http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0208duitrials08.html

Jury trials ruled out in DUI cases?

Judges may decide guilt

Michael Kiefer

The Arizona Republic

Feb. 8, 2005 12:00 AM

Prosecutors and Municipal Court judges in Arizona are pushing to eliminate the right to a jury trial for misdemeanor drunken-driving charges in the wake of an Arizona Supreme Court decision.

While the ruling addressed misdemeanors in general, prosecutors and judges across the state rushed to test whether it could be interpreted as a mandate for DUI trials to take place exclusively before a judge and not a jury.

The opinion was published Jan. 14, and since then, prosecutors in Gilbert, Mesa and Bullhead City have asked that DUI jury trials be canceled, and municipal judges and magistrates in Phoenix and Tucson have canceled some, pending hearings or a clarification from a higher court.

The prosecutors are certain they will prevail, and defense attorneys fear they will.

The reasons to prefer a bench trial instead of a jury trial are simple: time and money.

"Sometimes we prepare for a jury trial, and at the last minute, the defendant wants to plead before the court," said Mary Stringer, magistrate in Bullhead City Court. "So we have all the jurors on standby, and the logistics of it are very often time-consuming."

Prosecutors don't care for misdemeanor jury trials either, because they take more time to prepare than bench trials and because they're more likely to end in acquittal.

"Juries will take into account what's going to happen to the person, whether he's going to lose his license, and they tend to be more sympathetic than judges would be," said Paul Bender, a law professor at Arizona State University.

Those are the very reasons defense attorneys often prefer jury trials.

The main obstacle to moving to bench trials exclusively is a state statute that explicitly grants jury trials in DUI cases. At question now is whether that statute is moot.

Most DUI offenses are misdemeanors and involve motorists driving under the influence of drugs or with a blood-alcohol content of 0.08 percent or more or, in the case of an extreme DUI, 0.15 percent or more. An aggravated DUI, a felony, involves the commission of another crime while driving under the influence of drugs or alcohol.

DUI, though a serious crime, is one most likely to be committed by a regular person instead of a hardened criminal.

According to the Research and Statistic Administrative Office of the Courts, which crunches numbers on behalf of the Arizona Supreme Court, there were more than 65,600 trials for misdemeanor offenses at the state's Justice Courts and Municipal Courts in fiscal 2004, which ended June 30.

Only 1,273 of those were jury trials and three-fourths of them were criminal traffic cases, the bulk of them DUIs.

"These are people you can relate to," said Clifford Girard, a Phoenix attorney who specializes in DUI. "It isn't like representing a lot of felonies in Superior Court. So you're taking jury trials away from the middle class."

From shoplifting to reckless driving to selling liquor to a minor, whether a misdemeanor merited a jury trial was determined almost case by case, according to a 1966 Arizona Supreme Court opinion on a DUI case called State vs. Rothweiler.

That case set three criteria to determine if a defendant could have a jury trial: if a similar offense drew a jury trial before Arizona statehood, if the potential punishment was severe or if the crime carried a social stigma and raised issues of "moral turpitude."

The test results, however, were inconsistent and unfair. You could get a jury trial for possession of marijuana but not for unlawful possession of a concealed weapon, for dancing naked but not for animal cruelty or for soliciting a prostitute but not for beating your spouse.

The decision to change the rules stemmed from an attorney's request for a jury trial in a drag-racing case. The state Supreme Court decided that it didn't merit one.

The opinion, referred to as the Derendal decision, also clarified the rules for granting jury trials in any misdemeanor cases.

"What was really going on in the background and everyone knew it, was (speculation whether) the Supreme Court decision was going to do away with drunk-driving jury trials," said Neal Bassett, the attorney who took Derendal to the state Supreme Court. "That's why judges jumped on it."

Justin Derendal was arrested in August 2002 for drag- racing, a Class 1 misdemeanor, and Bassett, his attorney, requested a jury trial in Phoenix Municipal Court but was denied. He appealed all the way to the Arizona Supreme Court.

Rather than continue considering jury eligibility case by case and offense by offense, the Arizona justices invited interested prosecutors and defense attorneys to file briefs about the state's tests to decide whether any misdemeanors were jury-eligible.

Federal court rules do not allow for misdemeanor jury trials, deeming any offenses as petty if they would be punished by six months' incarceration or less. Arizona misdemeanors fall into that category. But rather than just adopt the federal standards, the Arizona Supreme Court modified the Rothweiler test.

In a Jan. 14 decision written by Vice Chief Justice Ruth McGregor, the court deemed "moral turpitude" to be too difficult to define and eliminated it as a factor. It left the provision for common-law precedence, meaning crimes such as shoplifting and reckless driving, which were tried in front of juries before statehood, will continue to be tried that way.

McGregor allowed that crimes carrying severe punishments could also be tried before juries, but she warned that losing a driver's license or going to jail for six months or less were not severe enough penalties.

Defense attorneys are scouring historical law books looking for pre-statehood precedents to the drunken-driving statutes. They're pondering whether court-ordered ignition-interlock devices and other DUI punishments will meet the definition of severe.

But their trump card may already be written into law.

In response to the 1966 Rothweiler decision, the Arizona Legislature amended the DUI laws, saying in Arizona Revised Statute 28-1381(f) that "the defendant may request a trial by jury and that the request, if made, shall be granted."

"At this point in time, most courts and judges are trying to decide the meaning of 28.1381(f), which says you must advise the defendant of the right to a jury trial and, if they request one, provide it," said Presiding Glendale City Judge Elizabeth Finn.

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kevin it may be time to get some new fatigues :) these will work just as well in phoenix as in baghdad

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0209uniforms09.html

Army gives uniforms 1st redesign in decades

Russ Bynum

Associated Press

Feb. 9, 2005 12:00 AM

FORT STEWART, Ga. - Army soldiers are being issued new fatigues with easy-to-use Velcro openings and a redesigned camouflage pattern that can help conceal them as they move rapidly from desert to forest to city in places like Baghdad.

"It might give you the extra second you need, save your life maybe," Sgt. Marcio Soares said Tuesday after trying on the new all-in-one camouflage uniform that is the first major redesign in Army fatigues since 1983.

Soares' unit, the Georgia National Guard's 48th Infantry Brigade, is the first to be issued the new fatigues as part of a $3.4 billion Army-wide makeover being phased in over the next three years.

The uniform will replace the standard forest camouflage (green, brown and black) and the desert camouflage (tan, brown and gray) now used by U.S. troops in Iraq.

Twenty-two changes were made to the uniforms, most notably the new camouflage pattern.

Instead of bold jigsaw swatches of colors, the new camouflage pattern uses muted shades of desert brown, urban gray and foliage green broken into 1-centimeter segments. Black was eliminated completely because it catches the eye too easily.

The resulting camouflage, similar to a pattern the Marines adopted two years ago, conceals soldiers in forest, desert or urban battlegrounds, said Sgt. 1st Class Jeff Myhre, the uniform's lead designer.

"In Baghdad, you can go from the desert to vegetation to the city in 10 minutes," Myhre said. "What we realized very quickly is there's no camouflage that's the 100 percent solution for any environment."

Other changes were prompted by complaints from soldiers in the field. Jacket and pocket buttons, which can snag on nets and other gear, have been replaced with zippers and Velcro.

Pockets at the jacket's waistline were moved to the shoulders, where soldiers can reach them while wearing body armor. And the uniforms have a looser fit, with more room to wear layers underneath.

Rank, unit and name patches attach with Velcro rather than being sewn on. Infrared-reflecting squares on the shoulders make friendly troops easier to identify while using night-vision goggles.

"The only problem I have with the uniform is, once the soldiers put it on, they don't want to take it off," said Brig. Gen. Stewart Rodeheaver, commander of the 48th Infantry Brigade, which has 4,000 reservists training at Fort Stewart to go off to Iraq in May.

The Army started developing the uniform two years ago and field-tested prototypes in Iraq. The final version was rolled out June 24, the Army's 229th birthday.

Col. John Norwood, the Army's project manager for soldier equipment, said the new uniforms will be issued in coming months to units being sent to Iraq. New soldiers entering basic training will be issued them by October, and all Army troops will be required to wear them by April 2008.

The new uniforms cost more: $85 each, compared with $60 for the old ones. But Norwood said the Army will save money by having to produce only one combat uniform rather than three: standard greens, desert camouflage and cold-weather fatigues.

And they should make soldiers' lives easier, too. The fabric is wrinkle-free and machine-washable, and the new suede boots do not require polishing like the old black boots.

"If you have a choice whether you teach them to polish boots or teach them how to survive in battle, we'd rather teach them to survive in battle," Rodeheaver said.

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damn those tempe piggys are well paid $41,159 to $55,571 for starting pay!

hell a computer programmers are starting at $50k out of college, and a thug

with a badge and gun can make that by working for the tempe pd.

http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/local/articles/0209evbriefs09.html

Tempe seeking to hire for Police Department

TEMPE - Tempe is searching for qualified people to join the police force. A testing session will be held at 5:30 p.m. Thursday at the main station, 120 E. Fifth St.

Today is the last day to pick up applications, which are available at the city's Human Resources Office or online at www.tempe.gov/police.

The starting salary range is $41,159 to $55,571, plus benefits.

Information: (480) 350-8764.

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it is easy to fool government buerocrats :)

http://www.cincypost.com/2005/02/08/fakedoctor020805.html

Bogus doctor sent to prison

By Kimball Perry

Post staff reporter

A judge sent a fake doctor to prison Monday and blasted Cincinnati fire officials who allowed youthful looking 20-year-old John Holliman to ride with them only on his word that he was the chief resident of an unnamed hospital.

"The city of Cincinnati requires more of lifeguards at municipal pools than they did of you. It's incredible," Hamilton County Common Pleas Court Judge Steve Martin told Holliman as he sent the felon to prison Monday for 15 months.

Holliman, who pleaded guilty last month in a plea deal to avoid a trial, told the judge Monday that it was easy to pass himself off to Cincinnati firefighters -- especially a lieutenant at a Central Parkway fire station -- as Antoine J. Douglas, M.D.

"I did not provide them with documents. I called them and talked to a lieutenant, and he allowed me to ride with them," Holliman told the judge.

Holliman convinced fire officials to allow him to ride along on some calls, as the department allows medical professionals who want additional training to do.

While fire officials were embarrassed by the gaffe, a spokesman took credit Monday for his department catching Holliman after he "eluded authorities on numerous other occasions" when posing as a doctor, firefighters and police officer, Fire District Chief Denny Clark said after Holliman's sentencing.

"We have since implemented a new process of credentialing individuals that ride along on our apparatus as well as reinforced existing procedures."

Those old procedures allowed Holliman -- with no proof "but my word," Holliman said -- to pose as a doctor to ride with emergency workers and actually declare an inmate at the Hamilton County Justice Center dead.

That medical pronouncement wasn't difficult because "rigor mortis already had set in," said Holliman's attorney, James Bogen. Holliman was charged July 1 with impersonating a doctor and disrupting public service.

Bogen asked the judge to give Holliman probation or local jail time instead of prison, saying Holliman had been sexually abused as a child, had been taken from his family by social workers and had spent 10 years in and out of a dozen mental facilities.

Not needing to document his "professional credentials," when Holliman was arrested he had a document that listed him as a "chief resident." That document had no letterhead and could have been generated on any computer.

That type of behavior shows exactly how self-centered Holliman is, and thus a danger to society, assistant prosecutor Bill Anderson noted.

"He puts his own needs of manipulation, ego gratification and false sense of self-importance ahead of society's needs for competence and safety," Anderson wrote in a memo asking the judge to send Holliman to prison.

"While posing as a police officer, he was lucky he didn't shoot someone or get shot himself. While posing as a physician, he is lucky he didn't come across someone severely injured and in need of competent medical care."

Holliman admitted posing as a police officer and threatening to write people tickets.

http://www.azcentral.com/offbeat/articles/0208fake-medic08-ON.html

Man lies to get free rides in ambulances

Associated Press

Feb. 8, 2005 10:17 AM

CINCINNATI - A Columbus man has been sentenced to 15 months in prison for telling Cincinnati firefighters he was a medical student so he could ride with paramedics on ambulance runs.

Authorities say 20-year-old John Holliman never treated patients. He was convicted of one count each of practicing medicine without a certificate and disrupting public service, and was sentenced Monday.

Assistant Fire Chief Bob Kuhn says Holliman told paramedics he was a medical student from Dayton.

Firefighters say they got suspicious when Holliman referred to the fire chief by his first name instead of calling him "chief" or using his full name.

Kuhn says ambulance ride-alongs are now limited to paramedic trainees and the media, and officials check out all credentials.

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whats next making it illegal for people accused of terrorism to have a lawyer???

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0211terrortrial11.html

N.Y. lawyer convicted of assisting terrorists

Larry Neumeister

Associated Press

Feb. 11, 2005 12:00 AM

NEW YORK - A veteran civil rights lawyer was convicted Thursday of crossing the line by smuggling messages of violence from one of her jailed clients, a radical Egyptian sheik, to his terrorist disciples on the outside.

The jury deliberated 13 days over the past month before convicting Lynne Stewart, 65, a firebrand, left-wing activist known for representing radicals and revolutionaries in her 30 years on the New York legal scene.

The trial, which began last June, focused attention on the line between zealous advocacy and criminal behavior by a lawyer. Some defense lawyers saw the case as a government warning to attorneys to tread carefully in terrorism cases.

Stewart slumped in her chair as the verdict was read, shaking her head and later wiping tears from her eyes.

She vowed to appeal and blamed the conviction on evidence that included videotape of Osama bin Laden urging support for her client. The defense protested the bin Laden evidence, and the judge warned jurors that the case did not involve the events of Sept. 11.

"When you put Osama bin Laden in a courtroom and ask the jury to ignore it, you're asking a lot," Stewart said. "I know I committed no crime. I know what I did was right."

Lawyers have said Stewart most likely would face a sentence of about 20 years on charges that include conspiracy, providing material support to terrorists, defrauding the government and making false statements. She will remain free on bail until her July 15 sentencing.

The anonymous jury also convicted a U.S. postal worker, Ahmed Abdel Sattar, of plotting to "kill and kidnap persons in a foreign country" by publishing an edict urging the killing of Jews and their supporters. A third defendant, Arabic interpreter Mohammed Yousry, was convicted of providing material support to terrorists. Sattar could face life in prison and Yousry up to 20 years.

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales called the verdict "an important step" in the war on terrorism.

"The convictions handed down by a federal jury in New York today send a clear, unmistakable message that this department will pursue both those who carry out acts of terrorism and those who assist them with their murderous goals," Gonzales said.

Stewart was the lawyer for Omar Abdel-Rahman, a blind sheik sentenced to life in prison in 1996 for conspiring to assassinate Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and destroy several New York landmarks, including the U.N. building and the Lincoln and Holland tunnels.

Prosecutors said Stewart and the others carried messages between the sheik and senior members of an Egyptian-based terrorist organization, helping spread Abdel-Rahman's venomous call to kill those who did not subscribe to his extremist interpretation of Islamic law.

Prosecutor Andrew Dember argued that Stewart and her co-defendants essentially "broke Abdel-Rahman out of jail, made him available to the worst kind of criminal we find in this world: terrorists."

At the time, the sheik was in solitary confinement in Minnesota under special prison rules to keep him from communicating with anyone except his wife and his lawyers.

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one of the reasons for the current police state is because the federal government is giving cops billions of bucks to help them in their war against the taxpayers

http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/local/articles/0211budget-publicsafety11.html

Feds' cuts to local police worry some

Judi Villa

The Arizona Republic

Feb. 11, 2005 12:00 AM

President Bush's proposed budget for fiscal year 2006 includes surprising cuts from programs designed to safeguard the nation's communities from crime and terrorism, including money earmarked to protect Arizona.

And while it is too early in the process to say exactly how much money Arizona stands to lose, it's clear that the cuts could be deep, and the hand-wringing has already begun.

Bush's plan calls for states to receive nearly $1.5 billion less from the Department of Justice and $310 million less from the Department of Homeland Security.

Among the harshest cuts: The Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS), which has helped put more than 100,000 new police officers on the streets, would lose $480 million, a reduction of about 80 percent. The State Homeland Security Grant Program would lose $280 million. Grants to high-threat, high-density urban areas would be cut by $55 million.

"When we start fussing with the safety and security of the folks in Arizona, it's a big deal," said Jeanine L'Ecuyer, spokeswoman for Gov. Janet Napolitano.

Across the Valley, police and firefighters have benefited from federal money, and officials say any cuts can only hurt the state.

Since 1994, law enforcement agencies in Arizona have received more than $241 million to hire new officers, improve technology and explore new community policing ideas. The money has put 99 officers in schools, provided laptops to patrol officers in Mesa and helped Tempe police beef up their bike squad.

More than 2,700 officers were hired in Arizona under the program, which paid 75 percent of a new officer's salary and benefits for three years.

"This was really the meat and potatoes as far as putting cops on the streets," said Jake Jacobsen, president of the Phoenix Law Enforcement Association. "This is going to hurt if it stays that way."

It's also going to hurt agencies that rely on federal homeland-security grants.

Since 2002, Arizona has shared grants totaling about $115 million. Last year, the Phoenix Fire Department alone received $2.3 million to buy biohazard suits for firefighters, respirators, body removal carts, biohazard detection equipment and antidotes for biochemical attacks. Phoenix also ordered three heavy-rescue fire trucks for statewide rapid responses, said Assistant Fire Chief Bob Khan.

Khan said Phoenix relies on federal money to cover training costs and buy equipment for its elite Urban Search and Rescue Team as well as for the Metropolitan Medical Response Team, a biohazard response unit. The teams also are used daily to respond to emergencies from car crashes to chemical spills.

"If the funding is reduced, there will be a direct impact. Our ability to mitigate man-made emergencies or national disasters will be greatly reduced," Khan said. "It isn't necessarily like closing down a fire station. But it could impact those unusual life-threatening emergencies that we have additional skills to respond to."

<#==#>

one of the reasons for the current police state is because the federal government is giving cops billions of bucks to help them in their war against the taxpayers

http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/local/articles/0211budget-publicsafety11.html

Feds' cuts to local police worry some

Judi Villa

The Arizona Republic

Feb. 11, 2005 12:00 AM

President Bush's proposed budget for fiscal year 2006 includes surprising cuts from programs designed to safeguard the nation's communities from crime and terrorism, including money earmarked to protect Arizona.

And while it is too early in the process to say exactly how much money Arizona stands to lose, it's clear that the cuts could be deep, and the hand-wringing has already begun.

Bush's plan calls for states to receive nearly $1.5 billion less from the Department of Justice and $310 million less from the Department of Homeland Security.

Among the harshest cuts: The Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS), which has helped put more than 100,000 new police officers on the streets, would lose $480 million, a reduction of about 80 percent. The State Homeland Security Grant Program would lose $280 million. Grants to high-threat, high-density urban areas would be cut by $55 million.

"When we start fussing with the safety and security of the folks in Arizona, it's a big deal," said Jeanine L'Ecuyer, spokeswoman for Gov. Janet Napolitano.

Across the Valley, police and firefighters have benefited from federal money, and officials say any cuts can only hurt the state.

Since 1994, law enforcement agencies in Arizona have received more than $241 million to hire new officers, improve technology and explore new community policing ideas. The money has put 99 officers in schools, provided laptops to patrol officers in Mesa and helped Tempe police beef up their bike squad.

More than 2,700 officers were hired in Arizona under the program, which paid 75 percent of a new officer's salary and benefits for three years.

"This was really the meat and potatoes as far as putting cops on the streets," said Jake Jacobsen, president of the Phoenix Law Enforcement Association. "This is going to hurt if it stays that way."

It's also going to hurt agencies that rely on federal homeland-security grants.

Since 2002, Arizona has shared grants totaling about $115 million. Last year, the Phoenix Fire Department alone received $2.3 million to buy biohazard suits for firefighters, respirators, body removal carts, biohazard detection equipment and antidotes for biochemical attacks. Phoenix also ordered three heavy-rescue fire trucks for statewide rapid responses, said Assistant Fire Chief Bob Khan.

Khan said Phoenix relies on federal money to cover training costs and buy equipment for its elite Urban Search and Rescue Team as well as for the Metropolitan Medical Response Team, a biohazard response unit. The teams also are used daily to respond to emergencies from car crashes to chemical spills.

"If the funding is reduced, there will be a direct impact. Our ability to mitigate man-made emergencies or national disasters will be greatly reduced," Khan said. "It isn't necessarily like closing down a fire station. But it could impact those unusual life-threatening emergencies that we have additional skills to respond to."

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sheriff joe idiot? asshole? or both?

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0211jaildelays.html

Construction issues keep jail projects shut

Christina Leonard

The Arizona Republic

Feb. 11, 2005 12:00 AM

Maricopa County's two largest jail projects were supposed to be open by now.

Elected officials have held their grand-opening ceremonies. Authorities have issued the certificates of occupancy. And the people who built the facilities say they're ready to go.

But the $247 million Lower Buckeye Jail and Central Services project and the $147 million Fourth Avenue Jail won't open for at least six to 10 more weeks. They were originally scheduled to open last June.

Sheriff's officials say the delays are related to construction issues. The office last week submitted a list of items that need fixing, including toilets that don't flush properly, lights that don't turn off and hot water that doesn't run in medical areas, according to a sheriff's memo.

Despite some "minor maintenance issues," construction was completed months ago.

"We have been collaborating with the Sheriff's Office to meet all their occupancy deadlines," said Heidi Birch, director of Capital Facilities Development.

Although Lt. Paul Chagolla, Sheriff's Office spokesman, said the office is ready to take possession of the jails now, the office has openly struggled with staffing issues.

In fact, a recent press release said the office still needed to hire 1,000 officers to operate the entire jail system, even though 600 new detention officers and deputies have been brought on in the past 12 months.

"Quite frankly, I'm anxious only because the people voted for that sales tax and they want their jails open. On the other hand, we're surviving," Sheriff Joe Arpaio said.

In 1998, voters approved a one-fifth-cent sales tax to build adult and juvenile jail facilities. Residents extended it for 20 years in November 2002. The county has built about a dozen projects, including a training academy, a property-and-evidence warehouse and parking garages.

There is a need for the new jails. The average daily jail population has grown to 9,300. The current jail system is designed to hold 5,400 inmates, Chagolla said.

Arpaio said Madison Street Jail also is falling apart. He cited 15recent cases in which inmates were digging holes through the walls.

Officials opened the Fourth Avenue Jail intake booking area in September. Construction was mostly completed in July.

The jail is a 578,000-square-foot building in downtown Phoenix that will accommodate 2,060 maximum custody pretrial jail beds.

Lower Buckeye Jail is on Lower Buckeye Road near 35th Avenue. It will include a total of 833,000 square feet of building space and contain 2,438 beds, including those for adults and juveniles. It will also include laundry, a food factory and central plant.

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bottom line is bullies like george bush only pick on countries that cant defend themselfs.

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0211nuclear-assess11.html

Not all nuke threats need same treatment by U.S.

Tom Raum

Associated Press

Feb. 11, 2005 12:00 AM

WASHINGTON - A nuclear threat is a nuclear threat. Except when it's not, according to the White House.

Why does North Korea seem to get a pass and not Iraq, invaded because of weapons of mass destruction that could not be found? And what about Iran, which got two days of saber-rattling this week about its suspected nuclear ambitions?

One reason for the different standards: North Korea is in a real position to carry out its threats and trigger a new Korean War. Also, the United States already is stretched thin in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"North Korea is quite capable of responding to any kind of military action that we take with a devastating attack, an artillery and missile barrage on the South that would inflict millions of deaths and casualties," said Michele A. Flournoy, who was a Pentagon strategist in the Clinton administration.

"Unlike Iran, North Korea poses not just a potential threat but an actual threat today," said Flournoy, now a defense analyst with the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Pyongyang's statement on Thursday that it possesses nuclear weapons - and needs them to defend against a hostile United States - complicates President Bush's hopes of defusing the situation with diplomacy. North Korea also said it was pulling out of six-nation talks on its nuclear program, talks on which the administration had placed high hopes.

But underscoring its recent low-key approach to North Korea, administration officials offered only muted response to the development.

A day after she scolded Iran for its nuclear program, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the North Korean statement was "unfortunate" but that it had been assumed since the mid-1990s that North Korea could make such weapons. White House spokesman Scott McClellan said, "We've heard this kind of rhetoric from North Korea before."

Both said they still hoped diplomacy would prevail.

Few experts dispute the North Korea menace.

Even without a nuclear capability, North Korea is a formidable threat to its neighbors and the 34,000 U.S. soldiers in the South. Its 1.1 million-strong army is the world's fifth largest. Most of its troops are grouped just north of the Demilitarized Zone, within striking distance of the South Korean capital of Seoul, a city of 10 million people.

Focused on Iraq, Bush has looked to China and allies in Asia to persuade North Korea to abandon its nuclear program.

But the six-nation talks - among China, North Korea, South Korea, Japan, Russia and the United States - have been unproductive, suspended since last June.

Bush critics have always contended that North Korea was the most imminent threat, rather than Iraq or Iran, the other two members of what he branded an "Axis of Evil" in 2002.

"Saber-rattling with respect to Iran, saying we're not going to take the military option off the table, is hamhanded diplomacy," said Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association.

"It is now clear that the North Korean nuclear program is the most advanced and urgent problem the international community faces. It ought to light a fire under the White House to put this on top of their to-do list. This doesn't mean the diplomatic process has been exhausted. This is by no means an occasion to throw up our hands," Kimball said.

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Phoenix Police using federal laws to flush the 2nd amendment down the toilet

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0212guns12.html

Gun crime = hard time

Armed felons drawing long federal terms

Judi Villa

The Arizona Republic

Feb. 12, 2005 12:00 AM

Bruce Lowry went to prison for 19 years for possessing 10 bullets.

Joshua Dowling is serving 15 years, not for the burglary he was caught doing but for the gun he had with him when he was arrested.

And, in Phoenix, after a jury acquitted Jacob Price of murder, police nailed him for illegally possessing guns, and he went to prison for 23 years.

Across the Valley, law enforcement agencies and prosecutors are trying to get a handle on gun violence by cracking down harder on career criminals who continue to possess weapons when they shouldn't.

The idea is simple: Identify criminals who are prohibited gun possessors, catch them with guns and prosecute them, whenever possible, under tougher federal gun laws. They get harsher prison sentences, keeping them off the streets for longer and, ultimately, cutting crime.

"We can wait until these guys are busted or we can intervene before the bodies start to pile up," said Special Agent John MacKenzie of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. "How do you minimize the violent crimes? You get out there and follow these guys around."

Nearly two years ago, MacKenzie started Project ARROW, an innovative, pro-active effort to identify violent felons coming out of prison and target those most likely to get another gun. In Phoenix, police recently formed a Gun Enforcement Squad to better utilize federal laws to target traditionally local crimes and bolster sentences for "prohibited possessors," those forbidden from having a gun under any circumstances.

Prohibited possessors include felons, convicts on probation, parole or any type of community supervision, undocumented immigrants, the mentally ill and those who have renounced their U.S. citizenship. Included is anyone convicted of domestic violence, even a misdemeanor.

Under federal law, a prohibited possessor with three violent felony convictions is considered an "armed career criminal" and can be sent to prison for life, even for having ammunition. The minimum sentence is 15 years.

"The guys we're seeing carrying the guns are violent people," Phoenix police Detective Darrell Smith said. "They're not burglars. These are the guys out there doing home invasions, armed robberies and carjackings. Those are the ones we need to target."

The Valley's efforts are reflective of a national push to eradicate gun violence and are largely driven by Project Safe Neighborhoods, a nationwide billion-dollar effort to reduce gun crimes. U.S. Attorney for Arizona Paul Charlton called the program "the frontline in the battle against gun crimes."

Charlton said it is widely recognized in law enforcement that 80 percent of the crimes are committed by 20 percent of the people.

"If you can focus on those 20 percent and find them with weapons and put them away," Charlton said, "then you can go a great way in reducing crime."

The cases are pretty simple to make. Catch a guy with a gun. Prove the gun is functioning. Show that he's a prohibited possessor, and there's the case. There's not a whole lot of defense.

Police efforts are not a sweep of people who possess guns legally. Authorities are looking for armed career criminals, not law-abiding citizens.

"We see these guys get picked up by patrol," Smith said. "They get booked. They get out. We see some guys with five, 10, 15 felonies, and they're still running around with a gun.

"They're only carrying a gun for one reason, and that's to hurt or kill somebody."

In 2003, gun-related homicides nationwide climbed to a six-year high, with 9,638 such murders. In Arizona, firearms were used in 282 murders in 2003, up 11.5 percent from 2002.

Guns are the most commonly used weapons in violent crimes. Traditionally, though, police have rarely thought much about tacking on gun violations in cases of murder, robbery, even burglary and domestic violence. And criminals often escaped stiff federal penalties as authorities routinely pursued the most serious state charges without considering federal ones.

But partnerships between police and federal and state prosecutors have spurred landmark changes in how gun crimes are handled. Just having a gun illegally can result in lengthy prison stints or add years to a sentence. And if a suspect is acquitted on the original charge, like Price was, he may not get off on the gun charges.

"We're really serious about doing whatever we can and stopping the violence," Phoenix police Lt. Rich Benson said.

In the first year of Project ARROW, MacKenzie sifted through the records of nearly 700 felons, evaluating their violent histories and their propensity to use guns in crimes. He identified 96 targets for surveillance, including Lowry, a leader of the Aryan Brotherhood prison gang with a lengthy rap sheet; and Dowling, who also had multiple felony convictions. About 52 percent of MacKenzie's targets were re-arrested, and nearly half of those were prosecuted for federal firearms violations, not for committing new crimes.

"We want to catch them before they do it," MacKenzie said. "It's trying to intervene before the violent crimes really get out of hand."

Phoenix's Gun Enforcement Squad now evaluates everyone arrested with a gun to see if he or she can be prosecuted federally. If that's not possible, weapons misconduct charges still can be tacked on by the state to extend sentences. The gun squad also keeps tabs on convicted criminals moving into certain areas of the city, investigates gun shop burglaries and tracks crime guns, entering bullets and casings into a national database to try to link them to unsolved crimes.

When Ronald Page, 34, was caught burglarizing a Phoenix pawnshop recently, detectives ran a background check to see if he was a felon - he wasn't - then evaluated the case to determine if state or federal charges would wield more prison time.

Before the gun squad, Page, who had outstanding warrants, likely would have just been charged with burglary and could have ended up on probation or with minimal jail time. Now, though, he'll also face a federal charge for possessing guns, the stolen ones, while under indictment.

"We're not going to let this guy take a plea and get put on probation for a couple years," Smith said. "Those guns would have ended up on the streets in some felons' hands."

Gun crime prosecutions in Arizona, like those nationwide, have more than doubled in recent years.

In fiscal 2004, 156 cases were prosecuted in Arizona, most involving felons in possession or suspects using firearms during violent crimes or drug transactions.

"Our communities are tired of the violence, the senseless violence, the violence that's created by guns," Benson said. "These people are going to get some healthy time, and the community will end up being safer because of it."

<#==#>

http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/northphoenix/articles/0212phx-guns0212Z3.html

'Ballistic fingerprints' tell tales

Judi Villa

The Arizona Republic

Feb. 12, 2005 12:00 AM

Phoenix police Detective Darrell Smith carefully sorts through the shell casings left at the scene of a drive-by shooting.

"All these shell casings came from one gun," Smith says. "You can tell by looking at it."

Smith picks the best one. He's about to enter it into the National Integrated Ballistics Information Network, or NIBIN, a database that takes pictures of the unique markings on a bullet or casing and searches for a match.

Phoenix police hooked in to NIBIN nearly two years ago. Detectives like Smith, who works in the newly formed Gun Enforcement Squad, are entering more and more bullets and casings into the system to try to link crimes together and solve unsolved cases.

Without NIBIN, "there's no way that we could take this and find a comparison," Smith said. "It would have to be done manually. I can't tell you how many shell casings are impounded. There's probably more than thousands. They'd have to do it one-on-one."

NIBIN is the latest tool in crime-fighting technology, a national database that takes photos of a gun's unique "ballistic fingerprint" and tries to match it to others and to unsolved crimes.

The system is similar to databases for human fingerprints and DNA evidence.

Because no two firearms leave the same marks when they fire bullets, ballistic fingerprints can provide a critical tool for law enforcement agencies. There's now a better chance shell casings left at a scene will point detectives to a much-needed lead.

In October 2002, when a sniper randomly killed 10 people in the Washington, D.C., area, police matched bullet fragments from the victims to prove the same gun was used in all the shootings.

And, in January, Phoenix had its first NIBIN hit when the agency was able to match shell casings left at two homicides in 2003 and 2004.

On this recent morning, Smith was entering casings from unsolved drive-by shootings in 2003.

Smith put his first casing into the system's scanner.

The system works by photographing the breech face of the casing, the firing pin impression and ejector marks made when a semiautomatic gun flings out the shell.

On the screen, the markings look like a series of thick and thin black and white lines, hills and valleys, bumps and grinds and circles. Detectives look for a pattern that's both quality and quantity.

Smith zooms in on the mark left by the firing pin.

"That's got some nice characteristics around it," he says.

Last year, Phoenix police entered nearly 400 exhibits into NIBIN. About 75 percent were from homicides and aggravated assaults where police had a suspect and a weapon and were hoping to link the gun to other unsolved cases. The rest of the exhibits were from scenes of unsolved crimes.

Phoenix is hoping to expand the system this year by entering more evidence from unsolved crimes.

"This is real good," Smith says of another casing from his pile. "This is what we look for. This is what we want."

NIBIN, created in 1999, is available at more than 200 sites across the country.

About 120,000 ballistic fingerprint images are stored in the system and nearly 4,500 gun crime leads have been generated to help police solve crimes, according to the Web site for the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence.

In Arizona, Phoenix, Mesa and Tucson police, as well as the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office and the state Department of Public Safety crime labs in Phoenix and Flagstaff have NIBIN systems up and running. Bullets and casings entered in Arizona are automatically compared to evidence entered from five states in the region. Detectives also can request a nationwide search.

If the system finds a possible match, a firearms examiner then compares the evidence under a microscope.

"It's linking crimes that we would never link without the system," Smith says, as he continues entering evidence from unsolved 2003 drive-by shootings. "I am hoping we get a lot more hits. The more we put in, the more possibilities we have."

<#==#>

the cops who murdered mario didnt spend a day in jail.

the cop who shot a chandler woman in the back didnt do any time.

but there seems to be a double standard on this.....

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0212grande12.html

18-year term for man who hurt deputy

Michael Kiefer

The Arizona Republic

Feb. 12, 2005 12:00 AM

An argument over a parking violation that severely injured a Maricopa County sheriff's deputy will put a man in prison for 18 years.

On Friday in Maricopa County Superior Court, Jose Fortino Grande, 28, was sentenced to 15 years in prison for aggravated assault and three years for leaving the scene of the accident that crippled Deputy David Wargo in 2003.

"It was a tragedy," said Wargo's mother, Maryjane Cantrell. "I feel that the sentence was fair, and our family will continue to pray for their family as we try to put our family back together."

Grande's mother fainted during the sentencing, and the proceedings stopped as paramedics tended to her.

Wargo was working as a security guard at a supermarket at 83rd Avenue and Camelback Road, when he asked Grande to move his truck. Grande tried to flee with Wargo holding onto the truck. Wargo then fell and struck his head. He suffered severe head injuries and is unable to communicate or take care of himself. He attended the trial in a wheelchair. He lives in a rehabilitation center in California.

Judge Gary E. Donahoe said that Grande refused to accept a plea agreement that would have resulted in a lighter prison sentence. Instead, Grande was convicted by a jury in late December.

Donahoe imposed an aggravated sentence for the aggravated assault charge, but said that Grande deserved some leniency on the other count.

"He did turn himself in, something a prominent spiritual leader here did not do," he said, referring to Bishop Thomas J. O'Brien, convicted of leaving the scene of a fatal accident a year ago.

<#==#>

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/11/opinion/11herbert.html?oref=login

OP-ED COLUMNIST

Torture, American Style

By BOB HERBERT

Published: February 11, 2005

aher Arar is a 34-year-old native of Syria who emigrated to Canada as a teenager. On Sept. 26, 2002, as he was returning from a family vacation in Tunisia, he was seized by American authorities at Kennedy Airport in New York, where he was in the process of changing planes.

Mr. Arar, a Canadian citizen, was not charged with a crime. But, as Jane Mayer tells us in a compelling and deeply disturbing article in the current issue of The New Yorker, he "was placed in handcuffs and leg irons by plainclothes officials and transferred to an executive jet."

In an instant, Mr. Arar was swept into an increasingly common nightmare, courtesy of the United States of America. The plane that took off with him from Kennedy "flew to Washington, continued to Portland, Maine, stopped in Rome, Italy, then landed in Amman, Jordan."

Any rights Mr. Arar might have thought he had, either as a Canadian citizen or a human being, had been left behind. At times during the trip, Mr. Arar heard the pilots and crew identify themselves in radio communications as members of "the Special Removal Unit." He was being taken, on the orders of the U.S. government, to Syria, where he would be tortured.

The title of Ms. Mayer's article is "Outsourcing Torture." It's a detailed account of the frightening and extremely secretive U.S. program known as "extraordinary rendition."

This is one of the great euphemisms of our time. Extraordinary rendition is the name that's been given to the policy of seizing individuals without even the semblance of due process and sending them off to be interrogated by regimes known to practice torture. In terms of bad behavior, it stands side by side with contract killings.

Our henchmen in places like Syria, Egypt, Morocco, Uzbekistan and Jordan are torturing terror suspects at the behest of a nation - the United States - that just went through a national election in which the issue of moral values was supposed to have been decisive. How in the world did we become a country in which gays' getting married is considered an abomination, but torture is O.K.?

As Ms. Mayer pointed out: "Terrorism suspects in Europe, Africa, Asia and the Middle East have often been abducted by hooded or masked American agents, then forced onto a Gulfstream V jet, like the one described by Arar. ... Upon arriving in foreign countries, rendered suspects often vanish. Detainees are not provided with lawyers, and many families are not informed of their whereabouts."

Mr. Arar was seized because his name had turned up on a watch list of terror suspects. He was reported to have been a co-worker of a man in Canada whose brother was a suspected terrorist.

"Although he initially tried to assert his innocence, he eventually confessed to anything his tormentors wanted him to say," Ms. Mayer wrote.

The confession under torture was worthless. Syrian officials reported back to the United States that they could find no links between Mr. Arar and terrorism. He was released in October 2003 without ever being charged and is now back in Canada.

Barbara Olshansky is the assistant legal director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, which is representing Mr. Arar in a lawsuit against the U.S. I asked her to describe Mr. Arar's physical and emotional state following his release from custody.

She sounded shaken by the memory. "He's not a big guy," she said. "He had lost more than 40 pounds. His pallor was terrible, and his eyes were sunken. He looked like someone who was kind of dead inside."

Any government that commits, condones, promotes or fosters torture is a malignant force in the world. And those who refuse to raise their voices against something as clearly evil as torture are enablers, if not collaborators.

There is a widespread but mistaken notion in the U.S. that everybody seized by the government in its so-called war on terror is in fact somehow connected to terrorist activity. That is just wildly wrong.

Tony Blair knows a little about that sort of thing. Just two days ago the British prime minister formally apologized to 11 people who were wrongfully convicted and imprisoned for bombings in England by the Irish Republican Army three decades ago.

Jettisoning the rule of law to permit such acts of evil as kidnapping and torture is not a defensible policy for a civilized nation. It's wrong. And nothing good can come from it.

<#==#>

Tempe Town Toilet Over Flows Again

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0213rain13.html

Tempe Town Lake becomes river again

West-end dam deflated, allowing runoff to pass

Brent Whiting and Lindsey Collom

The Arizona Republic

Feb. 13, 2005 12:00 AM

There was such a heavy runoff from the torrential storms that socked the Valley that a lake vanished Saturday.

For the first time since Tempe Town Lake was completed in 1999,the 16-foot dam on the west end was deflated to make room for water released by Salt River Project.

"The lake has gone completely down," said Shelley Hearn, a Tempe spokeswoman. "Now it's just a river."

Salt River flow was expected to reach 40,000 cubic feet per second or more by late Saturday, said Patricia Garcia Likens, an SRP spokeswoman. That doubled the flow of 20,000 at the onset of the storm, she said.

The rains that began Friday finally ended Saturday afternoon but not before dumping 1.28 inches at Sky Harbor International Airport, said Dennis Sturm, a National Weather Service forecaster.

Another big weather system may hit the Valley by Thursday or Friday, Sturm said.

In the meantime, there was flooding reported throughout the state, including Cottonwood, Globe and along the Hassayampa River in Wickenburg.

Ed Temerowski, the Wickenburg fire chief, said one home and two vehicles were swept into the raging river.

Two mobile homes also were threatened, Temerowski added. One local road was washed out and three utility poles were lost, resulting in power outages.

Approximately 25 people were left without power, said Damon Gross, a spokesman for Arizona Public Service Co. There were no reported outages in the Valley, he said.

There were 1.89 inches of rain in Wickenburg, according to the Maricopa County Flood Control District. There were 2.36 inches in Apache Junction, 1.77 near Black Canyon City, 2.01 in Cave Creek and 2.17 in far north Peoria.

In the meantime, reservoirs were rising, including those at Roosevelt Lake in Gila County and Lake Pleasant in the northwest Valley, officials said.

Roosevelt Lake was reported at nearly 44 percent capacity Saturday, up from 29 percent at the close of 2004.

Lake Pleasant was expected to rise 8 feet by today, sending shoreline campers to higher ground, said Darci Kinsman, a park supervisor.

In north Glendale, firefighters rescued a truck driver whose 18-wheeler got stuck in the current when he tried to plow through New River floodwaters near 75th Avenue and Hillcrest Boulevard.

Despite the heavy rains, Likens, the SRP spokeswoman, reported that the Valley remains in a drought.

"It's not uncommon to have a wet winter in the middle of a drought," Likens said.

The latest storm drama focused on Tempe Town Lake, which is created by two inflatable rubber bladders used as dams in the Salt River.

The lake's 5-foot east dam has been deflated since Dec. 31 when gushing water from the Salt River transformed a tranquil lake into a fast-flowing, debris-filled waterway.

In addition, water coursed over the west dam, tuning it into a man-made waterfall.

Chris Anaradian, the lake manager, said the increased runoff and safety considerations spurred a decision to deflate the west dam, which was expected to drop the lake to just above the riverbed from 16 feet.

The dam structure is designed to withstand a flow of about 65,000 cubic feet per second, Anaradian said.

It will be two or three days before any decision is made on whether to start raising the west dam again, he said.

"We'll take a look when the flow decreases to 5,000 or 10,000 cubic feet per second," Anaradian explained.

With the storm, about 70 people were evacuated east of Cottonwood early Saturday when water from the swollen Verde River flooded their homes.

At least 16 dwellings and more than a dozen motor homes were affected by the floodwaters, officials said.

But the waterline had receded by the afternoon, allowing some residents to return to their homes, according to Assistant Chief Jerry Doerksen of the Verde Valley Fire District. Those with flooded homes must wait until today.

It was the second or third evacuation in six weeks for some residents. A similar storm system waterlogged the area in late December and early January.

"Each time they start working on their house and start getting it fixed, here comes the water again," Doerksen said. "They've had a hard time."

An additional 40 people were also forced from their homes northeast of Phoenix. Residents from a mobile home park in Punkin Center, about 80 miles northeast of Phoenix, were evacuated from their homes about 3 a.m. Saturday, said Mariano Gonzales, Gila County Emergency Management deputy director.

A shelter established for the displaced remained unused by the afternoon, he said.

Four highways in the surrounding area were closed Saturday because of rockslides and flooded conditions. Department of Public Safety officials didn't know when Arizona 188, 77, 88 and 177 between Globe and Payson would reopen. U.S. 60 between Phoenix and Globe was also closed intermittently due to flooding, DPS officials said.

Heavy rain and snowmelt on Friday caused rivers and streams throughout Arizona to get near flood-stage levels. However, most creeks and rivers peaked by Saturday afternoon and started to decline.

Republic reporter Pat Kossan and the Associated Press contributed to this article.

<#==#>

cool drug. sounds like more fun then LSD. too bad the troops are forced to take it.

http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/news/articles/0213malaria13.html

Concerns spread about drug given to troops in Iraq

Seth Hettena

Associated Press

Feb. 13, 2005 12:00 AM

SAN DIEGO - As a volunteer firefighter, Georg-Andreas Pogany had seen disfigured bodies pulled from wrecked cars, but something different happened when the Army interrogator saw the mangled remains of an Iraqi soldier.

He became panicked, disoriented and that night reached for his loaded pistol and rifle as he thought he saw the enemy bursting into his room. Pogany asked superiors for help; the Army packed him home to face charges of cowardice, the first such case since Vietnam.

None of it made sense to Pogany until he learned more about the white pills the Army gave him each week to prevent malaria. The drug's manufacturer warned of rare but severe side effects including paranoia and hallucinations.

Pogany is among the current or former troops sent to Iraq who claim that Lariam, the commercial name for the anti-malarial drug mefloquine, provoked disturbing and dangerous behavior. The families of some troops blame the drug for the suicides of their loved ones.

The evidence is largely anecdotal, but stories have raised alarm in Congress, and the Pentagon has stopped giving out a pill it probably never needed to give to tens of thousands of troops in the first place.

"What are we doing giving drugs that cause hallucinations, confusion, psychotic behavior to people that carry weapons and hold secret clearances?" asked Pogany, 33, who is seeking a medical discharge. "It doesn't pass the common-sense test."

Safe, effective

The U.S. military, which developed the drug after the Vietnam War, maintains that Lariam is safe and effective, though the military tells its pilots not to take Lariam.

In written guidance about the drug last year, the military urged commanders to send for a medical evaluation anyone who showed behavioral changes after taking the drug, "especially . . . if they carry a weapon."

That description fits nearly all U.S. troops in Iraq.

Lariam is among the drugs recommended by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for treatment and prevention of malaria, which kills 1 million or more people worldwide each year.

The drug's New Jersey-based manufacturer, Roche Pharmaceuticals, points out that 30 million people worldwide have used Lariam during the past 20 years.

"There is no reliable scientific evidence that Lariam is associated with violent acts or criminal conduct," Roche spokesman Terence Hurley responded to e-mailed questions.

Further blurring the issue, the side effects associated with Lariam closely mirror symptoms of stress disorders related to combat, making diagnosis difficult.

Still, the pill has dedicated critics who believe it's causing problems that are just beginning to be understood. A review by the Department of Veterans Affairs found 34 articles in medical journals about patients who took Lariam and became psychotic.

Doctors at the Naval Medical Center in San Diego have diagnosed a disorder in the region of the brain that controls balance in 18 service members who took Lariam.

Pentagon records show the number of Lariam prescriptions issued to active-duty personnel nearly doubled, from 18,704 in 2002 to 36,451 the next year, said Lt. Col. Stephen Phillips, a program director for deployment medicine. Prescriptions issued at remote locations aren't counted, so actual numbers may be higher.

Fewer side effects

Shortly after the March 2003 invasion, military doctors determined another malaria drug would do the job with fewer side effects. Around the same time, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced that doctors should give patients revised information, underscoring that some Lariam users say they often think about killing themselves.

Military officials now concede Lariam wasn't needed in Iraq.

Troops sent to Kuwait in 1991 for Operation Desert Storm were given another anti-malarial, chloroquine. Before the Iraq invasion, the Armed Forces Medical Intelligence Center in Fort Detrick, Md., which is charged with evaluating medical risks, was concerned that a deadly malaria strain may have become resistant to chloroquine.

In March 2003, U.S. Central Command recommended the use of Lariam or another drug, doxycycline, in high-risk areas in Iraq.

Some commanders chose Lariam because it could be taken once a week rather than daily like doxycycline, whose side effects included sensitivity to sunlight. By July 2003, the military had determined the resistant strain wasn't in Iraq. Chloroquine then became the drug of choice.

Former Army Spc. Don Dills and his wife say he grew anxious, paranoid and depressed after taking Lariam for seven months in Iraq. Dills, 22, says he "went crazy" on a family visit to Mississippi last year and wound up jailed for robbery. When Dills' wife called her husband's first sergeant about the arrest, he told her: Look into Lariam.

"The bottom line is they know what's going on," said Elicia Dills, 25, of Pueblo, Colo. "They just don't know how to deal with the can of worms they opened."

<#==#>

the city of phoenix is going to hire more cops and get rid of the kid

http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/local/articles/0214kidsplace.html

After-school site auction set for April

Carol Sowers

The Arizona Republic

Feb. 14, 2005 12:00 AM

Kids' Place, which provides free after-school care for 35 south Phoenix children, is going on the auction block April 6.

The possible loss of Kids' Place comes just as Phoenix officials are considering shutting 60 city-paid after-school programs as part of a move to shave nearly $70 million out of the city's budget.

Carolyn T. Lowery, Kids' Place's founder, owes nearly $36,000 on a worn building at 12th Street and Broadway Road, an area where after-school programs are full or nearing capacity.

Richard Preciado is principal of Rose Linda Elementary School, which is near Kids' Place. He said the Phoenix Parks and Recreation after-school program there is at capacity with 140 children and that 15 to 20 more are on the waiting list.

Preciado added that he knows little about Kids' Place but said, "We appreciate any efforts to monitor our kids after school."

Constantly struggling to raise money, Lowery, 64, has moved her program seven times in the past 15 years. Others are trying to help her raise money through grants and fund-raisers, but it may come too late.

Roosevelt Brown, whose family owns the property, said Lowery has not made a mortgage payment for two years.

"We've always believed in what she is doing," he said. "But I've stalled my other siblings as long as I can. I think we have a right to do what we want with the property."

Reach the reporter at carol.sowers@arizonarepublic.com

<#==#>

the city of phoenix may shut down the kids place so they can hire more cops

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0216phxkids.html

Kids' Place could soon be shuttered

Carol Sowers

The Arizona Republic

Feb. 16, 2005 12:00 AM

SOUTH PHOENIX - Kids' Place, which provides free after-school care for 35 Phoenix children, is going on the auction block April 6.

The possible loss of Kids' Place comes just as Phoenix officials are considering shutting down 60 city-paid after-school programs as part of a move to shave nearly $70 million from the city's budget.

Carolyn T. Lowery, Kids' Place's founder, owes nearly $36,000 on a worn building at 12th Street and Broadway Road, an area where after-school programs are full or nearing capacity.

Constantly struggling to raise money, Lowery, 64, has moved her program seven times in 15 years. Roosevelt Brown, whose family owns the property, said Lowery has not made a mortgage payment for two years.

"We've always believed in what she is doing," he said. "But I've stalled my other siblings as long as I can. I think we have a right to do what we want with the property."

Shaiba Allen-Barry, president of the Caribbean-American Association and a nurse practitioner, said she is impressed with Lowery's work and plans to help her by applying for state and city grants that could mean as much as $200,000 for Kids' Place. She envisions buying the dilapidated building with the grant money, razing it and building a children's multicultural center.

Lowery is far from giving up.

"We started in the parks," she said. "We might just have to go back to the parks."

Reach the reporter at carol.sowers@arizonarepublic.com or (602) 444-8058.

http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/local/articles/0216phxkids.html

Kids' Place could soon be shuttered

Carol Sowers

The Arizona Republic

Feb. 16, 2005 12:00 AM

SOUTH PHOENIX - Kids' Place, which provides free after-school care for 35 Phoenix children, is going on the auction block April 6.

The possible loss of Kids' Place comes just as Phoenix officials are considering shutting down 60 city-paid after-school programs as part of a move to shave nearly $70 million from the city's budget.

Carolyn T. Lowery, Kids' Place's founder, owes nearly $36,000 on a worn building at 12th Street and Broadway Road, an area where after-school programs are full or nearing capacity.

Constantly struggling to raise money, Lowery, 64, has moved her program seven times in 15 years. Roosevelt Brown, whose family owns the property, said Lowery has not made a mortgage payment for two years.

"We've always believed in what she is doing," he said. "But I've stalled my other siblings as long as I can. I think we have a right to do what we want with the property."

Shaiba Allen-Barry, president of the Caribbean-American Association and a nurse practitioner, said she is impressed with Lowery's work and plans to help her by applying for state and city grants that could mean as much as $200,000 for Kids' Place. She envisions buying the dilapidated building with the grant money, razing it and building a children's multicultural center.

Lowery is far from giving up.

"We started in the parks," she said. "We might just have to go back to the parks."

Reach the reporter at carol.sowers@arizonarepublic.com or (602) 444-8058.

<#==#>

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0216racialprofiling16.html

Court told traffic stops based on race not unconstitutional

Michael Kiefer

The Arizona Republic

Feb. 16, 2005 12:00 AM

An Arizona assistant attorney general suggested to the state Supreme Court on Tuesday that law enforcement officers could pull over motorists because of their race without violating their constitutional rights.

The argument stunned the justices and led to a late afternoon statement from the Arizona Attorney General's Office denouncing racial profiling.

At issue is whether evidence could and should be thrown out of court if it arises out of a traffic stop based on racial profiling. A Yavapai County Superior Court judge has ruled that it cannot be thrown out.

But during oral arguments before the Arizona Supreme Court, the attorney representing the state said that targeting minorities for traffic stops can't be considered racial profiling unless the motorists are also ticketed.

"What is the traffic infraction involved in being Black?" Justice Rebecca White Berch barked at Assistant Attorney General Cari McConeghy-Harris.

"The stop itself does not implicate any law," McConeghy-Harris responded, adding that as long as the officer did not write a ticket, constitutional rights would not be infringed.

"I can't believe the state of Arizona thinks it's OK to make stops on the basis of race," Justice Andrew D. Hurwitz said.

Hours later, in response to media inquiries, the Attorney General's Office clarified its position.

"The Attorney General's Office has worked extensively to prevent racial profiling and is committed to ensuring that law enforcement agencies in Arizona do not engage in this practice," it said.

"The state's legal argument in (the case) does not in any way condone racial profiling. The state's position in that case is that an allegation of racial profiling does not justify dismissing a criminal prosecution or excluding evidence in a criminal case as long as law enforcement officers had a sufficient legal basis for the stop."

The case dates to 2001, when several Black and Hispanic motorists on Interstates 40 and 17 were stopped for supposed traffic violations and found to be carrying illegal drugs.

Flagstaff attorney Lee Brooke Phillips got several of their cases thrown out of Coconino County Superior Court by alleging racial profiling on the part of state Department of Public Safety officers. DPS was not able to produce records regarding the traffic stops and the cases were dismissed. The state is appealing.

Phillips made the same argument with three cases in Yavapai County Superior Court. He asked the state to pay for an expert who would compile statistics to show a disproportionate number of stops of minority motorists. The judge denied the request, so Phillips took it to the higher court.

Phillips also filed a class-action civil lawsuit against DPS, accusing the agency of racial profiling. Although DPS admitted no wrongdoing, it entered into a settlement last month, promising to gather data and take measures to avoid racial profiling.

The Supreme Court took the Yavapai County case to ponder whether racial profiling could be a defense against criminal charges, in the same way illegally obtained evidence is inadmissible in a trial.

"If you pull someone over unconstitutionally because they're Black and you discover evidence of a crime . . . I would think that's inadmissible because it's the result of an unconstitutional search," said Paul Bender, a law professor at Arizona State University.

The Rev. Oscar S. Tillman, president of the Maricopa County National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, agreed.

"I'm totally against racial profiling, and any harshness that comes down on it, I'm for it," he said. "If you stop 20 people and two of them got drugs on them, you consider that a success. But what about the 18 people that you have harassed?"

After the hearing, McConeghy-Harris said she didn't think the justices understood her point. She explained that she was not defending racial profiling but meant to say that traffic stops were minimally invasive and that racial profiling concerns should be addressed in civil lawsuits and not used as a defense in a criminal case.

The Supreme Court took the case under advisement, meaning the justices will discuss it and decide at a future date.

<#==#>

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0215Shanley15-ON.html

Defrocked priest Shanley gets 12 to 15 years for raping boy

Associated Press

Feb. 15, 2005 09:45 AM

BOSTON - Defrocked priest Paul Shanley, a central figure in the Boston Archdiocese clergy sex abuse scandal, was sentenced Tuesday to 12 to 15 years in prison for raping a boy repeatedly in the 1980s.

"It is difficult to imagine a more egregious misuse of trust and authority," Judge Stephen Neel said in imposing the term. But he turned aside a prosecutor's request for a life sentence.

Shanley, 74, once known for a being a hip "street priest" who reached out to troubled children and homosexuals, was convicted last week of two counts each of child rape and indecent assault and battery on a child.

He will eligible for parole after serving two-thirds of his sentence. He was also sentenced to 10 years' probation.

The case hinged on the reliability of the accuser's memories of the abuse, which he said he recovered three years ago as the clergy sex abuse scandal unfolded in the media.

Prosecutor Lynn Rooney had recommended a life sentence, saying Shanley used his position of authority to gain the trust of the boys he then molested.

"He used his collar and he used his worshipped status in that community," Rooney said. "There has been no remorse shown on the part of this defendant. There has been no acceptance of responsibility."

His lawyer, Frank Mondano, did not make a specific sentencing recommendation but asked Neel to allow Shanley to serve his sentence in a county house of correction rather than at a state prison.

He also said the prosecution's case was built on "vilification, half truths and lies." He has said he plans to appeal.

Shanley's accuser, now a 27-year-old firefighter in suburban Boston, said the former priest would pull him from Sunday morning catechism classes at St. Jean's parish in Newton and rape and fondle him. The abuse began in 1983, when he was 6 years old, and continued for six years, he said.

Rooney read a written statement by Shanley's accuser.

"I want him to die in prison," he said. "I hope it is slow and painful."

His wife addressed Shanley in court Tuesday, saying "no words can ever explain my disgust for you. You are a coward. You hid behind God."

"You robbed my little boy of his innocence," the accuser's father told Shanley. "You destroyed his understanding of good and bad and right and wrong."

Some inmate advocates say whatever prison term Shanley gets could amount to a death sentence.

Another key figure in the scandal in Massachusetts, former priest John Geoghan, was beaten and strangled behind bars in 2003, a year after being convicted of molesting a 10-year-old boy. A fellow prisoner later told investigators he killed Geoghan "to save the children."

"He's so high-profile that that puts a big target on his back," said James Pingeon, a lawyer at Massachusetts Correctional Legal Services, a group that provides civil legal services to inmates. "We feel concerned. Obviously, he's a vulnerable person because of his notoriety and his age."

<#==#>

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0217terror-split17.html

Iraq is spawning terrorist recruits

War fuels resentment, officials say

Dana Priest and Josh White

Washington Post

Feb. 17, 2005 12:00 AM

WASHINGTON - The Iraq insurgency continues to baffle the U.S. military and intelligence communities, and the U.S. occupation has become a potent source of recruiting for al-Qaida and other terrorist groups, top U.S. national security officials said before Congress on Wednesday.

"Islamic extremists are exploiting the Iraqi conflict to recruit new anti-U.S. jihadists," CIA Director Porter Goss told the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

"These jihadists who survive will leave Iraq experienced and focused on acts of urban terrorism," he said. "They represent a potential pool of contacts to build transnational terrorist cells, groups and networks in Saudi Arabia, Jordan and other countries."

On a day when the top half-dozen U.S. national security and intelligence officials went to Capitol Hill to talk about the continued determination of terrorists to strike the United States, their statements underscored the unintended consequences of the war in Iraq.

"The Iraq conflict, while not a cause of extremism, has become a cause for extremists," Goss said in his first public testimony after becoming CIA director. Goss said Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian terrorist who has joined al-Qaida since the U.S. invasion, "hopes to establish a safe haven in Iraq" from which he could operate against Western nations and moderate Muslim governments.

"Our policies in the Middle East fuel Islamic resentment," Vice Adm. Lowell E. Jacoby, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, told the Senate panel. "Overwhelming majorities in Morocco, Jordan and Saudi Arabia believe the U.S. has a negative policy toward the Arab world."

Jacoby said the Iraq insurgency has grown "in size and complexity over the past year" and is now mounting an average of 60 attacks per day, up from 25 last year. Attacks on Iraq's election day last month reached approximately 300, he said, double the previous one-day high of 150, even though transportation was virtually locked down.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told the House Armed Services Committee that he has trouble believing any of the estimates of the number of insurgents because it is so difficult to track them.

Rumsfeld said that the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency had differing assessments at different times but that U.S. intelligence estimates of the insurgency are "considerably lower" than a recent Iraqi intelligence report of 40,000 hard-core insurgents and 200,000 part-time fighters. Rumsfeld told Rep. Ike Skelton, D-Mo., the committee's ranking member, that he had copies of the CIA and DIA estimates but declined to disclose them because they are classified.

"My job in the government is not to be the principal intelligence officer and try to rationalize differences between the Iraqis, the CIA and the DIA," Rumsfeld testified. "I see these reports. Frankly, I don't have a lot of confidence in any of them."

After the hearing, Rumsfeld told reporters that he did not mean to be "dismissive" of the intelligence reports.

"People are doing the best that can be done, and the fact is that people disagree," Rumsfeld said. " It's not clear to me that the number is the overriding important thing."

Air Force Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the House committee that the extremists associated with al-Qaida and Zarqawi represent "a fairly small percentage of the total number of insurgents."

Sunni Arabs, dominated by former members of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party, "comprise the core of the insurgency" and continue to provide "funds and guidance across family, tribal, religious and peer-group lines," Jacoby said.

Foreign fighters "are a small component of the insurgency," and Syrian, Saudi, Egyptian, Jordanian and Iranian nationals make up the majority of foreign fighters, he said.

On terrorism, Goss, FBI Director Robert Mueller and Adm. James Loy, acting deputy director of the Department of Homeland Security, reiterated their belief that al-Qaida and other jihadist groups intend to strike the United States but offered no new information about the threat.

Mueller, whose bureau has the lead in finding and apprehending terrorists in the United States, said his top concern is "the threat from covert operatives who may be inside the U.S." and said finding them is the FBI's top priority. But he said they have been unable to do so.

Mueller said transportation systems and nuclear power plants remain key targets.

<#==#>

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/breaking_news/10907784.htm?1c

Posted on Tue, Feb. 15, 2005

Group sues state to stop CHP pot confiscations

MICHELLE LOCKE

Associated Press

BERKELEY, Calif. - Medical marijuana advocates have filed suit against the California Highway Patrol, demanding that officers stop confiscating pot from authorized users.

The suit, filed Tuesday in Alameda County Superior Court, is the latest salvo in the long-running debate over medical marijuana in California, approved by voters in 1996, opposed by federal authorities ever since and applied unevenly all over the state.

The suit, which also names the governor and attorney general, says the highway patrol's "rigid policy," of seizing medical marijuana "causes law abiding citizens to suffer pain, humiliation, loss of dignity, extreme anxiety and a fear of the police."

"It's been more than eight years since California voters approved the right to use marijuana medically and since that time law enforcement has resisted upholding that right," said Kris Hermes, legal director of Americans for Safe Access, the Berkeley-based group bringing the suit. "While this resistance is pretty widespread across California, CHP are the worst violators by far."

At CHP headquarters in Sacramento, spokesman Tom Marshall said department officials have not seen the suit and therefore had no comment.

As for CHP policy in general, he said, a doctor's note alone isn't enough to prevent confiscation of marijuana. Marshall said the agency is waiting for authorized user ID cards to be issued by the state Health Department.

The voluntary ID card program was authorized by legislators in 2003 but cards haven't been issued yet. Department of Health Services spokeswoman Norma Arceo said the program had been delayed for lack of funds, but officials are developing a pilot program with 10 counties and hope to have the system set up statewide by year's end.

People with a medical recommendation to use marijuana will be able to apply for the ID card and the department will also have a toll-free number and Web site to help officers check to see if a person is an authorized user, she said.

Hermes took issue with the argument that a doctor's recommendation isn't sufficient.

"The law states quite explicitly that a qualified patient is someone who presents a recommendation from their physician or a voluntary identification card," he said.

The suit also names Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Attorney General Bill Lockyer. The governor's office referred calls to the CHP and a Lockyer spokesman said he had not seen the suit and had no comment.

The suit seeks a court order stopping the CHP from seizing marijuana from legitimate patients.

"It's like someone being pulled over and getting their Motrin taken away that they use to relieve their pain," Hermes said.

---

On the Net: http://www.safeaccessnow.org

http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/news/politics/10908675.htm?1c

Posted on Tue, Feb. 15, 2005

Calif. Patrol Sued for Seizing Medical Pot

MICHELLE LOCKE

Associated Press

BERKELEY, Calif. - Medical marijuana advocates filed a lawsuit Tuesday demanding California Highway Patrol officers stop confiscating pot from authorized users.

The lawsuit is the latest salvo in the long-running debate over medical marijuana in California, approved by voters in 1996, opposed by federal authorities ever since and applied unevenly all over the state.

The lawsuit against the highway patrol - which also names Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Attorney General Bill Lockyer - says CHP's "rigid policy" of seizing medical marijuana "causes law abiding citizens to suffer pain, humiliation, loss of dignity, extreme anxiety and a fear of the police."

"It's been more than eight years since California voters approved the right to use marijuana medically and since that time law enforcement has resisted upholding that right," said Kris Hermes, legal director of Americans for Safe Access, the Berkeley-based group bringing the lawsuit. "While this resistance is pretty widespread across California, CHP are the worst violators by far."

The lawsuit seeks a court order stopping the CHP from seizing marijuana from legitimate patients.

"It's like someone being pulled over and getting their Motrin taken away that they use to relieve their pain," Hermes said.

At CHP headquarters in Sacramento, spokesman Tom Marshall said department officials have not seen the lawsuit and had no comment. But he said a doctor's note alone prescribing pot isn't enough.

Hermes disagreed: "The law states quite explicitly that a qualified patient is someone who presents a recommendation from their physician or a voluntary identification card."

Marshall said the agency is waiting for state health officials to issue user ID cards. Department of Health Services spokeswoman Norma Arceo said officials hope to have a statewide system by year's end.

The governor's office referred calls to the CHP. A Lockyer spokesman said he had not seen the lawsuit and had no comment.

http://www2.cbs5.com/localwire/localfsnews/bcn/2005/02/16/n/HeadlineNews/WEDNESDAY-MORNING-NEW/resources_bcn_html

A medical marijuana rights group has filed a lawsuit alleging that the California Highway Patrol is violating state law and both the federal and state constitutions by confiscating marijuana from qualified medical marijuana patients.

Americans for Safe Access (ASA), which is based in Berkeley, filed the suit in Alameda County Superior Court Tuesday against the CHP and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on behalf of eight legal medical marijuana patients.

Attorneys for the patients said they were stopped by the CHP for alleged traffic offenses and had their medicine confiscated by the police as an added punishment.

In 1996, California voters passed the Proposition 215, known as the Compassionate Use Act, which allows the use of marijuana for medical purposes.

Since then, the state Legislature has enacted a law that clarifies the act and explicitly allows the transportation of marijuana by qualified patients and caregivers.

The lawsuit alleges that the CHP is violating the law.

Kris Hermes, ASA's legal director, said, "A number of patients were told by CHP officers that they don't recognize Proposition 215.''

CHP spokesman Kelly Houston said he could not comment on the suit because CHP officials haven't seen it yet.

The suit doesn't seek monetary damages but asks for the state to change its policies.

<#==#>

the emperor of the american empire and the royal members of the american empire know people are out to get them!

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2005-02-16-lasers-norad_x.htm

Posted 2/16/2005 11:24 PM

NORAD plans to use lasers to tell pilots: Don't go there

By Thomas Frank, USA TODAY

The nation's top air defense command plans to use lasers to warn pilots that they're flying into restricted airspace around Washington, D.C., but the idea is worrying some pilots who think the beams could be disorienting and dangerous.

A proposed warning system would use red and green lasers to signal pilots, the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), which protects continental airspace, said in a statement. The system would be used if the plane can't be reached by radio and is flying unauthorized into a restricted zone protecting the nation's capital, NORAD said.

The low-intensity lasers would appear as a very rapid series of lights on the ground — a distinctive signal that wouldn't be confused with the light emitted by store-bought laser pointers, NORAD spokesman Lt. Cmdr. Sean Kelly. Commercial lasers have been a concern to the FBI because pranksters have shined them at planes during recent takeoffs and landings.

Security bulletins have also identified lasers as a possible method that terrorists might use to try to distract pilots and crash a plane.

The Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association (AOPA) said Wednesday that a laser warning system used by the military may lead to confusion.

"A pilot might report having been hit by a laser pointer, not realizing they had been warned off," said Chris Dancy, a spokesman for AOPA, which represents private pilots. "It is absolutely imperative that it be proven that these lasers will neither harm the pilot, nor distract the pilot to the point that it puts the flight in jeopardy."

Kelly said pilots will be given detailed instructions and shouldn't worry. "The system has been proven to be eye safe at every level," he said. "It's not going to be blinding."

The Federal Aviation Administration is in the process of certifying that the lasers would not distract pilots or damage their eyesight, spokeswoman Laura Brown said. An FAA determination is likely within a couple of weeks, she said. NORAD expects no objections, Kelly said.

Kelly said laser warnings would be quicker and less expensive than the current process of sending Air Force fighter jets to intercept planes that enter the restricted airspace — usually by accident — and don't respond to radio calls.

Since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, hundreds of small planes have flown within the restricted airspace around the capital. In some cases, fighter jets have been scrambled to check on a plane and escort it to a nearby airport.

In June, during President Reagan's funeral, Kentucky Gov. Ernie Fletcher's plane flew into the restricted airspace. A communications breakdown led police to believe a hijacked plane might be heading toward the Capitol, forcing a frantic evacuation of people gathered to view Reagan's casket.

<#==#>

from this samalia sounds like a nice place to live. no government? i like that idea!

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0218somalia18.html

Despite years of anarchy, life continues in Somalia

Alexandra Zavis

Associated Press

Feb. 18, 2005 12:00 AM

MOGADISHU, Somalia - In a crowded Internet cafe, women in flowing veils and men in jeans and T-shirts catch up on the news and chat with friends around the world. Across town, a nervous learner takes her turn at the wheel for a drive around an abandoned stadium.

Through 14 years of often violent anarchy, life has carried on in gun-riddled Somalia. There may be no government, but for those who can afford it, there is electricity at the flick of a switch, wireless Internet access, a university education and even driving lessons.

No central government

Somalia has been without any effective central authority since clan-based warlords united to oust dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991, then destroyed a U.S.-led military mission trying to relieve rampant famine and pacify the nation of 7 million.

Somalia became a patchwork of heavily armed fiefdoms which still clash periodically.

A new government was formed last year after tortuous negotiations among warlords, clan elders and civil society leaders. But it has no budget and meets in neighboring Kenya because it considers Somalia too dangerous.

With no state to provide services, private initiative rules.

Parents, nostalgic for a time when education and health care were free, scrape together what they can to pay their children's teachers. Schools range from informal classes under a tree to a rapidly expanding university in Mogadishu, the capital, that offers degrees in nursing, business management, computer science and other subjects to some 2,000 students.

Somali doctors working abroad have returned to work at several private hospitals. With no government support, all are forced to charge the equivalent to a few U.S. dollars, the currency of choice here. But even that can be prohibitive for Somalis who have lost everything in successive bouts of fighting and drought.

"If you don't pay, nobody will see you at the hospital," complained Asha Ali Abdi, lifting her veil to reveal her infant daughter, with the shrunken limbs and ginger-tinged hair that betray severe malnutrition. Abdi fled fighting in the south for a makeshift camp of cardboard and wooden shacks in the northern port city of Bossaso, one of many such camps across the country.

Mogadishu's harbor stands idle and camels graze at the national airport. But business is booming at private airstrips and natural harbors, with gun-toting militia fighters on hand to take their cut.

Utilities help residents

Private companies providing power and running water to a few hundred households apiece have mushroomed across towns.

When Somalia still had a government, Faduma Mayow bought her water off a donkey cart for about $1.50 a barrel. It was expensive, sometimes contaminated and never enough, said the mother of eight.

Now Isaf Water and Electricity Supply has installed a faucet in her courtyard from which chlorinated water flows for less than half the price. The chlorine comes from UNICEF, but otherwise Isaf is privately funded.

The same company powers lights and electric mixers at the family bakery, at 65 cents per outlet per day.

"Before, we used to mix everything by hand," said Mayow's husband, Abdallah Kasim Mohamed. "So now that we have mixers, we are making big business."

Isaf installs the cables and pipes as well as street lighting using neon strips wired to old lampposts.

Top telecommunications

Somalia's telecommunications are among Africa's best. With three companies competing, a land line can be installed in 24 hours. Local calls are free with the $10 monthly rental fee and international calls cost 50 cents a minute.

Cellphones are widely available, though Somalis are cautious about chatting in public lest a gunman help himself to the phone.

Outside the national stadium, out-of-work car owners run a driving school. They pay a militia for protection and let adults and children alike drive for about a dollar a turn.

"Right now, we don't have particular rules," explained Farhaan Mohamed, a former bus driver waiting for clients in his dented white sedan. "As long as you can make the tires turn, you can go."

While at least some businesses are thriving, security is a headache. Most owners say they would happily pay taxes if government would drive out the protection rackets.

<#==#>

How do you spell US government hypocrites :)

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0218iraq-pow18.html

U.S. fights ex-POWs who won Iraq suit

David G. Savage

Los Angeles Times

Feb. 18, 2005 12:00 AM

WASHINGTON - The latest chapter in the legal history of torture is being written by U.S. pilots who were beaten and abused by Iraqis during the 1991 Persian Gulf War. And it has taken a strange twist.

The Bush administration is fighting the former prisoners of war in court, trying to prevent them from collecting nearly $1 billion from Iraq that a federal judge awarded them as compensation for their torture at the hands of Saddam Hussein's regime.

The rationale: Today's Iraqis are good guys, and they need the money.

The case abounds with ironies. It pits the U.S. government squarely against its own war heroes and the Geneva Conventions.

Many of the pilots were tortured in the same Iraqi prison, Abu Ghraib, where U.S. soldiers abused Iraqis 15 months ago. Those Iraqi victims, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has said, deserve compensation from the United States.

But the U.S. victims of Iraqi torturers are not entitled to similar payments from Iraq, the U.S. government says.

"It seems so strange to have our own country fighting us on this," said retired Air Force Col. David W. Eberly, the senior former POW.

The case, now being appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, tests whether "state sponsors of terrorism" can be sued in U.S. courts for torture, murder or hostage-taking. The court is expected to decide in the next two months whether to hear the appeal.

Congress opened the door to such claims in 1996, when it lifted the shield of sovereign immunity, prohibiting lawsuits against foreign governments, for any nation that supports terrorism. Iraq was one of seven identified by the State Department as sponsoring terrorist activity. The 17 Gulf War POWs looked to have a very strong case when they first filed suit in 2002. They had been undeniably tortured by a tyrannical regime, one that had $1.7 billion of its assets frozen by the U.S. government.

The picture changed, however, when the United States invaded Iraq nearly two years ago and toppled Saddam from power. On July 21, 2003, two weeks after the Gulf War POWs won their court case in U.S. District Court, the Bush administration intervened to argue that their claims should be dismissed.

"No amount of money can truly compensate these brave men and women for the suffering that they went through at the hands of this very brutal regime and at the hands of Saddam Hussein," White House press secretary Scott McClellan told reporters when he was asked about the case in November 2003.

Government lawyers insist, literally, on "no amount of money" going to the Gulf War POWs. "These resources are required for the urgent national-security needs of rebuilding Iraq," McClellan said.

The case tests a key provision of the Geneva Conventions. The United States and other signers pledged never to "absolve" a state of "any liability" for the torture of POWs.

Former military lawyers and a bipartisan group of lawmakers have been among those who have urged the Supreme Court to take up the case and to strengthen the law against torturers and tyrannical regimes.

<#==#>

How do you spell US government hypocrites :)

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0218iraq-pow18.html

U.S. fights ex-POWs who won Iraq suit

David G. Savage

Los Angeles Times

Feb. 18, 2005 12:00 AM

WASHINGTON - The latest chapter in the legal history of torture is being written by U.S. pilots who were beaten and abused by Iraqis during the 1991 Persian Gulf War. And it has taken a strange twist.

The Bush administration is fighting the former prisoners of war in court, trying to prevent them from collecting nearly $1 billion from Iraq that a federal judge awarded them as compensation for their torture at the hands of Saddam Hussein's regime.

The rationale: Today's Iraqis are good guys, and they need the money.

The case abounds with ironies. It pits the U.S. government squarely against its own war heroes and the Geneva Conventions.

Many of the pilots were tortured in the same Iraqi prison, Abu Ghraib, where U.S. soldiers abused Iraqis 15 months ago. Those Iraqi victims, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has said, deserve compensation from the United States.

But the U.S. victims of Iraqi torturers are not entitled to similar payments from Iraq, the U.S. government says.

"It seems so strange to have our own country fighting us on this," said retired Air Force Col. David W. Eberly, the senior former POW.

The case, now being appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, tests whether "state sponsors of terrorism" can be sued in U.S. courts for torture, murder or hostage-taking. The court is expected to decide in the next two months whether to hear the appeal.

Congress opened the door to such claims in 1996, when it lifted the shield of sovereign immunity, prohibiting lawsuits against foreign governments, for any nation that supports terrorism. Iraq was one of seven identified by the State Department as sponsoring terrorist activity. The 17 Gulf War POWs looked to have a very strong case when they first filed suit in 2002. They had been undeniably tortured by a tyrannical regime, one that had $1.7 billion of its assets frozen by the U.S. government.

The picture changed, however, when the United States invaded Iraq nearly two years ago and toppled Saddam from power. On July 21, 2003, two weeks after the Gulf War POWs won their court case in U.S. District Court, the Bush administration intervened to argue that their claims should be dismissed.

"No amount of money can truly compensate these brave men and women for the suffering that they went through at the hands of this very brutal regime and at the hands of Saddam Hussein," White House press secretary Scott McClellan told reporters when he was asked about the case in November 2003.

Government lawyers insist, literally, on "no amount of money" going to the Gulf War POWs. "These resources are required for the urgent national-security needs of rebuilding Iraq," McClellan said.

The case tests a key provision of the Geneva Conventions. The United States and other signers pledged never to "absolve" a state of "any liability" for the torture of POWs.

Former military lawyers and a bipartisan group of lawmakers have been among those who have urged the Supreme Court to take up the case and to strengthen the law against torturers and tyrannical regimes.

<#==#>

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0218aspey18.html

Prosecutor's death was homicide

Medical examiner rules out suicide, but slaying still mystery

Emily Bittner

The Arizona Republic

Feb. 18, 2005 12:00 AM

Nearly two months after criminal prosecutor Brett Aspey died of a gunshot wound inside his Phoenix home, the Maricopa County Medical Examiner's Office decided someone else pulled the trigger.

Phoenix police detectives have debated whether his death was a homicide or a suicide. They are continuing to investigate the case, said Sgt. Randy Force, a department spokesman.

"We have evidence being investigated in our crime lab that we hope may shed light on what took place at that scene," Force said.

Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas said his office was mourning with the Aspey family for the "tragic and senseless loss" of the young prosecutor.

Aspey, 26, was a member of one of the state's most prominent legal families.

His father, Mark Aspey, a former assistant U.S. attorney in Flagstaff, was appointed to a position as a federal magistrate the weekend his son died.

Brett's uncle, Fritz, was president of the State Bar of Arizona from 1990 to 1991.

The victim and his father would talk often on the phone about rules of evidence, trial strategies and judges' rulings.

"I told him the proudest moment of my life would be to someday co-try a case with him," Mark Aspey said at his son's funeral.

With less than one year on the job, the younger Aspey tried standard cases, including burglaries and non-fatal shootings.

"Prosecution is an important and sometimes-dangerous job," Thomas said. "Our prosecutors have received death threats. . . . There is some personal courage entailed in bringing criminals to justice."

Thomas declined to comment on the specifics of Aspey's case and said his remarks concerned the general hazards of being a prosecutor.

If someone is arrested in Aspey's death, the state Attorney General's Office will likely prosecute, Thomas said.

A few weeks before his death, Aspey was promoted to a trial unit in which he would try felony cases, his father said.

Aspey, a competitive soccer player at Corona del Sol High School in Tempe, was well-liked as an Arizona State University undergraduate and then law student, friends said.

Reacting to the news that his son's death was ruled a murder, Mark Aspey said, "Our family sincerely hopes that the Phoenix Police Department, with the assistance of the FBI, will bring Brett's killer to justice."

Aspey was found dead in his bedroom Dec. 18 of a gunshot wound to the head.

<#==#>

this is what the tempe pigs did to me!!! execpt they took me to the bridge under priest road. they didnt beat me up like they did to this guy.

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0218EVtrial.html

Jury rules for police in assault suit

Katie Nelson

The Arizona Republic

Feb. 18, 2005 12:00 AM

TEMPE - A federal court jury cleared a Tempe police sergeant Thursday in a lawsuit brought by a man who claimed he was assaulted after being taken into custody.

The lawsuit filed by Alvin Yellowhair said he was sodomized with a metal nightstick in 1998 after being arrested. The eight-member jury began deliberating Wed- nesday afternoon on whether then-Officer John Ferrin beat and sexually assaulted Yellowhair and whether the city of Tempe should also be held responsible.

The jury found unanimously for Ferrin and the city.

Ferrin and Yellowhair were unavailable for comment.

The trial lasted more than a week before U.S. District Judge Stephen McNamee. It focused on an early March morning nearly seven years ago when Yellowhair called 911 after being in a fight. Police showed up at the north Tempe address and arrested Yellowhair, then an Arizona State University biochemistry student.

Neither side debated whether Yellowhair fought and screamed. Or that officers handcuffed and hobbled him because of his aggressive behavior and used a van instead of an ambulance to transport him to get treatment for a cut above his eye.

But their stories differed dramatically on what happened next.

Yellowhair said Ferrin drove to the dirt clearing under the Mill Avenue Rio Salado Bridge. There, Ferrin beat him at least five times on the head and choked him until he "saw stars," Yellowhair said during testimony.

In between the beatings, Yellowhair said Ferrin twice jammed a department-issued metal baton inside him.

Ferrin denied it happened. And Andrew Ching, a senior assistant city attorney arguing on his behalf, said that was not even possible. There wasn't time or motive for the "malicious" assault, Ching said.

<#==#>

Nice guy?? Huh!

http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/news/articles/0218mideast18.html

Israel to halt ruining homes of terrorists

Laura King

Los Angeles Times

Feb. 18, 2005 12:00 AM

JERUSALEM - Israel on Thursday announced it was halting a practice Palestinians find particularly objectionable that is also repeatedly denounced by human rights groups: the demolition of the family homes of suicide bombers and other attackers.

The step was the latest on a list of goodwill gestures by both Israel and the Palestinians meant to lay the groundwork for a return to peace negotiations under the Palestinian Authority's moderate new leader, Mahmoud Abbas.

The demolition of bombers' homes had struck a symbolic chord with Palestinians, who viewed the practice as a form of collective punishment for suicide attacks that have killed hundreds of Israelis.

During the past 4 1/2 years of fighting, Israeli troops have demolished the family homes of nearly 700 Palestinian attackers, many of them suicide bombers, according to the Israeli human rights group B'Tselem. Under military rules, Israeli authorities were not required to prove that the families involved had any prior knowledge of the plans of a bomber or gunman.

The demolitions usually took place in the dead of night, within hours of the attack. Palestinian families often were forced to flee with nothing more than the nightclothes they were wearing. In many cases, homes that were blown up or knocked down were compounds that housed several generations of a single Palestinian family.

Throughout the current conflict, the practice emphasized the vast gulf between the Israeli and Palestinian perceptions of their own and the other side's suffering.

Israel's army chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Moshe Yaalon, whose tenure has been cut short, was one of the first senior Israeli officials to raise public misgivings about the practice, arguing that such punitive measures sowed fury and hostility among Palestinians, rather than serving as a deterrent to future attacks as intended.

Yaalon last year appointed a special military panel to look into demolitions of bombers' homes, and its recommendation that the practice be halted was reported Thursday by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. Within hours, Yaalon's boss, Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz, acting with unusual speed on an internal finding, ordered that the practice be stopped immediately.

In announcing the decision, the army emphasized that Israel had acted within its legal rights when it knocked down hundreds of bombers' homes. Palestinians and human rights groups expressed doubts the practice would have survived a challenge under international law.

Palestinian schoolteacher Atta Sarasrah, 52, said he had no idea his 17-year-old son Hazem was going to carry out a suicide attack in Jerusalem in July 2002. Hazem killed only himself in the bombing, and injured seven Israelis.

<#==#>

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0218priestshot18.html

Ex-priest guilty of molestation

Victim shot tormentor in 2002

Foster Klug

Associated Press

Feb. 18, 2005 12:00 AM

BALTIMORE - A defrocked priest was convicted Thursday of molesting an altar boy who a decade later shot and wounded him on the street in a fit of rage when the clergyman refused to apologize.

Maurice Blackwell, 58, former Roman Catholic pastor of a Baltimore church, was found guilty on three of four counts of sexually abusing Dontee Stokes, now 29, during the early 1990s. He could get up to 45 years in prison when he is sentenced in April.

Stokes said he felt vindicated by the verdict. "The world can see that I'm not a perfect person," he said, "but I stand here right, and he stands wrong."

Blackwell, who uses a cane to walk because of his gunshot wounds, had no comment as he left the courtroom.

Stokes testified that the priest molested him from age 13 to 17. Prosecutors declined to charge Blackwell when Stokes first raised the accusations a decade ago.

In May 2002, as the sex scandal that engulfed the Roman Catholic Church was unfolding in Boston, a tormented Stokes shot Blackwell three times in the hip and hand during a confrontation on a city street.

The following December, Stokes was acquitted of attempted murder after claiming temporary insanity - he called it an "out-of-body experience" - but was found guilty on gun charges. Jurors sent the judge a note urging him to be lenient, and Stokes was sentenced to 18 months of home detention.

In the aftermath of the shooting, prosecutors reviewed Stokes' old allegations and charged Blackwell. The Vatican defrocked him in October.

In closing arguments Wednesday, defense attorney Kenneth Ravenell portrayed Stokes as a disturbed young man who made up the allegations to deal with a sexual-identity crisis. But prosecutor Jo Anne Stanton called the allegations that Stokes was concealing homosexual tendencies a "smokescreen."

Stokes acknowledged that he has had trouble distinguishing between fantasy and reality at times but maintained the abuse took place. In often graphic testimony, he described how pats on the back from the man he regarded as a father figure led to the priest sodomizing him in the rectory.

During the trial, a police officer who first investigated allegations against Blackwell testified he had found evidence that others had been victimized. The defense objected, and the judge ordered the testimony stricken.

However, Ravenell said the jury should not have been allowed to hear the evidence at all. He said he will appeal.

Stokes first accused Blackwell of abuse in 1993, but Blackwell denied the allegations and no other accusers came forward. Blackwell received psychological treatment and returned to his parish, though he was barred from working with children and young adults. He was later stripped of his church authority after acknowledging he had a sexual relationship with a teenage boy in the early 1970s.

The shooting was one of several acts of violence to come out of the sex scandal.

An ex-Marine in Missouri committed suicide after claiming he was molested by a priest as a youth. In 2002, a priest hanged himself at a Maryland psychiatric institution that specializes in treating clergy accused of sexual abuse, and an Ohio priest shot himself to death after being accused of molesting a girl.

Defrocked priest John Geoghan was beaten and strangled in a Massachusetts prison in 2003, apparently by a fellow inmate.

<#==#>

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0218migrantguide.html

Yucatán helping migrants go north

Guide, DVD show Mexicans how to cross border, send cash home

Chris Hawley

Republic Mexico City Bureau

Feb. 18, 2005 12:00 AM

MERIDA, Mexico - Officials in a Mexican state have published their own 87-page handbook for potential migrants to the United States, adding fuel to an international debate over whether such guides encourage illegal border-crossers.

The Guide for the Yucatecan Migrant, published by the southeastern state of Yucatán, comes with an accompanying DVD in Spanish and Mayan. It tells migrants how to apply for U.S. work visas but also gives detailed safety advice for crossing illegally, including where to find water in the desert and how to avoid the most dangerous areas. The guide includes a section specifically about Arizona.

Yucatán says it is the first Mexican state to publish such a guide, and U.S. immigration-control advocates worry it will be copied by other states. They already are angry over a similar 32-page book published by the Mexican Foreign Ministry in December.

"This boils down to the same thing: Mexican officials inducing and inviting illegal immigration," said U.S. Rep. J.D. Hayworth, R-Ariz. He said he is preparing a letter informing fellow members of Congress about the Yucatecan guide and will complain to the U.S. State Department.

The Yucatán government plans to show the DVD and distribute the books at community centers across the state, said co-author Estela Guzmán Ayala, migrant-affairs director for Yucatán's Institute for the Development of Mayan Culture and a former Mexican consul in Chicago.

The book was published last year but came out in a new, expanded version this month.

The guide warns repeatedly that undocumented migration is a crime and that migrants routinely die crossing the border. Guzmán said its main intent is to save lives.

"When we give people this guide, they actually get depressed, because we are very honest about the risks," Guzmán said.

The book comes amid a wave of outrage in the United States over the Guide for the Mexican Migrant, distributed by the Foreign Ministry in December. Soon afterward, Colorado pulled another guide for immigrants from a state Web site because of a complaint from Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., to Gov. Bill Owens that it encouraged illegal border-crossing.

Yucatán, a state of 1.7 million people, says it is the first Mexican state to produce a guide tailored to its citizens. The first batch of 1,000 was printed in May; 8,000 more were printed this month.

The state sends few migrants to the United States. Most of them, about 50,000, live in the Los Angeles area.

But the number has been rising, and the amount of money migrants sent back to Yucatán doubled in 2001-04 to about $9 million. On Dec. 28, the government held its first Day of the Yucatecan Migrant ceremony to honor expatriates.

"Our point with this book is not to promote migration or reject it, just to recognize it and provide information," said co-author Pedro Lewin Fischer, an ethnic-studies expert with the National Institute of Anthropology and History.

U.S. critics fear Mexican states quietly are encouraging undocumented immigrants as a way to boost their economies. Mexican migrants in all parts of the United States sent $16.6 billion to Mexico last year.

"That open border is worth more than a billion dollars a month to Mexico, so they're going to do whatever they can to keep it going," said Rick Oltman, Western field director for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, based in Washington, D.C.

The Guide for the Yucatecan Migrant is filled with photographs and maps, and the cover shows a man in traditional Yucatecan dress standing in front of the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco.

It devotes 11 pages to U.S. visas and how to apply for them. The guide published by the Foreign Ministry in December contained none of that information and was widely criticized for it.

An additional 21 pages are about crossing the border illegally, including descriptions meant to help migrants avoid the most dangerous routes through Arizona, California and Texas.

Eight pages deal with crossing the Arizona desert, telling migrants what clothes to wear and to add salt to their drinking water and use a rehydration formula that can be bought in pharmacies.

"After passing through Lukeville, you will cross through a national park where you will find tanks of water," one section says. "If the smuggler decides to walk beyond the park, you will travel on paths where there is no Border Patrol but in places where military exercises are conducted."

Guzmán said the descriptions are meant to help migrants realize when smugglers are leading them into danger.

Four pages are devoted to migrants' rights while detained by U.S. authorities. The guide tells them they only must give their names to officials, advises them to sign nothing without speaking to a lawyer or consular official and recommends they contact their local consulate for help in getting refunds for unused plane tickets.

The rest of the book is devoted to life in the United States: how to send money home, where to find health care, differences in U.S. and Mexican laws and driving tips.

The book urges migrants to seek free English classes. It also tells them how to apply for documents that will allow them to enroll in U.S. grade schools, a sore point for some U.S. school districts.

"There is an agreement between the governments of Mexico and the United States so that, no matter your migration status, you can study in elementary, secondary and preparatory schools," it says. "Don't stop studying; there is always an option."

The DVD repeats much of the same information using voice-overs, but it includes more photos and graphics.

The book ends with an invitation to return home:

"Don't forget that Yucatán is your homeland and that in your homeland we will always receive you with open arms and with the respect you deserve."

Reach the reporter at chris.hawley@arizonarepublic.com.

<#==#>

Some questions for laro.

Just what type of slave labor are you forced to do? Or is it the re-educating you so you have the proper political views?

As far as censoring my letters I meant government goons blacking out stuff so you cant read it. You know marking out the names of the guilty government officials. I guess not you probably would have mentioned that.

Well the Spanish will continue. I guess if Kevin doesn’t like it that’s tough krap!!! Laro says he likes the Spanish cuz he can share it with the inmates from Mexico and that a good as reason as any continue with it.  One other question laro? Can you read the Spanish? What is your level with Spanish. The reason I originally included the Spanish stuff is at some time I heard you say you were trying to learn Spanish. with me i used to be able to talk at the level of a 7 year old kid but that was many years ago. most of the spanish stuff i post i can read some of it. a lot of it i get out of context because i know the english side of the story. but it is very rare that i understand all of it.

Which calls for todays Spanish lesson. Conjugate the verb chingar! Which means “to f*ck” in English.

   yo chingo – I f*ck

   tu chingas – you f*ck

   usted chinga – you/he/she f*cks

   nosotros chingamos – we f*ck

   vosotros *         - you guys f*ck

   ustedes chingan – you guys/they f*ck

now lets use it in a sentence

   yo chingo el gobierno

   i f*ck the government

   tu chingas el gobierno

   you f*ck the government

   usted chinga el gobierno

   you f*ck the government

   el/ella chinga el gobierno

   he/she f*cks the government

   nosotros chinamos el gobierno

   we f*ck the government

   ustedes chingan el gobierno

   you guys f*ck the government

   ellos/ellas chingan el gobierno

   they f*ck the government

and last

   vamos a chingar el gobierno

   lets f*ck the govermment

<#==#>

http://www.azcentral.com/lavoz/front/articles/021605mexico-CR.html.html

México contraataca a la 200

Por Valeria Fernández

La Voz

Febrero 16, 2005

Una delegación de senadores mexicanos acompañados por representantes de la Comisión Nacional de Derechos Humanos visitará Phoenix el 9 de marzo buscando defender los derechos de los mexicanos amenazados bajo la Proposición 200.

Lo anterior fue confirmado hacia el cierre de esta edición por el secretario técnico de la Comisión de Derechos Humanos del Senado mexicano.

“Se va a posponer la fecha por un asunto de agenda, no por presiones de ningún tipo”, dijo Domingo Clavel Nicolas, secretario de la comisión. publicidad

En entrevista previa con La Voz el senador del PRI Sadot Sánchez Carreño anticipó que buscarían reunirse con la gobernadora Janet Napolitano y algunos legisladores para evaluar el impacto de la Proposición 200.

“No queremos que existan, con el pretexto de esta ley, situaciones que signifiquen una violación a los derechos humanos de los mexicanos que residen allá”, dijo Sánchez Carreño.

Aseguró que estarían vigilantes para ver si el gobierno local tiene algún mecanismo de garantías para proteger los derechos de sus connacionales.

La futura visita de los funcionarios mexicanos, que fue aprobada por el Senado, se dará en el marco de un clima antiinmigrante en la Legislatura de Arizona y poco después de que a nivel nacional el presidente apoyara una propuesta para erigir un muro fronterizo.

“Esto viene a enrarecer la atmósfera para el camino al que inevitablemente tenemos que llegar para alcanzar un acuerdo migratorio”, puntualizó el presidente de la Comisión de Derechos Humanos del Senado.

Aunque el senador negó que México entablaría un litigio internacional contra esta ley por violación de los derechos humanos, sostuvo que el poder ejecutivo podría solicitar una opinión de la Corte Interamericana de Derechos Humanos.

Del sur al norte

Pese a que la situación en la frontera sur de México es precaria en cuanto al trato de las autoridades federales a los inmigrantes y el respeto por los derechos humanos, el senador reconoció que esto no les impedirá defender a sus connacionales en Estados Unidos.

“No queremos que se haga a los migrantes del sur lo que reclamamos a los del norte, sería una incongruencia y una inconsistencia que reclamemos en el norte lo que no estamos haciendo en el sur”, puntualizó.

Pese a lo que argumentan críticos de las políticas de México, el senador negó que su país tuviera leyes similares a la 200.

“No existe una disposición legal que prohíba a una persona que no sea residente mexicana que se le niegue algún servicio de salud”, subrayó.

Contacte al reportero: valeriafernandez@ashlandmedia.com

<#==#>

a note by the guy who writes this stuff. in the USA international drivers licenses are issued not by the government but by a private business AAA or the American Automobil Association. First they are NOT valid by themselfs. They are only valid with the drivers license of your HOME country. In the USA they cost $10 and can be bought by walking in to any AAA office. In the rest of the world such as Mexico, South America and Europe International Drivers licences can be usually bought at that countries AAA affliate. And again international drivers licenses are valid ONLY with a drivers license from you home country. Also international drivers licenses are usually not valid in your HOME country.

http://www.azcentral.com/lavoz/nacion/articles/021605licencias-CR.html

Sin validez las licencias internacionales

Orlando, (EFE)

Febrero 15, 2005

).- Miles de inmigrantes indocumentados, la mayoría hispanos, recurren a la licencia de conducir internacional ya que cada vez es más difícil obtener una del estado, sin saber que esa opción sólo les podría llevar a un callejón sin salida.

Bajo sugestivos anuncios que prometen reemplazar una licencia estatal suspendida o vencida, 'borrar' los puntos negativos o multas acumuladas o 'darle la oportunidad' de manejar legalmente en el país, sitios de internet y diversos negocios cobran a muchos inmigrantes desde 60 hasta 350 dólares por un documento que -según las autoridades- no tiene ninguna validez.

"Este tipo de negocios y sitios que aseguran falsamente que se puede usar una licencia o permiso de conducir internacional (IDL e IDP) expedido por ellos, en lugar de la licencia de conducir estatal, podría estar llevando a muchos a un callejón sin salida", advirtió la Comisión Federal de Comercio para el Consumidor (FTC). publicidad

Según la FTC, estos documentos, además de constituir un fraude, "les podría traer serias consecuencias".

Según las autoridades federales, muchas de estas empresas y sitios de internet tienen como principal objetivo captar la atención de indocumentados que ven en este tipo de licencias su única posibilidad de obtener algún permiso de manejar.

En Florida, al igual que en la mayoría del resto de los estados, se requiere de una prueba de residencia legal para poder tramitar una licencia de conducir.

<#==#>

these computers are smart but they dont work 100% of the time. for more info check out an article several years old in the new yorker magazine

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0220border20.html

Print system nabs migrant criminals

Richard Marosi

Los Angeles Times

Feb. 20, 2005 12:00 AM

SAN DIEGO - The U.S. Border Patrol has arrested tens of thousands of people with criminal records, including suspected murderers, rapists and child molesters, since the agency last year installed a fingerprinting system that identifies criminals among the 1 million undocumented migrants apprehended annually.

The high-tech system is part of a broader effort by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to create a "virtual border" to stop terrorists and those with criminal pasts from entering the United States .

The fingerprints of all detained undocumented immigrants are now matched against the FBI's national criminal database through scanners installed at all 137 Border Patrol stations along the Mexican and Canadian borders. To process a person, all 10 fingerprints are rolled across a scanner, and the digitized images are compared against the database's 47 million records. The results usually come back within minutes. advertisement

About 30,000 of the 680,000 undocumented migrants who were arrested from May through December were identified as having criminal records, compared with about 2,600 during the same period in 2002, more than an elevenfold increase. Criminal undocumented immigrants are those with past arrests or convictions for crimes ranging from shoplifting to murder.

Since its start as a pilot program in 2003, the system has identified about 24 people suspected of homicide, 55 of rape and 225 of assault, according to Border Patrol statistics.

The system, installed over a six-month period ending in September, has made it difficult for suspects to flee the country and then return. That was common in the past when undocumented border-crossers who had criminal records or outstanding warrants often were simply deported because agents lacked tools to quickly investigate criminal histories.

The surge in arrests probably will strain the ability of federal agencies to house and prosecute criminal undocumented immigrants, law enforcement experts say.

How the Border Patrol handles the people it identifies depends on their records. People who have active warrants against them are handed over to the agencies that issued the warrants. Those with violent criminal records can be prosecuted for illegally re-entering the country and face potential 20-year prison terms.

People stopped at the border who have prior convictions for non-violent crimes, the majority of cases, are usually expelled from the country, Border Patrol officials say.

Among those apprehended:

• Leonardo Villareal Roman, a 28-year-old Mexican citizen, who was wanted by police in Santa Maria, accused of hacking a co-worker to death with a meat cleaver in 1999. When apprehended near Douglas in July 2003, Roman reportedly resisted and tried to take a gun from a Border Patrol agent.

• Juan Chavez-Diaz, 32, a registered sex offender, wanted by police in Petaluma, Calif., for a probation violation and captured in Arizona after crawling under the border fence near Naco. He was convicted in October 2003 of sexually abusing a young relative.

The value of the new technology has been most dramatically demonstrated in Arizona, the main crossing point for undocumented immigrants, where agents last October apprehended an average of 40 criminal undocumented immigrants per day, according to Border Patrol statistics.

<#==#>

homeland security idiots fund project to shrink-wrap dead human bodies

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/aplocal_story.asp?category=6420&slug=WA%20Shrink%20wrapped%20Bodies

Friday, February 18, 2005 • Last updated 12:08 p.m. PT

County coroner seeks large shrink-wrap machine

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

OLYMPIA, Wash. -- In the case of a natural disaster or terrorist attack, some emergency officials in Western Washington plan to be prepared - with a large, shrink wrap machine.

The Thurston County Coroner's Office recently won approval to purchase a machine able to shrink-wrap human remains. The process would make it easier to transport a large number of bodies.

After the bodies have been autopsied and identified, they would be zipped into body bags, placed on a plywood trays and covered with cardboard lids.

The trays would then be pushed through the machine and come out in shrink-wrapped packages. The wrapped bodies would be easier to carry than body bags and less disturbing for workers, county Coroner Judy Arnold recently told The Olympian newspaper.

"It's hard to think of people in those terms," she said. "But it's a matter of logistics, and we want to do it in the best and the most respectable way for both the deceased and the family."

The coroner's office has already started a bidding process to find a company to build the machine. A Homeland Security grant will pay for the machine, which will cost an estimated $50,000.

Rob Harper, spokesman for the state Department of Emergency Management, said it's the first plan of its kind in the state. The department administers the federal Homeland Security funds.

Emergency officials around the region began discussing the idea after the terrorist takeover of a Russian school in September and December's tsunamis, which killed more than 120,000 in Southeast Asia.

Photos of both events revealed the dead lying on the ground or being tossed into pickups.

The emergency officials want to avoid dealing with numerous limp and hard-to-carry body bags, especially in a situation where volunteer workers may not be used to handling human remains, Arnold said.

The shrink-wrapped bodies could be moved with forklifts, and the extra plastic covering would seal in biohazards such as anthrax in the case of bioterrorism.

The entire machine could be wheeled on a trailer to other parts of the state or taken by helicopter, Arnold said.

Bette Shultz, Thurston County's emergency management coordinator, said the machine is something that could have been used in the tsunami aftermath.

"You know, it's neat, but it's kind of creepy," she said. "It's one of those things you spend a lot of money for and hope you never have to use it."

---

Information from: The Olympian, http://www.theolympian.com

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/6995040/

Coroner seeks big shrink-wrap machine

For corpses, plastic is seen as neater and more respectfulThe Associated Press

Updated: 5:22 p.m. ET Feb. 18, 2005OLYMPIA, Wash. - Officials in Washington state want to find a machine that can shrink-wrap something big:

A human body.

The Thurston County Coroner’s Office is on the hunt for a machine that can wrap human remains in plastic in case of a natural disaster or a terrorist attack.

Officials say the process would make transporting a big number of bodies easier while sealing in biohazards like anthrax. And they say it would be more respectful than letting bodies sit around like they did after the Asian tsunami.

The office has started the bidding process to see who can build a machine, which will cost about $50,000. A Homeland Security grant will pay the bill.

© 2005 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

http://www.katu.com/news/story.asp?ID=75087

February 18, 2005

Wanted: One large shrink-wrap machine for county morgue

OLYMPIA - In the case of a natural disaster or terrorist attack Western Washington emergency officials plan to be prepared - with a large, shrink wrap machine.

The Thurston County Coroner's Office is looking for a machine that can shrink-wrap human bodies. Officials there say the wrapped bodies would easier to carry and less disturbing for workers to handle.

Emergency officials thought of the idea after seeing photos from December's deadly tsunami in Southeast Asia. The photos showed dead bodies lying around or being tossed into trucks.

The coroner's office plans to use a homeland security grant to pay for the machine. It will cost an estimated fifty-thousand dollars.

(Copyright 2005 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)

http://www.newsnet5.com/news/4213524/detail.html

Coroner Looks For Way To Shrink-Wrap Corpses

POSTED: 6:40 pm EST February 18, 2005

UPDATED: 7:03 pm EST February 18, 2005

OLYMPIA, Wash. -- Officials in Washington state want to find a machine that can shrink-wrap something pretty big -- a human body.

The Thurston County Coroner's Office is on the hunt for a machine that can wrap human remains in plastic in case of a natural disaster or terror attack.

Officials said the process would make transporting a big number of bodies easier, while also sealing in biohazards like anthrax. And they said it's more respectful than letting bodies remain exposed as happened after the Asian tsunami.

The office has started the bidding process to see who can build such a machine, which is estimated will cost about $50,000. A Homeland Security grant will pay the bill.

Copyright 2005 by The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

<#==#>

currently many 911 systems do not know the location of people calling 911 with a cell phone. but federal law demands that in the future 911 systems should be able to caculate the location of cell phone with the software, or that cell phone makers put GPS chips in the cell phones that tell the 911 computers the location of the cell phone. many cell phones made today have these GPS chip sets in them.

http://www.prensahispanaaz.com/edicion/comunidad/notas/91.htm

Edición: 698. Del 16 al 22 de febrero del 2005. Phoenix, AZ.

911, el gran aliado

La seguridad de la población de alguna manera está en sus manos. En muchas ocasiones ellos pueden marcar la diferencia entre la vida y la muerte de las personas.

Leo Hernández

La operadora del 911 en Phoenix, Louisa Pedraza, tiene bien presente una mañana de 1991 cuando atendió una llamada de un hombre que histérico decía que acababa de matar a un policía y que tenía en su poder a tres rehenes, a quienes amenazaba con matar también.

Durante 20 minutos ella estuvo en la línea hablando con él, para tratar de convencerlo de que se entregara y liberara a los rehenes, pero al final el hombre también se quitó la vida. Fue un episodio trágico que cobró tres vidas: la del policía, la de una mujer y la del propio asesino.

Este pareciera un capítulo tomado de una película de acción, pero pasó en una casa localizada en el área de la calle 24 y Campbell.

Pero en sus 24 años como operadora del Centro de Llamadas 911 (911 Call Center), Pedroza no solamente ha atendido llamadas de esa índole, con final trágico, sino que también le han tocado casos en los que se han podido salvar vidas, gracias a la labor conjunta de despachadores, policías y bomberos. Prefirió no mencionar ninguno en específico porque son incontables.

Esta operadora comparte otro caso con un desenlace fatal: el de una mujer que llamó desesperada para reportar que su hijo de 15 años se acababa de suicidar. Supuestamente tuvo una discusión con el director de su escuela y, deprimido, decidió escapar por la puerta falsa.

“Aún recuerdo ese caso con mucha tristeza. La pobre señora estaba deshecha y fuera de sí. Me puse a hablar con ella en el teléfono, y aunque lloré junto con ella, al final pude calmarla”, cuenta Louisa Pedraza, una de las pocas operadoras bilingües con las que cuenta el Centro de Llamadas 911, el cual se localiza en la calle 1 y Elwood, en Sur Phoenix.

Cabe destacar la labor que desempeñan esas personas, quienes de alguna manera tienen bajo su responsabilidad la seguridad de la población, y en muchas ocasiones literalmente tienen en sus manos la vida de las personas, por lo que pueden marcar la diferencia entre la vida y la muerte.

Sofisticado sistema

Sobre su trabajo, Louisa Pedraza explicó que cuando reciben una llamada, lo primero que hacen es preguntar si se trata de una emergencia.

En caso de ser así, añadió, inmediatamente envían policías o bomberos, dependiendo del asunto, quienes en cuestión de tres a cinco minutos arriban al lugar de los hechos.

“Cuando alguien llama, en nuestra computadora aparece toda la información del domicilio de donde sale la llamada, y esos datos automáticamente lo enviamos a las computadoras de las patrullas y de los bomberos.”

Señaló que es sumamente importante la coordinación de las operadoras y despachadoras del 911 con policías, bomberos y cuerpos de rescate.

Recalcó que en cualquier clase de emergencia la vida de las personas puede depender de ellos, por eso tienen que actuar con prontitud y precisión.

La experimentada operadora dijo que afortunadamente cuentan con un sofisticado sistema que les permite actuar rápido y de manera coordinada para atender todo tipo de emergencias.

Se trata de uno de los sistemas más avanzados y efectivos del mundo.

Más de 40 mil llamadas al mes

Louisa Pedraza reveló a PRENSA HISPANA que en promedio reciben 44 mil llamadas cada mes, aunque aclaró que esa cantidad incluye los reportes a la línea de Crime Stop.

“Aquí recibimos todas las llamadas al 911 y también cuando alguien se comunica para reportar un crimen.”

El año pasado, dijo, atendieron un total de 2.6 millones de llamadas en dicho centro, pero no todas fueron por situaciones de emergencia.

En realidad, solamente en 34 por ciento de ellas tuvieron que despachar policías o bomberos.

Mucha gente llama al 911 para reportar la desaparición de algún familiar o una mascota. También para pedir alguna clase de información o para otras cosas que no son realmente emergencias.

Sin embargo, de todas maneras las atienden y las refieren a algún número telefónico donde les podrán ayudar.

Pedraza hizo hincapié en la importancia de hacer un buen uso del sistema del 911 y utilizarlo solamente en casos de emergencia, ya que cuando alguien llama sin verdadera necesidad, ocupa una línea que tal vez alguien que sí se encuentra en peligro podría estarla necesitando.

Cada operadora del 911 atiende alrededor de 250 llamadas durante su turno de ocho horas, así que siempre están bastante ocupadas.

Más llamadas de celular

Las llamadas al 911 hechas de celulares han aumentado considerablemente en los últimos años, reveló Louisa Pedraza.

El año pasado, 54 por ciento de todas las llamadas que atendieron fueron hechas de teléfonos móviles.

Señaló que hasta cierto punto eso dificulta su labor, ya que el sistema no registra el sitio donde se encuentra la persona cuando llama de un teléfono celular.

“Cuando alguien nos llama de un celular tenemos que preguntarle dónde se encuentra; es decir, nuestras computadoras no registran su ubicación, como cuando alguien llama de una casa”, recalcó.

Advirtió que eso puede ser peligroso cuando la persona está extraviada o que no puede hablar. Si eso ocurre será más difícil su localización.

Varios idiomas

La mayoría de las llamadas que reciben en el 911 son en inglés, pero nunca faltan las que se hacen en otros idiomas, por lo que tienen que estar preparados para atenderlas.

Al respecto, comentó que después del inglés las llamadas que más reciben son en español, bosnio, vietnamita, árabe, francés, coreano, mandarín y somalí.

Señaló que esto representa un fuerte gasto para esa institución, pues implica el pago de agencias de intérpretes. Por ejemplo, el año pasado tuvieron que desembolsar por ese concepto 47 mil dólares.

Pedraza explicó que cuando les llega una llamada en árabe o vietnamita, por ejemplo, no cuentan en el Centro del 911 con una operadora que habla ese idioma, pero están conectados con agencias de intérpretes las 24 horas, así que inmediatamente hacen la conexión y atienden la emergencia.

“Esa es otra ventaja del sistema que tenemos, que en cuestión de segundos podemos conectarnos con los intérpretes y así podemos darle ayuda a la persona que llama sin importar el idioma.”

También reconoció que necesitan más operadores y operadoras que hablen español, ya que cada vez es mayor el número de llamadas que reciben en ese idioma, por lo que invitan a personas que sean bilingües a que apliquen para esa posición.

El salario es bueno, recalcó, ya que les empiezan pagando a 14 dólares la hora.

Pedroza comentó que los operadores del 911 no tienen que tener estudios especiales. Basta con que hayan terminado la High School o tengan el GED. Una vez que aplican y son aceptados, ahí les proporcionan el entrenamiento necesario.

Añadió que los requisitos no son tan estrictos, aunque los aplicantes deben someterse a un chequeo de su récord criminal y al detector de mentiras.

Recordó que los operadores del 911 deben ser personas honestas, de buena conducta moral y con vocación de servicio, pues la labor que desempeñan es sumamente delicada.

Louisa Pedraza aseguró que se siente muy orgullosa de ser operadora del 911, pues lo que más le satisface es poder ayudar a la comunidad, especialmente a las personas que están en una situación de emergencia.

Comentó que por ahora no piensa retirarse aunque ya califica para la jubilación: “Prefiero seguir aquí ayudando en lo que se pueda.”

Dijo que las personas interesadas en aplicar para operador u operadora del 911, pueden comunicarse al (602) 262-6608.

<#==#>

dont the cops have anything better to do then go around writting $2,500 messy yard tickets for people who have weeds in their yards that are over 6 inches tall.

these laws are selecetivelly enforced and as the lady says she wont cite you if your weeds are neet. ie:

    Jeanette Hicks, a Phoenix neighborhood preservation

    inspector, said her rule of thumb is that if plants

    look landscaped, she won't issue a citation for them.

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0222Weeds22.html

Flourishing weeds raise fire concerns

Jessica Wanke

The Arizona Republic

Feb. 22, 2005 12:00 AM

Weeds flourishing from heavy rains have Phoenix officials concerned about the potential for increased brush fires when the weather turns warmer.

"This is as green and brush filled season as I've seen in five years or more," Assistant Fire Chief Bob Khan said. "Everything that's green now, in May will be brown and it will be a tinderbox for fires."

In 2004, the Phoenix Fire Department responded to 674 brush, grass and field fires within the city limits, and Khan said there is a danger that these kinds of fires could be more frequent this year if people don't actively maintain their yards and alleyways.

Ken Lynch, spokesman for the Phoenix Neighborhood Services Department, said city residents have complained to his office since the rains started about unruly weeds in neighbors' yards.

Most people are not aware of the city's neighborhood preservation ordinance that says weeds must be less than 6 inches tall, Lynch said.

"(The weeds) are chest-high and it wasn't like that two weeks ago," Lynch said.

The Fire Department will start routine brush surveys April 1 and overgrown vegetation will be reported to the Neighborhood Services Department. Unkempt property could result in a fine of up to $2,500 if not responded to.

Jeanette Hicks, a Phoenix neighborhood preservation inspector, said her rule of thumb is that if plants look landscaped, she won't issue a citation for them.

Ahwatukee resident Mary Graf, a gardener, has grown penstemon, lupine and poppies in her yard, all wildflowers that could be mistaken for weeds.

She said she is grateful that the city monitors overgrowth, but hopes they don't cite people who spend time and care planting their gardens.

<#==#>

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0222BushPlot22-ON.html

Man accused of plotting to kill Bush

Associated Press

Feb. 22, 2005 08:55 AM

ALEXANDRIA, Va. - A former Virginia high school valedictorian who had been detained in Saudi Arabia as a suspected terrorist was charged Tuesday with conspiring to assassinate President Bush and with supporting the al-Qaida terrorist network.

Ahmed Omar Abu Ali, 23, a U.S. citizen, made an initial appearance Tuesday in U.S. District Court but did not enter a plea. He claimed that he was tortured while detained in Saudi Arabia since June of 2003 and offered through his lawyer to show the judge his scars.

The federal indictment said that in 2002 and 2003 Abu Ali and an unidentified co-conspirator discussed plans for Abu Ali to assassinate Bush. They discussed two scenarios, the indictment said, one in which Abu Ali "would get close enough to the president to shoot him on the street" and, alternatively, "an operation in which Abu Ali would detonate a car bomb."

Abu Ali was picked up in Saudi Arabia while studying at a university there. His family contends that U.S. officials were behind the detention and wanted him held in Saudi Arabia so he could be tortured for information.

A lawsuit brought on their behalf in U.S. District Court in Washington seeks to compel the government to disclose what it knows about Abu Ali and his detention.

Abu Ali's appearance in federal court here was a surprise because the government never publicly disclosed that he had left Saudi Arabia.

According to the indictment, Abu Ali obtained a religious blessing from another unidentified co-conspirator to assassinate the president.

More than 100 supporters of Abu Ali crowded the courtroom and laughed when the charge was read aloud alleging that he conspired to assassinate Bush.

When Abu Ali asked to speak, U.S. Magistrate Liam O'Grady suggested he consult with his attorney, Ashraf Nubani.

"He was tortured," Nubani told the court. "He has the evidence on his back. He was whipped. He was handcuffed for days at a time."

When Nubani offered to show the judge his back, O'Grady said that Abu Ali might be able to enter that as evidence on Thursday at a detention hearing.

"I can assure you you will not suffer any torture or humiliation while in the (U.S.) marshals' custody," O'Grady said.

Abu Ali is charged with six counts and would face a maximum of 80 years in prison if convicted.

<#==#>

the drug war creates criminals in the USA. in mexico it is an honest ethical way to feed your family.

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0222mexico-drugsongs22.html

Mexican schools stock book glorifying drug traffickers

Mark Stevenson

Associated Press

Feb. 22, 2005 12:00 AM

MEXICO CITY - Mexico's school libraries are stocking a book that includes the lyrics of narcocorridos, folk songs that glorify drug traffickers, causing a storm of criticism in a country where the drug market and its violence have become part of life.

Opposition activists are livid that the administration of President Vicente Fox, which has declared a "war on all fronts" against drug gangs, allowed tens of thousands of copies of the book 100 Corridos: The Soul of Mexican Song to slip into grade-school libraries.)

The book, printed by a private publishing company but bought in bulk by the government, contains lyrics for songs like The Red Car Gang, which describes Mexican cocaine smugglers shooting it out with Texas Rangers:

"They say they came from the south/In a red car/Carrying 100 kilos of cocaine/bound for Chicago . . . "

Another song describes female drug traffickers who poisoned police with opium to protect a drug shipment, then praises "The Lord of the Skies," the nickname for deceased drug lord Amado Carrillo Fuentes:

"They caught him alive/but they couldn't pin anything on him/now they can display him dead/on trumped-up charges . . . "

Experts say the corrido is Mexico's national song form. Born along with the country's independence in the 1820s, it reached its peak during the 1910-17 revolution. Narcocorridos didn't start becoming popular until the 1970s and '80s.

Legislators say the books have no place in Mexican schools and have scheduled hearings.

"It's very bad to put books like this into the hands of children because they portray drug lords as heroes," said Salvador Martinez, who heads the education committee of the lower house of Congress.

"That's bad, because we have a problem in this country where drug traffickers sometimes pave a town's road, build its school or hospital, and thus have a much better reputation among some people than the police. We have to work against that."

The U.S.-driven drug market has woven its way into the life of thousands of Mexican communities, where narcotics have been a source of otherwise scarce money and of power. Ambitious and amoral young men are drawn by the vast profits in shipping Colombian cocaine to the United States. Poor farmers often see cultivation of marijuana or opium as a step away from starvation.

In addition, Mexico has a growing domestic consumption problem - possibly aggravated by the increasing difficulty of smuggling drugs over the U.S. border - and concern about drug sales has led officials to routinely search students at some schools.

The sheer bulk of candidate books for libraries, and the fact that narcocorridos account for only a few of the corridos in the book, apparently allowed the narcotics issue to be overlooked.

Education Department officials say the volume is merely secondary reading material, purchased as part of an effort to put as many as 30 million books in school libraries across the country while supporting Mexican publishers.

More than 13,000 titles were submitted by local book distributors as candidates for the plan. The books were vetted by three non-governmental civic groups at the national level and then were evaluated by committees of parents, teachers and local officials in Mexico's 31 states and the capital.

All but one of those states - whose committees had access to the full text - picked 100 Corridos as a top choice for local libraries. The other state listed it as a second choice. None rejected it.

About 80,000 copies of the book were printed, though it is not clear how many made it into schools. Officials say they have no plans to withdraw it.

<#==#>

Bush talks tough on Russia

President in Belgium, urges U.S., European unity effort

Elisabeth Bumiller

New York Times

Feb. 22, 2005 12:00 AM

BRUSSELS, Belgium - President Bush warned Russia on Monday that it "must renew a commitment to democracy and the rule of law," but said he believed that the nation's future lay "within the family of Europe and the trans-Atlantic community."

Bush's words opened his first trans-Atlantic trip since his re-election and were part of a speech to build a new relationship with Europe after disputes over the American-led invasion of Iraq.

Bush's 31-minute speech, in the grand setting of Concert Noble, a 19th-century hall, declared that in a "new era of trans-Atlantic unity," the United States and Europe must work together to rebuild Iraq, seek peace between the Israelis and Palestinians, insist that Iran not develop nuclear weapons and demand that Syria end its occupation of Lebanon.

But the speech, the start of a five-day journey to Belgium, Germany and Slovakia, was most striking for his toughest words yet about President Vladimir Putin's rollback of democratic reforms and crackdown on dissent in Russia. Bush is to meet with Putin on Thursday in Slovakia's capital, Bratislava.

"We recognize that reform will not happen overnight," Bush said. "We must always remind Russia, however, that our alliance stands for a free press, a vital opposition, the sharing of power and the rule of law - and the United States and all European countries should place democratic reform at the heart of their dialogue with Russia."

In the evening, the president had a small dinner for his old nemesis, President Jacques Chirac of France, and appeared comfortable next to the man who had infuriated him by aggressively opposing the invasion of Iraq.

After the dinner, at the home of Tom C. Korologos, the U.S. ambassador to Belgium, a senior Bush administration official said Chirac and the president had discussed Iraq, Iran, the Israeli-Palestinian situation and U.S. opposition to the European Union's plans to lift an arms embargo on China.

In his speech at Concert Noble, Bush offered an elaboration of U.S. policy on Israel and the Palestinians, emphasizing that a new nation of Palestine must be made up of "contiguous territory" on the West Bank and that "a state of scattered territories will not work."

He emphatically said that Syria must withdraw its troops from Lebanon, and that "without Syrian interference, Lebanon's parliamentary elections in the spring can be another milestone of liberty."

On Iran, he said that the government must end its support of terrorism and not develop nuclear weapons, and that in American dealings with the country, "no option can be taken permanently off the table." But in the next sentence he stepped back from the threat of military force and said that Iran was different from Iraq and that "we're in the early stages of diplomacy."

EU in message

White House officials had promoted Bush's speech as a major embrace of European unity, and had released excerpts on Sunday night suggesting that the president would extensively support the idea of the 25-member European Union as a partner rather as a rival to the United States.

But he did not devote more than a few sentences to those ideas, and cast his support for a new European unity in the context of his goal of advancing liberty.

"America supports Europe's democratic unity for the same reason we support the spread of democracy in the Middle East - because freedom leads to peace," Bush said. "And America supports a strong Europe because we need a strong partner in the hard work of advancing freedom in the world."

On the Kyoto Treaty on global warming, which the Europeans support and the Bush administration opposes, he said that each side had expressed its views and that "now we must work together on the way forward." He said all countries could develop technologies like hydrogen-powered cars and clean-coal programs to slow the growth of greenhouse gases.

Bush received warm but not enthusiastic applause, a response that two senior Bush administration officials insisted was typical of the restrained European response to politicians' speeches. But some people in the audience said Europeans would be disappointed by Bush's words.

"This is not yet the breakthrough speech they would have hoped for," said Timothy Garton Ash, a professor of European studies at St. Antony's College at Oxford University who attended the speech. "That speech would have needed much more recognition and support of the EU."

Bush, Garton Ash added, was doing all the right things in his visit to the headquarters of the European Union on Tuesday, but "he's walking the walk and not talking the talk."

But Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt of Belgium, Bush's host, praised the speech. "He came to Europe with a very good mood," Verhofstadt said. "You have seen that in the speech. He was very open, he was very positive. He was listening to what we have said. It was not business as usual.

Bush himself alluded to what he expected to be a cool European reception when he quoted John Adams, although not by name, on Benjamin Franklin's service as U.S. ambassador to Paris more than two centuries ago.

"His reputation was more universal than Leibnitz or Newton, Frederick or Voltaire, and his character more beloved and esteemed than any or all of them," Bush quoted Adams on Franklin. Adams went on to say, the president said, that "there was scarcely a peasant or a citizen" who "did not consider him as a friend to humankind."

<#==#>

hello iraq, good by vietnam! remember when bush played fighter jockey and said the end of the major fighting was over in iraq about a year a go :)

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0221iraq-sabotage21.html

Insurgents systematically crippling Baghdad

James Glantz

New York Times

Feb. 21, 2005 12:00 AM

BAGHDAD - Attacks by insurgents to disrupt Baghdad's supplies of crude oil, gasoline, heating oil, water and electricity have reached a degree of coordination and sophistication not seen before, Iraqi and American officials say.

The new pattern, they say, shows that the insurgents have a deep understanding of the pipelines, power cables and reservoirs feeding Baghdad.

The shadowy insurgency is a fractured movement made up of distinct groups of Sunnis, Shiites and foreign fighters. But the shift in the attack patterns strongly suggests that some branch of the insurgency is carrying out a systematic plan to cripple Baghdad's ability to provide basic services for its 6 million citizens and to prevent the fledgling government from operating.

A new analysis by some of those officials reveals that the choice of targets and the timing of attacks have evolved over the last several months, shifting from economic targets to become what amounts to a siege of the capital.

In a stark illustration of the change, out of more than 30 sabotage attacks on the oil infrastructure this year, no reported incident has involved the southern crude-oil pipelines that are Iraq's main source of revenue. Instead, the attacks have aimed at gas and oil lines feeding power plants and refineries and providing fuel for transportation around Baghdad and in the north.

In an indication of how carefully chosen the targets are and how knowledgeable the insurgency is about the workings of the infrastructure, the sabotage often disrupts the lives of Iraqis, leaving them dependent on chugging, street-corner generators to stave off the darkness, robbing them of fuel for stoves and heaters and even halting the flow of their drinking water.

The overall pattern of the sabotage and its technical savvy suggest the guidance of the very officials who tended to the nation's infrastructure during Saddam Hussein's long reign, Iraqi officials say.

The only reasonable conclusion, said Aiham Alsammarae, the Iraqi electricity minister, is that the sabotage operation is being led by former members of the ministries themselves, possibly aided by sympathetic holdovers.

<#==#>

is george w [hitler] bush a hippocrite or what????

http://www.wkyc.com/news/news_fullstory.asp?id=30635

Report: Bush admits to marijuana use on secret tape

POSTED: Sunday, February 20, 2005 3:47:17 PM

UPDATED: Sunday, February 20, 2005 3:47:17 PM

NEW YORK -- A published report says President Bush apparently acknowledged trying marijuana in his younger days during a conversation with a friend.

Doug Wead secretly recorded at least a dozen talks with Bush between 1998 and the summer of 2000, when Bush was governor of Texas.

The New York Times says in one of those talks, Bush criticized then-Vice President Al Gore for admitting past marijuana use and explained why he would not answer questions about marijuana. In Bush’s words: “I don’t want some little kid doing what I tried.”

Wead, a former aide to President Bush’s father, discussed strategy and policy with the future president. He played a dozen of the tapes for a Times reporter.

Wead says he made the recordings because he views Bush as a historic figure.

The White House does not deny the authenticity of the tapes. Spokesman Trent Duffy says Bush—quote—“was having casual conversations with someone he believed was his friend."

<#==#>

the US military a jobs program for highly paid govenment thugs???

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2005-02-20-military-bonuses_x.htm

Posted 2/20/2005 10:40 PM

Military offering more, and bigger, bonuses

By Dave Moniz, USA TODAY

WASHINGTON — Faced with a persistent demand for personnel in Iraq and elsewhere, the Army and some of the military's elite commando units have dramatically increased the size and the number of cash bonuses they are paying to lure recruits and keep experienced troops in uniform.

Last month, the Pentagon said it would begin offering bonuses of up to $150,000 for long-serving Army, Air Force and Navy special operations troops who agree to stay in the military for up to six more years. The bonuses are the largest ever paid to enlisted troops. They reflect the difficulty in replacing highly valued troops such as Army Green Berets and Navy SEALs, whose training takes years and costs about $300,000 per person.

Meanwhile, the Pentagon is using cash bonuses on an unprecedented scale to try to boost re-enlistments, recruiting and morale among active-duty and reservist troops. The bonuses come as the demands of three years of war in Afghanistan and Iraq have raised questions in Congress about whether the U.S. military has enough troops to fight two major wars simultaneously.

The Army is offering re-enlistment payments of up to $15,000 to soldiers in 49% of its enlisted job categories — regardless of rank or where they are stationed. It's offering the same to any soldier who agrees to re-enlist while serving in a combat zone. It also is paying bonuses of up to $50,000 to senior enlisted soldiers in 16 hard-to-fill job categories, including truck drivers and bomb-disposal specialists.

Army bearing brunt in Iraq

Most of the 150,000 troops in Iraq are from the Army, which has roughly 1 million troops in its active-duty, reserve and National Guard units and has borne the largest share of fighting in the global war on terrorism.

"This is the most aggressive retention program since the American Civil War," says Col. Kelly Fraser, who monitors Army troop levels at the Pentagon. The Army will spend a record $400 million on bonuses this year to keep troops in the ranks.

The use of cash incentives to bolster recruiting and retention is not a new phenomenon. Challenged to keep technically skilled troops in the ranks during the high-tech boom of the late 1990s, the Air Force and Navy offered thousands of dollars in cash payments to computer technicians, air traffic controllers and pilots.

But those bonuses generally were smaller than today's, and they went to relatively few troops. The new bonuses extend across large swaths of the active-duty Army, Army National Guard and Army Reserve:

• In December, the National Guard tripled the top cash bonus for Army Guard recruits who had served in the active-duty military, offering payments of up to $15,000 for those willing to join. The Guard also began offering a bonus of $15,000 for Guard soldiers who will re-enlist for six years, triple the previous amount.

• The active-duty Army announced in January enlistment bonuses of up to $20,000 for recruits who score well on entrance tests, the largest sum it has ever paid to prospective soldiers.

• Last month, the Army increased the top bonus for soldiers re-enlisting in the combat zones of Iraq, Kuwait and Afghanistan to $15,000, up from $10,000. The payments are tax-free, and for most recipients would represent a significant percentage of their annual pay. For example, an Army specialist with three to four years of experience who is in a combat zone and who has a young family typically receives a salary of about $36,000.

The Pentagon says the bonuses have kept enough troops in the ranks and, in a few cases, avoided severe shortfalls. The armed forces spend years grooming leaders and cannot quickly replace those who leave. For example, it takes more than a decade to train a master sergeant, major or lieutenant colonel to lead combat units into battle.

Fraser says the bonuses helped boost re-enlistment rates to 107% of the Army's goal last year and kept Guard and reserve re-enlistment near 100% of their goals.

The increased use of cash payments is causing concern among some military scholars. Some fear that an overreliance on financial incentives tarnishes the notion of selfless service, a core value of the all-volunteer force.

'More of a mercenary role'

"This is a fundamental change. It moves us away from any fantasy of equity, and it is moving folks into more of a mercenary role," says Jim Martin, a retired Army colonel who teaches military culture at Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania.

Richard Kohn, a history professor at the University of North Carolina who studies the military, also has misgivings. But Kohn says the increased cash bonuses are not surprising, given the current strain on America's military. "Is this indicative of some larger malaise in our manpower policies, if you have to staff your armed forces in this manner?" says Kohn. He says the new bonuses suggest that the USA needs a larger military.

Others see the new bonuses as a positive development. Dan Christman, a retired Army lieutenant general and the former superintendent of the U.S. Military Academy, says military personnel are underpaid, given their skills and the risks they face. "Once you go to the concept of an all-volunteer force, you accept that the marketplace plays a fundamental role," he says.

Richard Danzig, who was secretary of the Navy under President Clinton, says bonuses generally are effective. But he also worries that such payments might undermine the "sense of equality" in the ranks, where "no one is considered more valuable than others."

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., a member of the Armed Services Committee and a former Air Force lawyer, says he has no objections to the Pentagon's increased use of bonuses because of the demands the military is placing on its troops.

The Army's bonus program dovetails with other efforts in the military to make troops' lives more bearable. The Navy has begun a program in which sailors can make bids on jobs that are considered undesirable, requesting extra pay of several hundred dollars a month.

The Army also has tried to create more stability in the ranks by allowing some soldiers and families to stay at the same base for up to six years. Previously, a soldier typically would have to move every two to three years.

<#==#>

I would recommend that anybody in maricopa county jail awaiting trial read this book. basicly the book was written by the goverment and the book admits that the cops and court is corrupt and that their is very little justice in the criminal justice system in maricopa county.

i read this book at the century branch of the phoenix library

    "down and dirty justice"

    by Gary T lowenthal

library number 345.79173 L952d

it wasnt a great book, and dont buy it. read it at

the library. but it was interesting because it was

written by a prosecuting attorney at the maricopa

county public defenders offices and several times in

the book he admits that both the cops and the courts are

more or less corrupt. he also admits that the criminal

justice system does not despense justice and more or

less punishes anybody that accidently happens to get

in the sight of the cops.

its an odd book because the guy who wrote it Gary T lowenthal

teaches at the ASU college of law and he took off for a year

on his sabitical for a year. since he had been teaching law

for many years he decide to see how the system really works

so he got a job with from rick romley and was a prosecutor

for a year and he worked for free.

while Gary T lowenthal is a bad guy he does point out that

the systems sucks, is not just, and that the police are

corrupt.

for you guys in jail one interesting thing

he also pointed out the the maricopa prosecutor attorneys

are like crooked used car salesmen when they deal with

people charge with crimes and will do anything to

get a person to take a plea bargin.

he didnt say this but from the words he used rick

romley the former county attorney is a very hateful

vindictive man who will do anything to get relected

and views people in jail as people he can torture to

make his political career.

rick romley is gone as of a few weeks ago. he has been

replaced by a new nazi who the new times said will be

an even worse asshole and work hand in hand with sheriff

joe for his nazi schemes to torture people.

to illustrate how screwed us the idiots are in the

maricopa county prosecurers office in one case a

guy in downtown phoenix used a wire to yank dollar

bills out of a box in a parking lot. the box was

put their to allow people to pay their parking

on a honor basis. and the guy was just fishing

money out of it with a wire.

by a normal mans defination that would be theft.

and even by the laws in the ARS that is also theft.

but the author of the book decided to charge the

guy with BURGLERY because he could get a longer

sentence. he twised the defination of BUILDING

and said this 3 foot by 3 foot by 6 inch metal

box on a parking lot was a commericial building

and therefor the guy who was fishing dollar bills

out of it was guilty of burglery. lucky the judge

did not buy his line of reasoning.

<#==#>

I would recommend that anybody in maricopa county jail awaiting trial read this book. basicly the book was written by the goverment and the book admits that the cops and court is corrupt and that their is very little justice in the criminal justice system in maricopa county.

i read this book at the century branch of the phoenix library

    "down and dirty justice"

    by Gary T lowenthal

library number 345.79173 L952d

it wasnt a great book, and dont buy it. read it at

the library. but it was interesting because it was

written by a prosecuting attorney at the maricopa

county public defenders offices and several times in

the book he admits that both the cops and the courts are

more or less corrupt. he also admits that the criminal

justice system does not despense justice and more or

less punishes anybody that accidently happens to get

in the sight of the cops.

its an odd book because the guy who wrote it Gary T lowenthal

teaches at the ASU college of law and he took off for a year

on his sabitical for a year. since he had been teaching law

for many years he decide to see how the system really works

so he got a job with from rick romley and was a prosecutor

for a year and he worked for free.

while Gary T lowenthal is a bad guy he does point out that

the systems sucks, is not just, and that the police are

corrupt.

for you guys in jail one interesting thing

he also pointed out the the maricopa prosecutor attorneys

are like crooked used car salesmen when they deal with

people charge with crimes and will do anything to

get a person to take a plea bargin.

he didnt say this but from the words he used rick

romley the former county attorney is a very hateful

vindictive man who will do anything to get relected

and views people in jail as people he can torture to

make his political career.

rick romley is gone as of a few weeks ago. he has been

replaced by a new nazi who the new times said will be

an even worse asshole and work hand in hand with sheriff

joe for his nazi schemes to torture people.

to illustrate how screwed us the idiots are in the

maricopa county prosecurers office in one case a

guy in downtown phoenix used a wire to yank dollar

bills out of a box in a parking lot. the box was

put their to allow people to pay their parking

on a honor basis. and the guy was just fishing

money out of it with a wire.

by a normal mans defination that would be theft.

and even by the laws in the ARS that is also theft.

but the author of the book decided to charge the

guy with BURGLERY because he could get a longer

sentence. he twised the defination of BUILDING

and said this 3 foot by 3 foot by 6 inch metal

box on a parking lot was a commericial building

and therefor the guy who was fishing dollar bills

out of it was guilty of burglery. lucky the judge

did not buy his line of reasoning.

<#==#>

the american emporer is not wanted in germany!!!!

http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/news/articles/0223bush-germany23.html

Germany's public not a fan of Bush

President to meet with nation's chancellor, also take part in talk

Tom Hundley

Chicago Tribune

Feb. 23, 2005 12:00 AM

BERLIN - With its market squares and Gothic spires, the city of Mainz offers a postcard backdrop for President Bush's meeting with German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, but for residents, today's presidential visit will feel more like an invasion.

The city center will be locked down for Bush's 11-hour stay, and a state of near martial law has been in effect since Tuesday.

U.S. sharpshooters have taken up positions on rooftops, and residents who live close to the palace where Bush and Schroeder will meet have been warned not to go out on their balconies.

Schools and most businesses will be closed for the day.

The four main highways leading in and out of the southern city are to be closed during the morning and evening rush hours, and shipping on the Rhine, Europe's busiest river, will be halted to allow Bush to take a brief boat ride.

Up to 5,000 protesters are expected, but they will be outnumbered by 10,000 police.

The anti-Bush demonstration will be allowed, but it will take place several miles from where Bush and Schroeder will meet.

Bush also will participate in a round-table discussion with a group of carefully selected Germans and Americans.

Initial plans for a town hall-style forum were scrapped when German officials said they could not guarantee the friendly questions that Bush is accustomed to hearing.

Later today, the president likely will receive a warm and patriotic welcome when he travels to the U.S. military base at nearby Wiesbaden, where he will mingle with soldiers from the U.S. Army's 1st Armored Division.

While Europe's political leaders are eager to patch up the Atlantic alliance and re-establish a decent working relationship with Washington, public opinion in Europe remains hostile to Bush.

In Germany, where polls before last fall's presidential election indicated that 74 percent of the population preferred Sen. John Kerry to Bush, opposition to the war in Iraq still runs deep.

"It remains a total mystery to me how postwar experiences like Vietnam and Korea are not reflected in any way in today's U.S. politics," said Sunhild Schorradt, 41, a civil engineer in Berlin.

"America's attitude that everything she does is right is scary to me. I'm also scared by the acceptance of violence in order to achieve goals which are not necessarily bad goals," she said.

Schroeder is sensitive to the public mood.

Facing a tough re-election bid in the fall of 2002, the German leader was trailing in the polls until he came out strongly in opposition to military action in Iraq.

Bush has given him the cold shoulder ever since.

<#==#>

To: lpaz-discuss@yahoogroups.com

From: "Terry" <terry@terrybressi.org>

Date: Wed, 23 Feb 2005 21:22:08 -0700

Subject: Re: [lpaz-discuss] Taxpayer Bill of Rights--Meeting Feb. 24

When it comes to taxes, a good start would be for the legislature to simply obey the State Constitution.

Article 9, Section 9 of the Arizona Constitution states:

"Every law which imposes, continues, or revives a tax shall distinctly state the tax and the objects for which it shall be applied; and it shall not be sufficient to refer to any other law to fix such tax or object".

Given the clear wording of Article 9, Section 9 - how is that the legislature has gotten away with imposing a graduated state income tax on individuals that refers to the federal income tax in order to fix the amount of the tax:

ARS 43-102 Declaration of Intent: "(A) It is the intent of the legislature by the adoption of this title to accomplish the following objectives:

(1) To adopt the provisions of the federal internal revenue code relating to the measurement of adjusted gross income for individuals...."

Given that the legislature ignores taxing limitations imposed upon it by the State Constitution to begin with, why would 'Honorable Russell

Pearce' believe that a 'Taxpayer Bill of Rights' would make any difference? The problem isn't a lack of laws or legislation that controls State government operations - but rather a lack of intestinal fortitude by members of the legislature and the populace at large to hold government accountable to the rule of law.

Terry

C. D. Tavares wrote:

>Just a reminder that this is happening on Thursday.

> 

>Begin forwarded message:

> 

> 

> 

>>From: "C. D. Tavares" <Tavares@alum.mit.edu>

>>Date: January 30, 2005 9:16:41 PM MST

>>To: WesternLibertarian@yahoogroups.com, Discuss LPAZ

>><lpaz-discuss@yahoogroups.com>

>>Subject: [WesternLibertarian] Fwd: Taxpayer Bill of Rights--Meeting

>>Feb. 24

>>Reply-To: WesternLibertarian@yahoogroups.com

>> 

>> 

>>A free lunch from the Republicans, plus a chance to teach them

>>something about fiscal responsibility.  Have at 'em.

>> 

>>Begin forwarded message:

>> 

>> 

>> 

>>>From: "Tom Jenney" <tomjenney@cox.net>

>>>Date: January 30, 2005 7:14:42 PM MST

>>>To: <cd@libertyhavenranch.com>

>>>Subject: Taxpayer Bill of Rights--Meeting Feb. 24

>>>Reply-To: <tomjenney@cox.net>

>>> 

>>>The Arizona Federation of Taxpayers Presents

>>> 

>>> 

>>> 

>>> The Honorable Russell Pearce

>>> 

>>>Chairman, Arizona House Appropriations Committee

>>> 

>>> 

>>> 

>>>To discuss:

>>> 

>>> 

>>> 

>>>The Need for a Taxpayer Bill of Rights

>>> 

>>> 

>>> 

>>> If Arizona had enacted a Taxpayer Bill of Rights in 1994, the

current

>>>$908 million state budget deficit would only be $214 million and

each

>>>Arizona worker would have received an average refund of $264 per

year.

>>> 

>>> 

>>> 

>>> Join us for food, drink and a lively discussion on the Taxpayer

Bill

>>>of Rights and grassroots strategies to support pro-economic growth

>>>legislation.  Stay afterwards for cigars, billiards and darts.

>>> 

>>> 

>>> 

>>> Thursday, February 24th

>>> 

>>>7:00 pm

>>> 

>>>George & Dragon Restaurant

>>> 

>>>4240 N. Central  (North of Indian School)

>>>Phoenix, AZ 85012

>>> 

>>> 

>>> 

>>> 

>>>This is a free event.

>>> 

>>> 

>>> 

>>> RSVP at info@aztaxpayers.org

>>> 

>>> 

<#==#>

To: lpaz-discuss@yahoogroups.com

From: "Terry" <terry@terrybressi.org>

Date: Wed, 23 Feb 2005 22:51:04 -0700

Subject: Re: Fwd: Taxpayer Bill of Rights--Meeting Feb. 24

Mike Renzulli wrote:

>Mwahahahahaha!!! They did this three times on the federal level and very

>little changed. The IRS held back after passage of similar legislation but

>is back to their old selves again. I hope someone will remind them of this

>and that it is nothing more than a feel good measure. The best thing they

>could do (but they obviously won't due to the leeches that soak off the

>state) is to scrap the state income tax.

> 

> Mike

> 

> 

There's any interesting website at:

   http://trac.syr.edu

that tracks enforcement activities of several federal agencies including the DHS, FBI, DEA, ATF, & IRS.

On one page, the site graphs IRS levy, lien, and seizure activities since 1992:

   http://trac.syr.edu/tracirs/highlights/current/collenfG.html

The huge drop in these enforcement activities is directly attributable to Congressional Hearings held on IRS taxpayer abuse in the late 1990's and the IRS Restructuring and Reform Act passed shortly thereafter. Although enforcement activity is definitely picking up again - the IRS is still not where near the level they were at in the mid-1990's. The IRS took the biggest hit in the category of property seizures where the new law shifted the burden of proof back to the IRS where it rightfully belonged in the first place. John can undoubtedly provide a more detailed analysis of these trends then I can.

Other graphs show that since the early part of the 19th century, the income tax burden has shifted from corporations at 100% to individuals at over 84% today. In addition, even though corporate receipts are nearly 3 times greater than individual receipts, individuals receive the lions share of IRS audit & enforcement attention.

Other graphs break down enforcement activity by region along with comparing the different categories of initiated enforcement activity against successful prosecutions.

Interesting stuff.

Terry

<#==#>

boy arnt you lucky kevin :)

the nazis in the secret service could have flown you to saudi arabia and had you whipped to try to get a confession out of you.

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0224torture24.html

Bush plot suspect's treatment questioned

Mark Sherman

Associated Press

Feb. 24, 2005 12:00 AM

WASHINGTON - A Virginia man accused of plotting with al-Qaida to kill President Bush should be held indefinitely, federal prosecutors said Wednesday in court filings that also rejected his contention that he was tortured while held in Saudi Arabia.

At a court hearing a day earlier in Alexandria, Va., 23-year-old Ahmed Abu Ali offered to display scars on his back as proof that he was tortured by Saudi authorities. In their filing Wednesday, prosecutors said, "There is no credible evidence to support those claims."

Abu Ali never complained about his treatment during several meetings with an American diplomat in Saudi Arabia, according to the filing. Moreover, an American doctor examined him Monday and found "no evidence of physical mistreatment on the defendant's back or any other part of his body."

Edward MacMahon, one of Abu Ali's lawyers, said Wednesday that he had not seen the government's motion and declined to comment. But on Tuesday, both MacMahon and defense lawyer Ashraf Nubani had said they had seen the scars on his back. Nubani said they looked like whip marks.

His lawyers and family allege the Saudis held him at the U.S. government's request and tortured him with the knowledge of American officials. Before Abu Ali's return, a lawsuit filed on his family's behalf in U.S. District Court in Washington sought information about his capture and treatment.

The government sought to have the case dismissed, but U.S. District Judge John Bates has declined.

In the indictment, the government alleges Abu Ali discussed assassinating Bush, conducting a terrorist attack in the United States and establishing an al-Qaida cell here.

It is unclear how much the indictment relies on Abu Ali's own words or those of several unidentified conspirators who the indictment says were known al-Qaida members.

<#==#>

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0224scotus24.html

States can't segregate inmates, high court rules

Hope Yen

Associated Press

Feb. 24, 2005 12:00 AM

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court extended its skepticism of government policies that classify by race, ruling that state prisons cannot segregate inmates even temporarily except under the most extraordinary circumstances.

The 5-3 decision Wednesday set aside a lower court ruling for California that said prisons should have wide leeway to impose race restrictions for safety reasons. It all but ended a long-standing policy in California and called into question prison restrictions in two other states.

Since the landmark Brown vs. Board of Education ruling in 1954, the court repeatedly has held that racial classifications by the government are usually unacceptable. Prisons should be no different even if the restrictions are temporary, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor wrote for the majority.

"In the prison context, when the government's power is at its apex, we think that searching judicial review of racial classifications is necessary to guard against invidious discrimination," O'Connor wrote.

In a dissent, Justice Clarence Thomas argued that justices generally have given prison officials a free hand in managing their facilities to control violence. California's system has been a "breeding ground" for violent gangs, warranting judicial deference.

"The majority is concerned with sparing inmates the indignity and stigma of racial discrimination. California is concerned with their safety and saving their lives," Thomas wrote in an opinion joined by Justice Antonin Scalia.

Justice John Paul Stevens filed a separate dissent, arguing that the prison segregation should be declared outright discriminatory.

At issue was an unwritten California policy requiring officials to automatically bunk inmates by race for the first 60 days after their arrival. After an evaluation for dangerousness, inmates are then assigned to a permanent cell on a non-racial basis. Inmates are separated again by race when they transfer to a new facility.

Under the ruling, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals must now scrutinize California's 25-year-old policy for hard evidence that it is necessary and works. At least two other states, Texas and Oklahoma, apply similar policies to new inmates that also could be challenged.

California's prison system, with roughly 160,000 inmates, is the nation's largest.

<#==#>

i am sure they have learned their lesson that illegal torturing of POW's can get them into a lot of  troupble. i sure that anyone now involved in torturing POW's has strict orders not to take photographs like they did in the past which cause the torture to be discovered.

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0224iraq-detain24.html

Overhaul of Army detention under way

Washington Post

Feb. 24, 2005 12:00 AM

WASHINGTON - The Army has initiated extensive changes in the way it trains for and conducts its worldwide detention operations, acknowledging that a series of investigations into prisoner abuses in Iraq, Afghanistan and Cuba revealed failures, omissions or confusion in Army doctrine and training that might have contributed to the abuses.

Maj. Gen. Donald Ryder, the Army's provost marshal general and head of the Army's criminal investigation command, said Wednesday that the wide-ranging abuse investigations launched after the Abu Ghraib prison scandal prompted the Army to rework its detention operations, specifically in training soldiers about their roles in U.S. prisons and rewriting doctrine to clarify what they are permitted to do in their jobs.

Some of the investigations released over the past year pointed to confusion between military police and military intelligence soldiers and a lack of clarity about allowable interrogation techniques as setting the stage for illegal activities.

Ryder's description Wednesday of a systemic overhaul in training and doctrine contrasted with early Army investigations, which ruled out doctrinal or systemic problems as the root causes of the abuse.

Ryder told reporters at the Pentagon Wednesday that the Army has since altered its interrogation policies and techniques, developed a new training program for correctional soldiers, and revised two doctrine manuals and created six new doctrine manuals that relate to detention operations. He said the Army plans to add 35 specialized correctional units over the next three years.

<#==#>

im suprized the arizona republic publishes stuff like this!!!! this information could be used by terrorists or illegal aliens to sneak into the usa along the arizona mexican border. well i guess it is just too bad. the information is out now :) but that wont stop me from publishing it on http://arizona.indymedia.org

http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/arizonaliving/articles/0224safety24.html

When hiking near the border, safety is a factor

John Stanley

The Arizona Republic

Feb. 24, 2005 12:00 AM

Southwestern Arizona is home to some of the most desolate, remote and God-forsaken country in the continental United States.

It's magnificent.

Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument and the adjoining Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge together comprise almost 1.2 million acres of scenic splendor along the border with Mexico. But with more stringent controls being enacted elsewhere along that border, more illegal border crossers, smugglers and drug traffickers are making their way across these lands, raising the question: Is it safe to visit?

The answer is yes, with a few qualifications.

"We tell people that the risk is greater than it was several years ago," says Roger Di Rosa, the Cabeza Prieta manager, noting that the refuge has no restrictions - for safety reasons - on where visitors may hike or camp. "The only restrictions we have are for wilderness protection, and they're always in place."

The situation is slightly different at Organ Pipe, where officials periodically close parts of the park to campers, based on the frequency of illegal activity they note in those areas.

"We don't hide the fact that there are parts of the park that are heavily impacted," says Fred Patton, chief ranger at the monument. "But most people won't see those areas unless they go out looking for them."

Although incidents involving violent confrontations are few, Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument ranger Kris Eggle was killed in a shootout by an illegal border crosser in 2002.

Both areas are quintessential Sonoran Desert, what Di Rosa calls "real Edward Abbey country." But with the increase of border crossing and consequent law enforcement efforts, the wilderness aspects have been somewhat compromised.

Patton and Di Rosa say concerns about illegal activity shouldn't keep visitors away.

"We would not allow people into the parts of the park that are open if we didn't think they'd be safe there," Patton says. "Our primary concern is for the safety of the public."

"You can hike where you want to on the refuge," says Di Rosa. "We don't try to dissuade people from hiking or camping, just try to make them aware of the risks."

Their recommendations include:

• At Organ Pipe, call ahead for information on possible closures. This can change, so stop by the Kris Eggle Visitor Center for current information.

• At Cabeza Prieta, don't hike south of El Camino del Diablo or leave vehicles unattended on the road.

• If you leave a vehicle for a multiday hike, be prepared for the possibility of a break-in by leaving water in sight outside the vehicle (for migrants) and hiding water in the area (for yourself, should your vehicle be stolen). Be prepared to hike to a point of safety, following roads whenever possible, as they are patrolled regularly.

Reach the reporter at (602) 444-4414.

<#==#>

santa barbara library kicks out homeless people using the excuse that they smell bad!!!! but i bet they still hit them  up for sales tax even if they smell bad

http://www.sanluisobispo.com/mld/sanluisobispo/news/local/10961064.htm

Posted on Tue, Feb. 22, 2005

Bad B.O. now a no-no at county libraries

Nathan Welton

The Tribune

County library users can't scream, run, steal things, break stuff, fight, swear or view Internet porn, according to new rules.

They also can't smell bad.

That means library employees now have a legal standing to tell homeless people to go away.

According to long-standing, yet informal, rules that the county Board of Supervisors recently added to its law books, malodorous patrons can be kicked out.

If they don't leave, they might lose their access.

That, of course, doesn't mean librarians will police the stacks of books, said library director Brian Reynolds.

Instead, he said librarians will act with common sense and ask people to leave only if they're ruining the library experience of others.

"If you and I are sitting in a reasonable distance from each other -- 3 to 5 feet in our society, and you've done something that's so bad I can't stand to talk to you, then that becomes an issue," Reynolds said, noting that some people have smelled so bad that they've ruined furniture.

Policing body odor

Rules specifically mention "body odor," which means employees can also legally kick out people who have medical disorders causing excessive body odor.

The policy does not appear to restrict the overuse of cologne or perfume, however. Those chemicals are known to cause asthma attacks in people with chemical sensitivities.

"I think that rather than smelling bad and having no other place to go, we should look into shower facilities," said Eric Greening, a county government watchdog.

He urged supervisors, who approved the rules last week, to tackle the issue in a "kind and compassionate way," instead of a punitive one.

Other communities have done that. When librarians in Santa Barbara ask people to leave, they hand out an information card detailing the nearest free shower and laundry facilities.

"We're not saying go to Holiday Inn and rent a room," said Carol Keator, director of the Santa Barbara library, which doesn't have a no-smell rule. "We're saying the homeless shelter has services there that would allow you to get a shower or whatever it is."

She added that her staff tries to focus on behavior instead of personal circumstances.

So do San Luis Obispo County librarians, Reynolds said.

If, for example, customers violate the no-sleeping regulation because of their medication, he'll let them stay.

He also said his staff would try to accommodate chemically sensitive asthmatics if necessary, and noted that the body-odor rule is seldom enforced.

"In 12 years, I can think of less than half a dozen incidences where people smell so bad that you can't get within 10 feet of them," he said, adding that an information card with free shower and laundry facilities is a good idea.

Balancing patrons' rights

It is unclear how many similar laws there are in the state, according to California Library Association director Susan Negreen.

"I'm sure every library struggles with the line between individual rights versus the rights of other patrons to have a safe and healthy environment," she added. "Librarians hold dearly the right to freedom of information, and it's the core tenant of librarianship.

"Any time they make the decision to restrict someone's access," Negreen said, "it's very difficult for them to decide to do that."

According to the American Library Association, libraries should not restrict access of people who "merely inspire the anger or annoyance of others," and behavior policies should not be subjective.

Rather, such policies should "employ a reasonable, objective standard based on the behavior itself."

This objectivity guideline was effectively upheld after a homeless man, Richard Armstrong, tried to enter a Washington, D.C., library on a cold winter day in 1993. Guards told him to leave and clean up, so he challenged the rules regarding dress and hygiene.

He won based on constitutional rights violations; the judge said the rules were subjective, so enforcement would be arbitrary.

An additional case upheld a library's rules when a homeless man sued after being removed from the library 11 times. According to a publication by the Massachusetts Bar Association, librarians alleged the man would stare at patrons and bathe in the restroom.

Library users said they felt intimidated, and librarians said they had an obligation to keep the facility open for everyone.

Other officially outlawed behaviors at San Luis Obispo County libraries include going barefoot, not supervising children, bringing along animals, playing games, blocking walkways and sitting in "inappropriately" large groups.

The library's policy is that nobody should impede others' use of the facility, Reynolds said.

"We don't want people to behave in such a way that bothers others so it puts a crimp in their day," he added.

<#==#>

http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/issues/2005-02-24/news/dougherty.html

Turn Up the Heat

Napolitano should get behind the state's new fire marshal and force Tent City's closure

BY JOHN DOUGHERTY

john.dougherty@newtimes.com

Tents have gone up in flames before at Sheriff Joe Arpaio's infamous outdoor compound.

And there's no reason to think it won't happen again at Tent City.

With virtually unlimited access to cigarettes, booze and drugs, enraged inmates could torch the tents, just like they did on October 4, 1994, when a five-hour riot erupted and two tents burned to the ground.

The melee broke out after guards discovered prisoners had somehow gotten on the roof of the adjacent Estrella Jail and retrieved 10 to 12 cartons of cigarettes and a number of liquor bottles.

Cigarettes and booze fuel a lively black market inside the tent compound, where individual smokes go for at least a dollar apiece. Sparking the row in '94 was a black marketeer's worry that a detention officer was about to find illicit profits hidden inside a locker. To create a diversion, the inmate torched a tent.

The fire triggered a frenzy, and soon another tent was burning along with a couple of outdoor toilets. Guards finally regained control of the facility after rounding up 48 "problem inmates" and transferring them to traditional jails.

Amazingly, no one was seriously injured during the disturbance. The conditions that existed in 1994 have only gotten worse, as more inmates are jammed into the tents with only a handful of guards to maintain order.

The incendiary black market remains alive and well.

Arpaio knowingly facilitates the freewheeling contraband trade by allowing hundreds of work-release and work-furlough inmates to bring up to $40 a day each into Tent City. These inmates together spend nearly $50,000 a month on food and other products sold from jail vending machines.

Naturally, Arpaio keeps demand high for the vending-machine fare by providing inmates food that's barely edible, if edible at all.

There's no doubt that a large portion of this money is also spent on the black market. It's only a matter of time before all hell breaks out again.

Insurrection, however, isn't the only threat to the safety and welfare of the more than 2,000 inmates jammed into Arpaio's rotting surplus military tents.

Shoddy electrical construction combined with leaky tents and steady rain has created hazardous conditions that could result in tragedy.

Inmates tell me they routinely see sparks flying from exposed wires leading to overhead fluorescent lights that have gotten soaked in the recent downpours. The light in one tent was hit the other day with such a powerful electrical surge during hard rain that it was ripped from its support bracket and crashed to the floor.

But that's not all.

Open electrical outlets connected to wires unprotected by conduits are strewn across wet concrete floors. Inmates have been sleeping on metal-frame bunks wet from the rains.

These reports of hazardous conditions aren't just the angry fantasies of drenched and disgruntled prisoners. I have obtained dozens of photographs taken inside Arpaio's tent jail in the last couple of weeks documenting the complaints.

There's no way any building inspector worth his clipboard would allow you or me to string up a haphazard maze of unprotected wires and open electrical boxes inside a leaking canvas structure that's used as permanent housing.

The inspector would slap a red tag with "Cease and Desist" in bold letters onto the nearest tent pole.

Unless the proprietor's name is Joe Arpaio.

For 12 years, the state fire marshal has let Arpaio slide with the unsafe conditions inside Tent City. Rather than shutting down the compound for violating the state fire code -- as one inspector urged in June 2002 -- the fire marshal has routinely granted a variance that has allowed Arpaio to keep his most successful publicity stunt open for business.

Arpaio certainly doesn't give a damn whether Tent City, which propelled him to international notoriety and immense political power, poses a serious threat to the safety of thousands of citizens.

That's right: citizens. Most of the folks held in Tent City haven't lost the rights of citizenship because they have been convicted of misdemeanors -- typically DUIs. These small-potatoes inmates are mere props in Arpaio's psychotic quest for attention and power.

Dignity, health and life mean nothing to Outlaw Joe. Inmates have beaten senseless, and several have been killed, while serving their rinky-dink sentences inside Arpaio's tents. In September 2002, state Court of Appeals Judge Jefferson L. Lankford held Arpaio personally liable for the severe beating of one inmate.

In a stinging 26-page opinion, Lankford wrote that the sheriff "admitted knowing about and in fact intentionally designing some conditions at Tent City that created a substantial risk of inmate violence. [There's a] lack of individual security and inmate control inherent in a tent facility [with] the small number of guards, a mixed inmate population subject to overcrowding [and] extreme heat and lack of amenities."

Lankford ruled that evidence presented in the inmate's lawsuit that led to the opinion supported the jury's finding that Arpaio was "callously indifferent" to Eighth Amendment protections afforded to prisoners and that he purposely "exposed Tent City inmates to serious injury."

Arpaio considers the appeals court ruling a minor nuisance.

"It doesn't impact anything," he told me last year, before he stopped speaking to me because I persisted in reporting on his corrupt regime.

When was the last time you told a Court of Appeals judge to shove it?

Arpaio's arrogance and reckless disregard for the law sends a powerful signal to his employees, many of whom take great delight in humiliating and threatening inmates and even their visitors.

Governor Janet Napolitano could put a stop to the Tent City outrage by ordering her newly appointed fire marshal, Bob Barger, to reject Arpaio's pending request for a variance to keep the tents open.

Napolitano could prove that she's more than a self-absorbed career bureaucrat worried that she must keep her head down so she can hang on to her current job for another term, or move on to something even more high-profile.

If Napolitano truly had the right stuff of courageous leaders, she would stare down Arpaio by putting a stop to his Tent City antic. For a politician worried about her career, there's nothing to lose anymore: Joe's demented regime has become the laughingstock of law enforcement across the state, and even Republican party bigwigs hate the blowhard's guts.

I'm saying that when the vast majority of the state's cops and powerful GOP officials -- hardly a bunch of liberal pantywaists -- come out strongly against one of their own, there's political capital to be gained by dashing Arpaio's delusion of grandeur and forcing him to close a facility that can never meet basic fire code regs.

Soon, there should be no need for Tent City. Taxpayers spent a whopping $500 million for two state-of-the-art jails that would be ready to go except for one giant problem.

Arpaio hasn't hired the 1,000 guards necessary to open the 3,200-bed facilities.

Even though he's had seven years to do it.

Somebody -- the governor, the county supervisors -- should tell him to get off his wrinkled ass and hire these detention officers pronto, because Tent City will be phased out because it cannot live up to minimum safety standards.

It's obvious Arpaio is dragging his feet in staffing the new jails. Why would he want to close his filthy Tent City gulag after it has made him a worldwide celebrity?

Arpaio knows he can always generate overcrowding in the jail system with haphazard roundups of deadbeat parents and prostitutes. If he really needs prisoners to prove his point that Tent City is still needed, he could even pull tens of thousands of warrants out of file cabinets and have his deputies sweep through poor neighborhoods.

In other words, he wouldn't be above phonying things up. He couldn't care less how much it costs taxpayers.

As a former U.S. attorney for Arizona and former Arizona attorney general, Napolitano must know that Arpaio uses Tent City to purposely violate the constitutional rights of Arizona's citizens in a crass grab for political power.

Such vulgarities are the hallmark of dictators.

Napolitano ducked my recent question about the future of Tent City during her weekly press conference, passing the buck to her newly appointed fire marshal to decide whether to issue another variance to keep Tent City open.

"The fire marshal can take a look at all the evidence, all the facts, and make a . . . determination," she said. The governor doesn't like to be asked tough questions at her weekly love fest with the daily media.

The trouble is, Bob Barger has been in office only six weeks and is still awaiting Senate confirmation. He's not going to declare war on Arpaio without Napolitano's blessing.

Barger tells me he hopes ongoing discussions with the sheriff's office will lead to a timetable for transitioning inmates out of Tent City and into the new jails.

"How long do you keep granting variances to the fire code?" says Barger, who made it clear to me that 12 years is long enough.

But Barger's engaging in wishful thinking if he believes Arpaio will voluntarily phase out the tents. The hammer will have to come down or Outlaw Joe will never budge.

It's clear that Barger wants to do the right thing. He wants to do his job, which is to ensure the safety of Arizona's citizenry, even if they are inmates in Arpaio's lockups. What the governor must do now is stop going against the wishes of her bedrock constituency of progressives and stand up to Outlaw Joe. She must back her fire marshal's clear belief that Tent City's an anachronism.

There's no percentage for her in staying out of it this time.

phoenixnewtimes.com | originally published: February 24, 2005

<#==#>