Sunny checked the numbers after going through the e-mails and finding all these first time e-mailers. She started wondering how many people read that post and she checked and wow.
Sunny runs the office. I'm a psychologist.
Do I love Valley of the Dolls? Rebecca loves that book. I've read it and enjoyed it but when we moved in together in college, Rebecca, C.I. (of The Common Ills) and me, that was her big book. That's not an insult to her. It's a good book. But Rebecca could (and probably still can) quote from that book.
If you really loved last night's post, you should read Rebecca if you aren't already. Never expect much from my blog. It's nothing but a journal and it's no big deal.
That's not me being modest. C.I. could write something like that and truly mean it, no pretense.
But she also truly does something wonderful.
She busts her ass. She's always calling friends to ask them if they have something on Iraq, she's always reading papers and books on it, calling friends who are MidEast professors to sound them out on developments, calling friends in the State Dept, etc. She really works to pull together that site.
Rebecca's the first to tell you she writes on the fly. But that's okay, her personality always comes through and holds those posts together.
But I'm not like either of them. I'm okay with that. But I just want to be clear to anyone stopping by that you shouldn't expect anything from this site.
My practice these days -- for years now -- is all veterans and pretty much solely PTSD. There are evenings I come home when I tell Mike I have to go to the bedroom be alone for an hour just to decompress. There are evenings when I can't pull anything together.
So never visit here expecting much.
Nina Burleigh (Daily Beast) writes about the murder of Mary Pinchot Meyer:
Her name was Mary Pinchot Meyer, and she lived and died in a gone world of monogrammed matchbooks, white-glove dances at Yale, yachting summers in the Med. She bewitched the blue-blooded men she ran with and who ran the world for a while, arrogant, entitled men who thought of themselves as poets and spies. One of them, her husband Cord Meyer, was both an accomplished short-story writer and, as the No. 3 in the CIA, one of the Right-est architects of the nascent security state .
She also dropped acid with Timothy Leary and painted abstract art with Kenneth Noland, but her greatest claim to fame is the tragic and mysterious way she died, shot twice at close range in a park in Washington, D.C., at age 43, 10 days after the Warren Commission report was released.
Her murder is one of Washington’s “enduring mysteries,” as the headline writers like to put it. Many have tried to solve it, including me. I concluded, as did the journalist Ron Rosenbaum before me, that Mary was most probably murdered by Ray Crump, the man police arrested within hours of the crime in the vicinity of the murder. He was identified by an eyewitness, then acquitted by an all-black jury in 1965, as racial tensions were rising not just in D.C., but nationally. The evidence against him was strong but circumstantial (no gun was ever found), but my investigation led me to believe Crump was entirely capable of violent behavior. His long post-acquittal record included stints in federal prison for repeat arsons and the rape of a 13-year-old. I met a former wife who was in hiding from him; she showed me a scar on her neck from a knife attack and described his strange and violent fugue states.
Mary's Mosaic is the new book by Peter Janney about the murder. Dick Russell wrote the foreword to Janney's book:
Early in 1976, about six months after I began probing into the Kennedy assassination for The Village Voice, an article caught my attention in – of all places – the National Enquirer. The weekly tabloid was not generally known for its investigative veracity, but this particular story was thoroughly documented. The subject was Mary Pinchot Meyer, a Washington socialite who’d been shot twice and murdered while walking near the Potomac River on October 12, 1964.
Since the originally accused assailant had been acquitted, the identity of her killer remained unknown. Publicly, so did the identity of her lover, until the Enquirer story alleged that for almost two years before his assassination on November 22, 1963, Mary Meyer had been having an affair with President John F. Kennedy. The Enquirer recounted – and this would soon be corroborated in other periodicals – that Mary had kept a diary.
The weekend after her death, a small group of people were said to have gathered at her Georgetown home in search of it. Cord Meyer, her ex-husband and a high official in the CIA, was there. So was James Angleton, head of the CIA’s Counterintelligence division, and his wife Cicely, a close friend of Mary’s. Also present was Tony Bradlee, Mary’s sister and the wife of Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee.
The story went that none of them could locate Mary’s diary and that her sister had later found it inside a locked steel box containing dozens of letters, including some from the slain president Kennedy. Bradlee had then turned the box over to Angleton, who took the material to CIA headquarters. James Truitt, a journalist for Newsweek and another friend of the Meyers, said he’d received a letter from Angleton saying: “As to the diary and related papers, I burned them.” For more than 20 years, Angleton had been a “spook’s spook” who roamed the Agency corridors looking to ferret out penetrations by the Soviet Union.
Then in 1974, a new CIA Director, William Colby, leaked word to the media that Angleton had also been in charge of Operation CHAOS, a domestic intelligence-gathering program that far exceeded the CIA’s original charter. Angleton was forced to resign. Not long thereafter, he began meeting with journalists for the first time, obviously intent on getting his side of certain stories on the record. I was one of them, although I never really understood why Angleton chose to wine and dine me on three occasions at his customary meeting place, Washington’s Army-Navy Club. After all, The Village Voice hardly seemed like his cup of tea. And I did not disguise the fact I was looking into a probable conspiracy in the death of President Kennedy.
Indeed, the first time we met, late on a mid-December afternoon in 1975 in the plush club lounge, I gave him one of my Voice articles to leaf through. Angleton lit a cigarette, took a sip of his martini, and said: “The subject is a far more complex one than reflected in your article.” After the assassination, Angleton’s Counterintelligence branch had been assigned as the CIA’s direct liaison to the Warren Commission, of which former CIA Director Allen Dulles was a member. I wondered, why Angleton’s office?
“Because we had the research facilities, knew the mechanisms of the KGB and foreign intelligence,” Angleton replied quickly. “We knew every assassination in history, knew more about the sophistication of the Cuban DGI, that type of thing.”
Pretty obviously, he was trying to steer my thoughts toward possible foreign involvement. Angleton dismissed the rumors that Lee Harvey Oswald might have been an American agent as “completely false” and continued: “Unless one knows the dossiers that are in Moscow and Cuba, there can be no ultimate determination.” Several times over the course of our get-togethers, he would raise the specter of the KGB’s Department 13, which specialized in what those in the trade called “wet affairs” (assassinations). Angleton was one of the strangest men I ever met: tall, bespectacled, stoop-shouldered, with his appearance calling to mind the image of an ostrich whose head seemed, despite itself, to be peering out at the world after a lifetime buried in the sand. But what secrets was he willing now to unearth, and what was his motivation? Was he still, in fact, covering someone’s tracks – even, perhaps, his own?
In April 1976, we met for the second time and one of the first things I asked him about was the Enquirer’s revelatory piece about Mary Meyer and her diary. Angleton gazed out the window for a long moment. Then he replied that he had been acting in a private capacity for the family, and in no way for the CIA, which he hastened to add had nothing to do with her death. He went on to relate a fascinating, even occult, story. Angleton and his wife had planned to go out to dinner and a show with Mary Meyer that October evening in 1964. When news came over the radio that someone had been killed in a park not far from where she lived, Cicely Angleton had a premonition that it was Mary. So that night, they drove over to her house, but found it completely dark. A grim foreboding grew stronger in Angleton’s wife. Angleton said he’d called Meyer’s answering service, which at first simply said that she wasn’t in. But when Angleton explained they had a date with her, and that his wife was hysterical in the car, he was told of Meyer’s death.
The entire time Angleton was relating this, I noticed that he was digging his fingers deeper and deeper into the wooden arm of the comfortable chair in the Army-Navy Club. I have puzzled over that moment for many years.
Over the course of time, I read Timothy Leary’s memoir that only added to the mystery of Mary Meyer – maintaining that he’d turned her on to LSD, that she may even have taken a “trip” with President Kennedy, and that she’d called Leary the day after the assassination indicating that “he was changing too fast; they couldn’t control him anymore.” They clearly implied that JFK had been assassinated by elements within our own government. Now, with Peter Janney’s remarkable book Mary’s Mosaic, the questions that long haunted me have been largely answered. Now I see how Angleton was trying to bend the truth, and why. Not only about Mary Meyer, but about who killed Kennedy, which all but certainly involved the same element of individuals.
The Daily Beast article was an attempt to say, "Don't read this book." It had the opposite effect on me. I ordered it on Amazon tonight.
"Iraq snapshot" (The Common Ills):
Wednesday,
April 4, 2012. Chaos and violence continue, the Thursday national
conference gets the axe, Tareq al-Hashemi continues his diplomatic tour
of the region, PTSD issues, and more.
This week's. Black Agenda Radio, hosted by Glen Ford and Nellie Bailey (first airs each Monday at 4:00 pm EST on the Progressive Radio Network), features coverage of the United National Anti-War Coalition conference in Stamford, Connecticut where both hosts were among the speakers. Another speaker was International Action Center's Sara Flounders.
Sara
Flounders: In fighting today's wars, it's more important step is
building a movement that acknowledges the relationship between the war
at home and the war abroad. It's a big challenge. How dare any US
official lecture any, any other country on prisoners, human rights or
on democracy. What hypocrisy. This -- this country has the largest
prison population in the world and that's not counting the secret
prisons, the secret renditions, the secret kidnappings, the drones,
it's not counting immigration detention. We need to consciously step
back from ever being an echo of the State Dept and their arrogant
charges and target other countries. US wars, they rely on an arrogance
of empire. Can they once again get a population to believe that
humanitarian war is possible? That they're bringing democracy,
advancement for women, an end to sectarian violence. We need an
anti-war movement that is really, consciously against all US wars.
That's simple. And against all the forms that US wars take today.
Bombs and occupations, yes. But sanctions, sabotage, drones, media
onslaughts, demonetization of leaders, racist stereotypings of whole
peoples. We represent here many different political currents and
traditions here in this room. And we can't and won't agree on many
issues. So how do we proceed how do we stay united and keep our focus?
If we focus on US imperialism, on its crimes, whatever our views on
many social issues, we will be together because we need an antiwar
movement that opposes US war. Consider the US-NATO war against Libya.
Eleven countries simultaneously dropping bombs on a country with no
means of defense all claiming they were on a humanitarian mission while
they target the electric grid, the water supply, civilian
communications. Now let's talk about WikiLeaks' latest Stratfor
revelation -- and, by the way, Free Bradley Manning -- the latest
WikiLeaks' document in the Stratfor files, they describe in some detail
the White House meeting that reviews British and French and US Special
Forces, units on the ground in Syria, planting bombs, running guns,
training and seeking total destabilization. Now that's the truth.
UNAC today stands for self-determination and demands that all US
troops, drones and sabotage teams out. Unconditional US withdrawal.
That's a big contribution, a big step. We can't be making demands on
any country at the very time it's under attack, at the time that the
bombs are falling, at the time the sanctions are strangling, Today, in
the last weeks, we see the most cynical and arrogant approach. Kony.
Kony 2012. Right? Invisible children? And what is it? Young people
cheering AFRICOM, US troops in Africa? That's the way they sell US
wars today. There's a rapidly expanding US military presence in
Africa. It includes troops in Uganda, a military mission in Mali,
drone bombings in Somalia, political intervention in Sudan, all under
the umbrella of AFRICOM. It's blame the victim. It saturates the
media and it saturates the mass movement. We need to stand up to it.
And a just on a personal level and to give a comparison, there was a
time when if a woman was attacked, sexually assaulted, what was the
defense of the attacker, of the courts and of the police? It was to
ask, what was she wearing? Doing? Where was she walking? That she
invited or deserved this attack. And one gain of the women's movement
was to say: It's irrelevant. That is irrelevant. That's the way we
have to see US wars. That is the way. Let's talk about Syria and Libya
and Iraq and Iran and Venezuela and Bolivia and Sudan. US imperialism
wants to destroy each of these countries. Not because they've made any
compromises to survive -- and they have. But because they've
nationalized the source of wealth, because it's US domination,
corporate domination, that they want. This empire has problems they can
no longer solve. Capitalism can no longer bail itself out with war. The
capitalist crisis is global. It's unsolvable So our unity is more
important. The United National Anti-War Coalition, UNAC,
was founded on the principle of self-determination for all the
oppressed nations and people. What do we want to demand that they
abolish NATO, we want to talk about march on the RNC and the DNC.
Abolish NATO and end the wars abroad.
Yesterday, we noted Margaret Kimberley's speech to the conference. Of the conference, Glen Ford explains:
I was privileged to present the coordinating committee's draft of the Action Plan to UNAC's national conference
in Stamford, Connecticut, this past weekend. "This action plan does not
just target some U.S. wars," said the committee's statement. "It does
not target the currently unpopular wars. It does not shy away from
condemning wars that remain acceptable to half the population because
the real reasons for them are obscured in the rhetoric of humanitarian
intervention. It does not advocate that we avoid putting U.S. boots on
the ground by mounting embargoes that bring economic devastation on the
peoples of Iran. It does not condone war by other, more sanitized,
means. It does not cheer on wars that minimize U.S. combat deaths by
the use of robotic unmanned planes or the highly trained murder squads
of the Joint Special Operations Command. It does not see war by
mercenary as somehow less threatening to the peoples of the world and
the U.S. than war by economic draft. It does not give credit to
Washington for removing brigades from one country in order to deploy
them in the next."
The document
demands an end to "all wars, interventions, targeted assassinations and
occupations" and U.S. withdrawal from "NATO and all other
interventionist military alliances."
UNAC's reasoning is rooted in the principle that all the world's peoples have the inherent right to self-determination, to
pursue their own destinies -- the foundation of relations among
peoples, enshrined in international law but daily violated by the
United States.
Moving
from wars to one, Iraq. We're going to do a little exercise first.
It's 2016. I decide to throw a party and send out invites to Jane
Arraf (Christian Science Monitor and Al Jazeera), Sam Dagher and Gina Chon (Wall St. Journal), Liz Sly, Alice Fordham, Ernesto Londono and Ed O'Keefe (Washington Post), Jack Healy, Tim Arango. Alissa J. Rubin, Damien Cave, Sabrina Tavernise and Stephen Farrell (New York Times),
Nancy A. Youssef, Sahar Issa and Laith Hammoudi (McClatchy Newspapers),
Deborah Haynes and James Hider (Times of London), Lourdes
Garcia-Navarro, Quil Lawrence and Kelly McEvers (NPR), Borzou Daragahi,
Ned Parker, Alexandra Zavis, Tina Susman (Los Angeles Times), Lara Jakes, Rebecca Santana, Hamza Hendawi and Brett Barrouquere (Associated Press), Jomana Karadsheh, Mohammed Tawfeeq and Arwa Damon (CNN), Trudy Rubin (Philadelphia Inquirer) and Anna Badkhen (San Francisco Chronicle, among others).
That's
34 people. I need a head count so I'm asking everyone to RSVP. It's a
week away and only 10 have. That's not a really good sign. 12 show up
(11 invited, one not invited). Tim Arango insists he Tweeted his RSVP
and since I'm not on Twitter, I missed it. 5 show up just to be kind
(Damien Cave, Liz Sly, Borzou Daragahi, Ed O'Keefe and Alissa J.
Rubin). 5 show up to tell off the crazy bitch that's slammed everyone
online for so many years (Jane Arraf, Arwa Damon, Stephen Farrell, Sam
Dagher, Jomana Karadsheh and party crasher David E. Sanger). As we sit
down to eat, there is silence that only momentarily vanished during
dinner, most people talk to one another, I make some idiotic toast that
further alienates everyone present.
The next
morning, not even I am stupid enough to delude myself into thinking my
dinner party was a success. If someone says to me, "Well people showed
up," even I'm not stupid enough to assume they showed up due to some
love for me. They showed up for various reasons including manners and
to tell me off. I am not idiotic enough to assume that my decision to
host a party means my hosting a party makes it a success. Good or bad
(and mine was bad), my just hosting a party I invited people too does
not make it a success.
The Arab League Summit
was not a success for Iraq. Less than half of the heads of countries
who are members of the Arab League attended. With the exception of
Kuwait, no leader attended because of Nouri. Those other heads of state
that attended did so for a variety of reasons but Iraq and Nouri
weren't among them.
Today, Liz Sly (Washington Post) offers
that "the goodwill generated between Iraq and its Arab neighbors by an
extravagant summit in Baghdad last week began unraveling at speed." No
goodwill was generated. Iraqi President Jalal Talabani was lavishly
praised in public remarks by those attending. And some of that praise
was probably for him (he was a gregarious host from all account) but
some of the heavy praise was just to make a point -- via contrast
-- about Nouri al-Maliki (prime minister and thug of Iraq) who got far
less public praise from those attending. When you grasp that most were
not there for Nouri and not impressed by Nouri, you can grasp that he's
shot himself in the foot every day since as he's verbally attacked
Qatar and Saudi Arabia. He has no real ties to the Arab neighbors. If
Kuwait didn't want the borders redrawn, they probably wouldn't be as
chummy with him as they are.
Sameer N. Yacoub (AP) broke the news this morning that the national conference had been called off according to Speaker of Parliament Osama al-Nujaifi. Yamei Wang (Xinhua) adds
that the the Speaker "attributed the postponement to the mounting
differences among political blocs during a meeting by the prepatory
committee held on Tuesday." The national conference is something that
Jalal Talabani and Osama al-Nujaifi have been calling for since
December 21st in order to address the ongoing political crisis.
Political
Stalemate I (when Nouri wouldn't honor the results of the March 7, 2010
elections) only ended in November 2010 because all parties -- including
Nouri -- agreed to the US-brokered Erbil Agreement. Once he was made
prime minister -- the main gift to Nouri in the Erbil Agreement -- he
tossed it aside, that's December 2010 and the start of Political
Stalemate II which has been ongoing ever since. Over the summer, the
Kurds began calling for a return to the Erbil Agreement. They were then
joined by Iraqiya (who came in first in the March 7, 2010 elections)
and Moqtada al-Sadr, among others. The Erbil Agreement found Nouri
making various concessions if the others would allow him to remain
prime minister. But he got to be prime minister and trashed the
agreement, refusing to honor what he agreed to, the very things that
made the other political blocs sign off on the agreement.
Maliki
had agreed to hold the reconciliation conference as a last-minute
concession to the Sunnis and Kurds ahead of the Baghdad summit, which
the government hoped would showcase Iraq as stable, safe and assuming its rightful place in the firmament of Arab nations after the withdrawal of U.S. troops late last year.
But
relations with Arab states have since been deteriorating fast, along
with any hopes that Iraq will soon be able to resolve its own internal
problems. On Sunday, Maliki issued a forceful defense of Syrian
President Bashar al-Assad, saying his ouster would destabilize the
region. On the same day, at a U.S.-backed gathering of "Friends of
Syria" in Istanbul, Saudi Arabia endorsed a plan to fund and equip
Syrian rebels.
Did Nouri want the meet up to take place? Rami Ruhayem (BBC News) argues that today "his opponents said they would not attend, and his allies said there was no point."
This morning, before the meet-up got the axe, Dar Addustour reported
on Nouri's paranoia and how he was girding himself for a possible
takeover attempt. He doesn't name Barzani but, as Dar Addustour points
out, that is who he's referring to when he frets that he may be
replaced. Nouri fears his puppet masters in the US may be about to dump
him and that's why Barzani is in DC. (Why would the White House dump
him? Nouri thinks they might move towards someone more willing to favor
an attack on Syria.) He also fears Tareq al-Hashemi's current
diplomatic tour of other countries might have something to do with Arab
leaders of other countries gearing up for a coup. Unnamed confidants of
Nouri state that he is preparing himself for those possibilities and
also for a military coup staged by Iraqi security forces loyal to DC.
(Last month, State of Law repeatedly floated that there were several
Iraqi military officers -- high ranking -- who were spying for the
United States.)
Does that really sound like he wanted the meet-up?
Yamei Wang (Xinhua) reports,
"Nujaifi attributed the postponement to the mounting differences among
political blocs during a meeting by the prepatory committee held on
Tuesday." Wang's reporting that the agenda was agreed to but some
other issues came up on Tuesday.
Nouri
al-Maliki is not a genius, he's barely literate. But when throwing out
possibilities, it's worth remembering that Nouri stalls and stalls and
stalls again. He stalled on the national conference to begin with. As
Liz Sly noted he postponed it until after the Arab League Summit. Most
of the other players -- not just Iraqiya -- were saying that it needed
to be held in February, then that it needed to take place before the
summit.
The reason for the national conference
is what? The Erbil Agreement. He's stalled on implementing that for
over a year. When the major protests hit Iraq on February 25, 2011 and
the people were demanding basic services, jobs and end to corruption
and to the 'disappearing' of people in Iraq's legal system, what did
Nouri do?
He said, "Give me 100 days and I'll
address it." He took 100 days, he never addressed it. Even
now, approximately 400 days after he asked for 100 days, he's never
addressed the issues that Iraqis raised. He stalls and stalls. He
hopes people forget or that he can exhaust them. That's what he did in
his first term as prime minister.
Others may
have called off the meet-up (they may not). But if something happened
on Tuesday night to bring about this decision, don't put it past Nouri
to have instigated that. It his pattern.
The
political crisis did not start half-way into December when Nouri
started demanding Deputy Prime Minister Saleh al-Mutlaq be stripped of
his post and then that Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi be arrested.
That is, however, when certain media outlets began to take the ongoing
political crisis seriously. (Please note, that week that started with
Nouri ordering al-Hashemi arrested, it was never news to American
broadcast network news because the only one that reported on it that week was The NewsHour on PBS -- CBS Evening News, ABC World News Tonight and NBC Nightly News all ignored the prime minister ordering the arrest of the vice president.)
An Iraqi correspondent for McClatchy Newspapers reviewed much of that time yesterday at Inside Iraq noting:
In
a press conference Maliki said that he had a criminal file on Hashimi
that he had been sitting on for three years, and was now ready to
prosecute him. For the objective observer, the timing of this
announcement was telling. [. . .] Confessions of Hashimi's security
personnel were aired on state television and an arrest warrent for
Hashim himself was issued and also made public on state TV -- All this
publicity on Maliki's side in order to burn the bridges and make any
political deal impossible in this country where government is glued
together with political deals.
A
day after al-Hashemi went to the KRG, Nouri issued the arrest warrant.
Tareq al-Hashemi has remained in the KRG as a guest of Iraqi President
Jalal Talabani and KRG President Massoud Barzani. Until Sunday
when he traveled to Qatar. Despite Nouri's bluster, Qatar refused his
request to extradite al-Hashemi (who stated it was a visit and that
he'd return to the KRG when he finished his diplomatic tour. Habib Toumi (Gulf News) explains, "Al Hashemi was received by the Qatari Emir Shaikh Hamad Bin Khalifa Al Thani received Al Hashemi at his court." Alsumaria notes
that when asked at a press conference today, Osama al-Nujaifi declared
that he understood al-Hashemi to be making an official trip and that,
as he understood it, al-Hashemi would be returning to the KRG.
Mohammed Jamjoon (CNN) reports
that al-Hashemi has now traveled onto Sadui Arabia. Jamjoon quotes
Usama al-Nugali, spokesperson for Saudi Arabia's Foreign Ministry,
stating, "He came to Saudi Arabia and met with Prince Saudi Al-Faisal,
the foreign minister. He is, after all, the vice president of Iraq."
Turning to the topic of violence, AFP reports that a Baquba sticky bombing claimed 1 life today. AGI notes 5 people have been killed in a Dhuluiya car bombing with at least ten more injured. Fang Yang (Xinhua) reports,
"The booby-trapped car went off when a team of police explosive experts
were defusing a roadside bomb nearby in the town of al-Duluiyah, some
90 km north of Baghdad, the source from Salahudin's operations command
said on condition of anonymity." AFP offers,
"The police officer said that the explosion took place at about 8:30 am
(5:30 GMT) when Dhuluiyah police chief Colonel Qandil Khalil's convoy
was passing by." And they also note,
"It was the second attack against Colonel Khalil's convoy this year,
after a previous car bombing in January that he also survived."
Dhuluiya is in Salahuddin Province. Yesterday journalist Kamiran Salahudin was killed in the province by a sticky bombing. Also yesterday, Al Sabaah reports,
the Turkish military shelled Dohuk and Erbil in their continued pursuit
of the PKK. The paper notes that the shelling was continuous and
lasted for approximately 30 hours.
Dropping back to Monday's snapshot:
Lastly, Jonathan Fisher (WebProNews) covers new threats to the internet from around the world and he notes this on Iraq:
According to a translation from the Centre for Law and Democracy, Articles 3, 4, and 5 of Iraq's Informatics Crimes Law would impose a mandatory life sentence for anyone using a computer or the Internet to do any of the following:
- "compromise" the "unity" of the state;
- subscribe,
participate, negotiate, promote, contract or deal with an enemy … in
order to destabilize security and public order or expose the country to
danger;
- damage, cause defects, or hinder
[systems or networks] belonging to security military, or intelligence
authorities with a deliberate intention to harm [state security].
- promote "ideas which are disruptive to public order";
- "implement terrorist operations under fake names or to facilitate communication with members or leaders of terrorist groups";
- "promote
terrorist activites and ideologies or to publish information regarding
the manufacturing, preparation and implementation of flammable or
explosive devices, or any tools or materials used in the planning or
execution of terrorist acts";
- facilitate or promote human trafficking "in any form";
- engage in "trafficking, promoting or facilitating the abuse of drugs".
The
Act also includes provisions to punish network users who "create chaos
in order to weaken the trust of the electronic system of the state,"
"provoke or promote armed disobedience," "disturb public order or harm
the reputation of the country," or "intrude, annoy or call computer and
information network users without authorization or hinders their use,"
the Electronic Freedom Foundation
reports. Copyright infringement and hacking would also land users in
big trouble under the Act, which proposes a 2- to 3-year prison term
for either offense.
Today Alice Fordham (Washington Post) reports on attempts to curb speech in Iraq where bills are being considered that could imprison people who criticize the government or make new requirements/hurdles for demonstrating. She speaks with Iraqi blogger Hayder Hamzoz:
The law also contains a sentence of life imprisonment for using computers or social networks to compromise "the independence of the state or its unity, integrity, safety."
Hamzoz, who does not use his real name out of concern for his safety, said he believes the legislationis intended to allow the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to control social media. The government essentially did just that more than a year ago, when it swiftly smothered an uprising inspired by the Arab Spring revolts sweeping the region.
"It's to attack the activists," he said.
Moving over to the United States, Senator Patty Murray is the Chair of Senate Veterans Affairs Committee. Her office notes:
FOR PLANNING PURPOSES
Wednesday, April 4th,
CONTACT: Murray Press Office
2012 (202) 224-2834
TOMORROW: Murray in Spokane with VA Health Officials to Host Roundtable Discussion with Local Veterans, Tour Homeless Veterans Facility
Veterans will discuss experiences with homelessness, mental health issues, and transition
(Washington, D.C.) – Tomorrow, Thursday, April 5th, U.S. Senator Patty Murray will hold a roundtable discussion with VA officials and local veterans in Spokane to discuss a range of topics including veterans homelessness, issues specific to female veterans, mental health, basic service problems in rural Washington, and transition. Following the roundtable, Senator Murray and Dr. Petzel, Under Secretary for Health in the Department of Veterans Affairs, will tour the Spokane Veterans Homelessness Outreach Center. Senator Murray will discuss her efforts to improve veterans care and benefits nationwide, and will use the stories and suggestions she hears on Thursday to fight for local veterans in Washington, D.C.
WHO: U.S. Senator Patty Murray
Dr. Petzel, Under Secretary for Health in the Department of Veterans Affairs
Dr. Bastian, Chief of Behavioral Health at the SVAMC
Julie Liss, Women's Veterans Coordinator at the SVAMC
John Davis, Program Coordinator, Healthcare for Homeless Veterans
Monica Giles, Program Coordinator at the SVAMC
Local veterans
WHAT: Roundtable with local veterans and service providers about the difficulties they face in regards to:
homelessness, women veteran's issues, mental health, and transition.
WHEN: TOMORROW: THURSDAY, April 5, 2012
Roundtable begins at 12:00 PM PT, tour will take place immediately following roundtable
WHERE: Spokane Veterans Homelessness Outreach Center
705 W. Second Avenue
Spokane, WA 99201-4412Map
Wednesday, April 4th,
CONTACT: Murray Press Office
2012 (202) 224-2834
TOMORROW: Murray in Spokane with VA Health Officials to Host Roundtable Discussion with Local Veterans, Tour Homeless Veterans Facility
Veterans will discuss experiences with homelessness, mental health issues, and transition
(Washington, D.C.) – Tomorrow, Thursday, April 5th, U.S. Senator Patty Murray will hold a roundtable discussion with VA officials and local veterans in Spokane to discuss a range of topics including veterans homelessness, issues specific to female veterans, mental health, basic service problems in rural Washington, and transition. Following the roundtable, Senator Murray and Dr. Petzel, Under Secretary for Health in the Department of Veterans Affairs, will tour the Spokane Veterans Homelessness Outreach Center. Senator Murray will discuss her efforts to improve veterans care and benefits nationwide, and will use the stories and suggestions she hears on Thursday to fight for local veterans in Washington, D.C.
WHO: U.S. Senator Patty Murray
Dr. Petzel, Under Secretary for Health in the Department of Veterans Affairs
Dr. Bastian, Chief of Behavioral Health at the SVAMC
Julie Liss, Women's Veterans Coordinator at the SVAMC
John Davis, Program Coordinator, Healthcare for Homeless Veterans
Monica Giles, Program Coordinator at the SVAMC
Local veterans
WHAT: Roundtable with local veterans and service providers about the difficulties they face in regards to:
homelessness, women veteran's issues, mental health, and transition.
WHEN: TOMORROW: THURSDAY, April 5, 2012
Roundtable begins at 12:00 PM PT, tour will take place immediately following roundtable
WHERE: Spokane Veterans Homelessness Outreach Center
705 W. Second Avenue
Spokane, WA 99201-4412Map
A new study of PTSD by UCLA's Semel Institute (and published in the Journal of Affective Disorders) is garnering attention. Stephanie O'Neill (KPCC -- link is text and audio) reports,
"The new study suggests that a person is more likely to suffer from
Post Traumatic Stress Disorder or if they carry two particular gene
variations that interfere with the body's ability to produce Serotonin.
That's the brain chemical that regulates, mood, sleep and alertness." Medical News Today quotes
the study's lead author, Dr. Armen Goenjian, stating, "People can
develop post-traumatic stress disorder after surviving a
life-threatening ordeal like war, rape or a natural disaster ... If
confirmed, our findings could eventually lead to new ways to screen
people at risk for PTSD and target specific medicines for preventing
and treating the disorder." Science Daily notes,
"PTSD can arise following child abuse, terrorist attacks, sexual or
physical assault, major accidents, natural disasters or exposure to war
or combat. Symptoms include flashbacks, feeling emotionally numb or
hyper-alert to danger, and avoiding situations that remind one of the
original trauma." The study examined 200 survivors of the December 7, 1988 Armenian earthquake which claimed at least 45,000 lives.
On the topic of PTSD, Randy Griffith (Tribune-Democrat) explains, "There are three general characteristics of the disorder, Zitnay said. They are re-experiencing the trauma, avoidance and hyper-arousal. Those with PTSD re-experience the event through nightmares, flashbacks and increased anxiety when reminded of the event. Avoidance is characterized by seclusion, amnesia of the incident and taking pains to stay away from locations, people or objects associated with the trauma." Shuka Kalantari (KALW) reports on PTSD by speaking to Iraqi refugee Jasmine who studies engineering in California.
Shuka Kalantari: Jasmine remembers one of those flashbacks. She was at a women's studies class at her college in San Jose. They were watching a documentary about a war in Chile. After the film, the teacher asked students to try and imagine how their life would be if they lived in war.
Jasmine: So she tried like to make the student feel like the feelings of these people. So she stated [. . .] to the class, "You imagine that you lost your husband." As she came to me, "You imagine that they tried to kidnap you."
Shuka Kalantari: Jasmine didn't have to imagine.
Jasmine: I feel like I'm out of air. I left the class and I remained outside -- for over like 20 hours just like crying in a way.
Shuka Kalantari: For the next her mind was flooded with bad memories. She said that even seemingly unrelated things would trigger her symptoms.
Jasmine: Sometimes like part of songs would make me like really like sad and depression if something happened to me. I feel like I'm out of the war for a couple of days.
Shuka Kalantari speaks to the Center for Survivors of Torture's Dr. James Livingston who explains PTSD is fairly common among those forced to flee their homes. Jasmine's father was shot dead in Baghdad and she left the country when it appeared she was being targeted for kidnapping.
On the topic of PTSD, Randy Griffith (Tribune-Democrat) explains, "There are three general characteristics of the disorder, Zitnay said. They are re-experiencing the trauma, avoidance and hyper-arousal. Those with PTSD re-experience the event through nightmares, flashbacks and increased anxiety when reminded of the event. Avoidance is characterized by seclusion, amnesia of the incident and taking pains to stay away from locations, people or objects associated with the trauma." Shuka Kalantari (KALW) reports on PTSD by speaking to Iraqi refugee Jasmine who studies engineering in California.
Shuka Kalantari: Jasmine remembers one of those flashbacks. She was at a women's studies class at her college in San Jose. They were watching a documentary about a war in Chile. After the film, the teacher asked students to try and imagine how their life would be if they lived in war.
Jasmine: So she tried like to make the student feel like the feelings of these people. So she stated [. . .] to the class, "You imagine that you lost your husband." As she came to me, "You imagine that they tried to kidnap you."
Shuka Kalantari: Jasmine didn't have to imagine.
Jasmine: I feel like I'm out of air. I left the class and I remained outside -- for over like 20 hours just like crying in a way.
Shuka Kalantari: For the next her mind was flooded with bad memories. She said that even seemingly unrelated things would trigger her symptoms.
Jasmine: Sometimes like part of songs would make me like really like sad and depression if something happened to me. I feel like I'm out of the war for a couple of days.
Shuka Kalantari speaks to the Center for Survivors of Torture's Dr. James Livingston who explains PTSD is fairly common among those forced to flee their homes. Jasmine's father was shot dead in Baghdad and she left the country when it appeared she was being targeted for kidnapping.
The
Defense Dept needs to get out the message that PTSD knows no
boundaries, that it could happen to anyone and that seeking treatment
is taking control of PTSD. As part of that effort, they have released this video of Chaplain Steve Dundas discussing his PTSD.
Chaplain: Steve Dudnas: I am Lt Commander Steve Dundas. I've been in the military 30 years, the Navy since 1999. When we got to Iraq our mission was to support US Marine Corps and Army advisers across the entire Al Anbar Province. These teams were out by themselves and they would very seldom if ever see a chaplain because of their isolation. I would go out and provide counseling, religious services. The hardest parts of the deployment? One, I've had a lot of experience as a trauma department chaplain and seen a lot of death. But when I got there and actually saw our wounded Marines and soldiers, prayed with them, anointed them, that was one of the really hard things -- was to see what war does to these warriors. I had studied a lot about PTSD and dealt with Marines who had it. I thought I was pretty much untouchable to it because I thought I'd seen everything. But I was really surprised by some of the things I saw and the impact that they had. The sites, the smells especially. The exhaustion. The travel. We went through some of the most dangerous areas of Iraq. Occasionally got shot at. And there was always an understanding that al Qaeda had chaplains at the top of their target list. When I came back to the States, I just felt so disconnected from people, church. I didn't even know if God still existed. And that was one of the most painful parts of my life. Prayer became really hard. Just going -- Doing life became really hard. I was depressed, angry, on edge all of the time. Finally, our medical officer did an assessment and was convinced that I was really starting to suffer PTSD and got me connected with the Deployment Health Clinic at Portsmouth Naval Medical Center and I started seeing a therapist there trying to figure out how to deal with my experiences. For me, writing is something that allows me to work through things and if I didn't write them out [they] would gnaw at me. And some of that deals with my own struggles with PTSD and faith, some of it deals with how I see the world now, and part of it are those things that are part of me: my dad, growing up, baseball. About the only place I can be in a crowd of people and still feel really safe is at a baseball game. And part of it is just the way the diamond's laid out and just the peacefulness of it. My role as a chaplain is to provide the spiritual support as they make this journey and as they begin to open up about what they've gone through. But many times, it requires more than just the chaplain. And so, I'll say, I know it's scary but I think that you need to seek the help of a mental health professional because it's a way to get better. And I tell them my experiences which are good experiences with both the therapists I've had. That they understood and they didn't push me to some track that I was unable to go to. I realize that you can't go back, you can't go back to what you were, you have to adapt to what you are. Do you want to be healthy? Yes. Do you want to be well adjusted? Yes. Does that mean you're going to be the same person you were before you went to war? No. Nobody is. But that's okay if we open ourselves up to get help. It's not something that we're going to be better overnight. What it will be though is a step on the way to healing, a step on the way to integrating those experiences with our daily life now. I don't think it is weakness to seek help. In fact, I think it's a sign of strength. I think it's a sign that you want to move forward. And what I hope is that when I spend time with people, when I share with people, when I listen to people, that I can help them to begin that process if they haven't already started. And to encourage them if they're already getting some therapy. Provide that extra bit of support, that extra bit of connection so that they don't feel that they're alone.
