence documents and
summaries of observations from field agents and the police
cyberintelligence unit. Some plaintiffs and their lawyers, seeking to
bolster their cases, asked the court to disclose the documents. In May,
Judge Francis allowed the disclosure of 600 pages of documents relating
to security preparations before the convention.

But a second batch of documents, including pictures and reports by
undercover agents detailing which protest groups were infiltrated and
the results of the surveillance operations, remained in contention. The
city argued that disclosure would reveal sources, methods and other
information that might compromise current and future investigations,
while the plaintiffs contended that the reports would disprove city
claims that the protesters planned to engage in violence, and would
show that mass arrests had been unnecessary.

In his ruling yesterday, Judge Francis acknowledged that some
information in the documents needed to be protected. He himself edited
out what he regarded as privileged law enforcement information in many
“field intelligence reports” from agents covering
confidential sources and techniques. And he did not order the release
of documents in which the Republican convention was not mentioned.

But he rebuffed city arguments that general information gathered
about an organization would necessarily jeopardize confidential police
matters. “It is difficult to imagine how someone could determine
the identity of an undercover officer simply from the fact that he or
she was present at a meeting or protest attended by dozens, if not
hundreds, of people,” the judge declared.

In addition to the field intelligence reports, two other categories
of documents whose contents and even subject matter have never been
publicly discussed — 84 documents that the city contended were
privileged in their entirety and 177 that the city agreed to release
with its own editing — were ordered disclosed in part by the
judge.

The city, he said, did not explain “why the documents in the
first category are privileged, nor does it explain why it is necessary
to redact information from documents in the second category,”
adding: “The court can only guess at why the city believed that
they are subject to privilege.”

Parts of the documents, which could be released in 10 days unless
the city appeals, are expected to be used in court by the plaintiffs,
either as evidence in challenging the motives and conduct of the police
in the arrests, fingerprinting and detention of protesters, or in
formulating questions for cross-examining witnesses for the city,
including David Cohen, the deputy police commissioner for intelligence.

Mr. Dunn, of the civil liberties union, said that Commissioner Cohen
had been giving a deposition when the dispute over the documents arose,
and the judge granted a city motion to postpone the deposition.

“We believe that these documents will disprove the
N.Y.P.D.’s claim that demonstrators planned to engage in
violence,” Mr. Dunn said. “We believe these documents will
reveal not only the vast scope of the N.Y.P.D.’s political
surveillance operation, but also that there was no need for the Police
Department’s harsh treatment of protesters.”

New York Times

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BOING BOING::Jay Kinney reviews Zeitgeist, the Movie

For the last couple of months, Boing Boing readers
have been emailing me about a two-hour documentary available on Google
Video called Zeitgeist, the Movie. I finally got around to viewing it.

In three parts, Zeitgeist (which
has no credits) attempts to show that 1) Christianity is rehashed pagan
sun-worship and is used by the rich and powerful to control people, 2)
the 9/11 tragedies were part of an elite conspiracy, and 3) ever since
World War I, the ultra-rich have been secretly manufacturing wars and
financial collapses to control the populace and to get richer and more
powerful.

I don’t know enough about politics, history, or religion to have a valid opinion of Zeitgeist but I was interested in getting a well-informed person’s assessment of
the documentary. I could think of no one better suited than Jay Kinney. He’s the publisher of Gnosis magazine, the author of several books on Western esoteric and occult traditions, and the author of The Masonic Enigma, “a journey of discovery into the real facts (and mysteries) of Masonry’s history and symbols.” He’s also an amazingly talented cartoonist, and contributed to The Whole Earth Review which is how I first learned about him. (His 1987 article, “If Software Companies Ran the Country,”
where he compares Al Capp’s Shmoos to infinitely-copyable software,
remains as fresh and powerful today as it did 20 years ago).

At my request, Jay watched the movie, and kindly wrote the following review for Boing Boing:

Zeiting the Geist

The latest bit of guerilla media to take the online universe by
storm is “Zeitgeist, the Movie.” Clocking in at close to
two hours’ length, and with over a million views on Google Video
since its June 26th “official” release, Zeitgeist
is a grabby, cranky, can’t-stop-watching-it documentary that
purports to tell the real truth about Christianity, 9/11, and the
International Bankers.

Exactly who is behind the video is unclear, although someone
with the moniker of “Peter J.” has posted an online letter
claiming credit and explaining Zeitgeist’s message to those who may have somehow failed to grasp the worldview that the video hammers home.

And what is that worldview, pray tell? Religions in general, and
Christianity in particular, are primarily systems of social control.
9/11 was an inside job and the destruction of the WTC twin towers and
building 7 were aided by controlled demolition. And finally,
International Bankers, through the Federal Reserve and the Council on
Foreign Relations (CFR), control our money and our future, leading to,
ta da, the coming One World Government and the microchipping of
everyone.

Exactly how all this fits together is left to the
viewer’s imagination or, presumably, the film-maker’s hash
pipe. Are those who manipulate Christianity for control purposes in
cahoots with the Bankers, and were the Bankers in on the 9/11 caper? Zeitgeist
sidesteps such logical questions through the use of the all-purpose
term, “the elite,” a shadowy group of rich and powerful men
who want nothing more than to enslave humanity and reap block-buster
profits through the promotion of wars and financial crises.

For conspiracy buffs, this is all pretty standard fare, and,
indeed, aficionados of the genre will find little new in
“Zeitgeist.” The notions that most religions were
originally a kind of solar worship, and that the Jesus Christ story
recapitulated the mythos of numerous other “dying gods,”
were floating around in the late 1700s. Fittingly, the video features a
quote from Thomas Paine reducing Christianity to warmed-over sun
worship, which was a daring bit of religion-baiting 200 years ago,
albeit not so earth-shattering today.

The nefarious International Bankers meme has been propagating
itself since at least the mid-1800s and has long been a mainstay of
radical right-wing circles where it has often overlapped with
mutterings about Jewish cabals.

The 9/11 truth segment of the video is, of course, of much
more recent vintage, but, here too, it mostly repeats accusations that
have gotten widespread play in the uber-skeptic milieu.

Breaking new factual ground is not what Zeitgeist is
about, however. Rather, the video is a powerful and fast-acting dose of
agitprop, hawking its conclusions as givens. Unfortunately, like most
propaganda, it doesn’t play fair with its intended audience. At
times, while watching it, I felt like I was getting Malcolm
McDowell’s treatment in Clockwork Orange: eyes pried wide open while getting bombarded with quick-cut atrocity photos.

At other times, Zeitgeist engages in willful confusion
by showing TV screen shots of network or cable news with voice-overs
from unidentified people not associated with the news programs. If one
weren’t paying close attention, the effect would be to confer the
status and authority of TV news upon the words being spoken. Even when
quotes or sound bites are attributed to a source, there’s no way
to tell if they are quoted correctly or in context.

Late in the video, there’s a supposed quote from David
Rockefeller, which, if genuine, would be an astounding confession of
complicity in mass manipulation. But, of course, the quote is not
sourced or dated, which renders it useless. (The video’s website
does feature a Sources page, but a hodge-podge list of books, with no page numbers cited, is of little value for source verification.)

The over-all temper of the video is rather like the John Birch
Society on acid, with interludes by Harry Smith. Incongruously, after
spending nearly two hours trying to scare the bejeezis out of its
viewers, Zeitgeist ends on an oddly upbeat note, telling us
that Love — not Fear — is the answer, We are all One, and
featuring sound-bites from Ram Dass and Carl Sagan.

It’s a shame, really, that Zeitgeist is,
ultimately, such a mess. There are plenty of legitimate questions about
what transpired on 9/11, just as there are plenty of shady doings in
international finance or puzzling aspects of religious history, for
that matter. And what is coming down in the name of National Security
is truly unnerving. Yet, bundling them all together in disjointed
fashion does justice to none of them. Time and again, Zeitgeist maximizes emotional impact at the expense of a more reasoned weighing of evidence. But, perhaps that’s the intention.

I’ve often pondered about what it might take to snap
everyone out of the walking dream we collectively entered on 9/11/01.
Just as the fall of the Berlin Wall provided the emotional pivot for
the end of the Cold War, only a collective experience of an intensity
equal to that of 9/11 might jolt us awake as to what is really
happening in the corridors of power and certain undisclosed locations.

It’s my hunch that Zeitgeist is one attempt to
provide such a jolt, and it does indeed pack a certain punch. Too bad
it also runs off in three directions at once, and is so indiscriminate
in its sources and overly certain of its conclusions. Zeitgeist
may be powerful, but its power is tainted with some simplistic and
pernicious memes that have already received more propagation than they
deserve. The video’s producer does inform us that “It is my hope that people will not take what is said in the film as the truth . . .”

Indeed.

Link to Google Video page | Link to torrent files

Body:

August 3, 2007 transcript by Reg NYC “We are not questioning the generals. Mr. President, we are questioning you! Stop hiding behind Dave Petraeus.” – Wesley Clark Jon Soltz: …an Iraq war veteran. (applause) (laughs) I find that so funny, because whenever you go to a Republican event, they don’t seem to cheer for the troops. So, I (laughs) I, I thank you guys for that applause. I’m also the Chairman of VoteVets.org a group that (cheering) y’all have been so supportive of that without, without the support of the Kos community we would never’ve been where we are today. We obviously penetrated the political system from the outside much like everybody in this room, and for your support I, I thank you. It’s obviously an honor to be here. I’m here this morning to introduce General Wesley Clark who, who sits on the board of, of VoteVets. (applause and cheering) Click here for Jon Soltz’s complete introduction Ladies and gentlemen, please give a round of applause for General Wesley Clark. (enthusiastic cheering and applause) GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. (more cheering and applause) Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. (more cheering and applause) Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. (persistent cheering and applause) Thank you very much. Thank you. It makes me feel good and I haven’t even announced yet. (laughter and cheering) That was a joke. (laughter) I’m, I’m really happy to be here, and I’m really happy to see all of you here. This community’s made a huge difference in American politics. This is the centerpiece of a new politics, and you can feel it. You can feel it in the energy. You can feel it in the ideas. You can feel it in the enthusiasm and the commitment and the, the, the selflessness that you all have brought into the business of politics. You didn’t work your way up to get positions. You weren’t after a claim. All you wanted was an opportunity to have your ideas heard and to be able to resonate with others who have the same concerns and the same love for America that you have. And you built a community that’s incredibly powerful, and I want to thank you for that, and I want to thank you for what you did for helping Democrats take over the House and the Senate in 2006. You’re wonderful. (applause) And I want to, I want to also recognize we’ve got a lot of people here who are working in this community now, you’ve got a lot of people here, you may not have met them, but who are candidates for elective office in the 2008 cycle. And could I ask all the candidates in 2008, if you’re here, would you stand up and let this community get a look at you, because they want to meet you? (applause) I’m real proud of those people who are running, because it takes a lot of courage to go out there and run for office. It’s not the kind of courage that you might get a Silver Star for in the military. It’s the kind of courage where you really think about it, where you worry about your family. You worry about what the impact is. You worry about what it’s going to do to your life and whether you actually are pursuing a, a dream that’s got some chance of becoming real. It takes true, deep courage to make those kinds of commitments. So, I salute the candidates, and I’m really proud of you. I hope every one of you win. (applause) Read More

MySpace.com

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The top spot in a Congressional softball league belongs to drug
reform advocates who are “busting the stoners-as-slackers stereotype,”
Roll Call reports.

The “One Hitters,” took over the No. 1 spot in the Congressional
Softball League last week, and the team fielded by Students for a
Sensible Drug Policy and NORML holds a 13-3 record in the league
comprised of lobbyists, Capitol Hill aides and interest group employees.

“Kris Krane, executive director of Students for a Sensible Drug
Policy and the softball team’s captain, chalks up its success to
the five years the team has been playing together — and a little
extra motivation that comes from trying to dispel the myth that folks
who want marijuana legalized are all munchie-craving, lava-lamp-gazing
losers,” reports Roll Call’s Heard on the Hill gossip column.

This is the One Hitters’ fifth year in the intramural softball
league, and the team previously made headlines when the Office of
National Drug Control Policy refused to face them on the field two
years ago.

“Everyone knows that ONDCP backed out because they were scared
of losing to us on the field, much the same way they are afraid to
debate us because their policies fail in the court of public
opinion,” said
center fielder David Guard, who is associate director of the Drug
Reform Coordination Network. “We have an open challenge to the
Drug Czar to play or debate anytime, anywhere.”

The team’s next game is Tuesday against the “No Talent AZ Clowns,”
whose players come from the offices of Arizona Sens. John McCain and
Jon Kyl.

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AP Via Yahoo:

Iraq’s power grid is on the brink of collapse
because of insurgent sabotage of infrastructure, rising demand, fuel
shortages and provinces that are unplugging local power stations from
the national grid, officials said Saturday.

Electricity Ministry spokesman Aziz al-Shimari said power
generation nationally is only meeting half the demand, and there had
been four nationwide blackouts over the past two days. The shortages across the country are the worst since the summer of 2003, shortly after the U.S.-led invasion to topple Saddam Hussein, he said.

Power supplies in Baghdad
have been sporadic all summer and now are down to just a few hours a
day, if that. The water supply in the capital has also been severely
curtailed by power blackouts and cuts that have affected pumping and
filtration stations.

Karbala province south of Baghdad has been without power for
three days, causing water mains to go dry in the provincial capital,
the Shiite holy city of Karbala.

“We no longer need television documentaries about the
Stone Age. We are actually living in it. We are in constant danger
because of the filthy water and rotten food we are having,” said
Hazim Obeid, who sells clothing at a stall in the Karbala market. Read more…

This how we win hearts and minds. Dirty water, rotting food, no
electricity, no refrigeration or air conditioning in 130 degree heat
and worst of all, no end in sight.

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January 9, 2007
Tomorrow night at 9 p.m. EST, President Bush will address the nation and announce an escalation of the war in Iraq by sending about 20,000 more U.S. troops to Iraq. Can Congress do anything about it?

Some members have claimed that anything other than symbolic action is unconstitutional. Legal scholars on both the left and the right say that’s false. History supports their case.

A new report from the Center for American Progress details how, over
the last 35 years, Congress has passed bills, enacted into law, that
capped the size of military deployments, prohibited funding for
existing or prospective deployment, and placed limits and conditions on
the timing and nature of deployments. Some examples:

December 1970. P.L. 91-652 —
Supplemental Foreign Assistance Law. The Church-Cooper amendment
prohibited the use of any funds for the introduction of U.S. troops to
Cambodia or provide military advisors to Cambodian forces.

December 1974. P.L. 93-559 — Foreign
Assistance Act of 1974. The Congress established a personnel ceiling of
4000 Americans in Vietnam within six months of enactment and 3000
Americans within one year.

June 1983. P.L. 98-43 — The Lebanon Emergency
Assistance Act of 1983. The Congress required the president to return
to seek statutory authorization if he sought to expand the size of the
U.S. contingent of the Multinational Force in Lebanon.

June 1984. P.L. 98-525 — The Defense
Authorization Act. The Congress capped the end strength level of United
States forces assigned to permanent duty in European NATO countries at
324,400.

November 1993. P.L. 103-139. The Congress
limited the use of funding in Somalia for operations of U.S. military
personnel only until March 31, 1994, permitting expenditure of funds
for the mission thereafter only if the president sought and Congress
provided specific authorization.

Read the full report for more examples.

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Saturday , 04 /08 /2007 Time 5:59:12
Najaf – Voices of Iraq

Najaf, Aug 4, (VOI) – The holy Shiite city of Najaf suffered
from a power cut during the past two days after the National
Electricity Network turned off the power station that provides the city
with electricity, adding to the agony of local residents who struggled
to withstand the scorching heat of August.

A source from the Najaf Electricity Department told the independent
news agency Voices of Iraq (VOI) that the Iraqi Ministry of Electricity
turned off the northern and al-Hizam power stations after the Najaf
municipal council detached the local natural gas station from the
national network.

With a temperature of 48°C, the price of ice cubes increased
dramatically. Muhammad al-Ghazali, a local resident told VOI, “I
have been searching for ice cubes since the early morning, but to no
avail. (Large) ice cubes are sold at 16,000-20,000 Iraqi dinars
(12.9-16 U.S. dollars) and people are fighting over them.”

Wondering why Najaf’s residents should be punished for a
dispute between the Ministry of Electricity and the local municipal
council, al-Ghazali called on the government to provide basic services
for the Iraqi people.

Complaining about a similar increase in fuel prices, another local
resident said that gas has been sold for 35,000 Iraqi dinars/20 liters
($28), compared with 18,000-20,000 dinars ($14.5-16) before the
electricity crisis in the city. “We are completely crippled by
heat and lack of electricity. We lost concentration. For how long will
the government allow this to continue?” he wondered.

Najaf’s Deputy Mayor Abdul Hussein Abtan announced earlier on
local al-Ghadeer TV that the municipal council had isolated the natural
gas station from the national network, while municipal council member
Birak al-Shamarty denied the news. According to al-Shamarty, the
council switched off the capacity regulator which controls the flow of
electricity to the city, but vowed to adhere to the city’s quota
for electricity.

Al-Shamarty attributed the power cut to a failure in the electricity
national network, which he said was the result of an overload on the
network. Meanwhile, a source from Najaf’s natural gas station
linked the electricity crisis in the city to a significant decrease in
gas pressure which he said deactivated two natural gas-powered units in
the local power station.
SS

Aswat Aliraq

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