US ‘floating Abu Ghraib’ in Spain

From British daily The Morning Star:

Stop the US torture ship

Friday 29 May 2009

by Adrian Roberts

The notorious USS Bataan, which has held prisoners including John Walker Lindh, David Hicks and Ibn Al-Sheikh Al-Libi, docking in Mallorca on Thursday morning.

British human rights campaigners Reprieve have urged the Spanish authorities to board and search US torture ship USS Bataan after it moored at the Palma de Mallorca holiday resort.

Reprieve said on Friday that the USS Bataan is one of the US government’s most infamous “floating prisons” and will remain at the island until Saturday.

At least nine prisoners including John Walker Lindh, David Hicks and Ibn Al-Sheikh Al-Libi, who recently died in mysterious circumstances in Libyan custody, are confirmed to have been held aboard the USS Bataan.

Reprieve pointed out that, in January 2002, Mr Al-Libi was flown to the ship, which was then cruising the northern Arabian Sea, before his interrogation began.

From there, he was rendered to Egypt where he was forced under torture to confess that al-Qaida and Saddam Hussein were in league on weapons of mass destruction.

Details regarding the operation of prison ships have emerged through a number of sources, including the US military and other administration officials, the Council of Europe, various parliamentary bodies and journalists, as well as the testimonies of prisoners themselves.

Reprieve investigations also suggest that a further 15 ships have been used to hold prisoners beyond the rule of law since 2001. Prisoners are interrogated aboard the vessels and then rendered to other, often undisclosed, locations.

A former prisoner told Reprieve: “One of my fellow prisoners in Guantanamo was at sea on an American ship before coming to Guantanamo. He was in the cage next to me. He told me that there were about 50 other prisoners on the ship.

“They were all closed off in the bottom of the ship. The prisoner commented to me that it was like something you see on TV. The people held on the ship were beaten even more severely than in Guantanamo.”

Reprieve investigator Clara Gutteridge said: “Ships have been used by the US to hold terror suspects illegally since the days of president Clinton, so it would be no surprise if this practice continues under Obama.

“The US and Spanish governments, as well as the EU, must urgently reveal what this ship is doing on European territory.”

Reprieve director Clive Stafford Smith added: “The arrival of USS Bataan should ring alarm bells in any law-abiding country. The Spanish authorities are duty-bound to board and search the ship for missing prisoners.”

Mr Stafford Smith has also pointed out that the US chooses ships to try to keep their misconduct as far as possible from the prying eyes of the media and lawyers.

“By its own admission, the US government is currently detaining at least 26,000 people without trial in secret prisons and information suggests up to 80,000 have been through the system since 2001,” he said.

“The US government must show a commitment to rights and basic humanity by immediately revealing who these people are, where they are and what has been done to them.”

Bush Told Journalist in 1999 “I’m Going to Invade Iraq”: here.

Ancient musical instrument lituus recreated

From BigNews Network:

Scientists recreate long forgotten music instrument ‘Lituus’

ANI Sunday 31st May, 2009

Londo : By using a new software, researchers from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and the University of Edinburgh have been able to recreate a long forgotten musical instrument called the Lituus.

Played in Ancient Rome, the 2.4m (8ft) long trumpet-like instrument fell out of use some 300 years ago.

Bach‘s motet (a choral musical composition) “O Jesu Christ, meins lebens licht” was one of the last pieces of music written for the Lituus.

Now, for the first time, the 18th Century composition has been played, as it should have been heard.

The Lituus produced a piercing trumpet-like sound interleaving with the vocals when it was performed by the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis (SCB).

Edinburgh University researchers developed a system that enabled them to design the Lituus using the best guesses of its shape and range of notes.

The 2.4m-long thin straight horn, with a flared bell at the end, is an unwieldy instrument with a limited tonal range that is hard to play.

The software was originally developed by a PhD student Dr Alistair Braden to improve the design of modern brass instruments, reports the BBC.

Later Braden and his supervisor Professor Murray Campbell were approached by a Swiss-based music conservatoire, the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis, to help them recreate the Lituus.

SCB gave the Edinburgh team their expert thoughts on what the Lituus may have been like in terms of the notes it produced, its tonal quality and how it might have been played.

They also provided cross-section diagrams of instruments they believed to be similar to the Lituus.

“The software used this data to design an elegant, usable instrument with the required acoustic and tonal qualities,” says Professor Campbell.

“The key was to ensure that the design we generated would not only sound right but look right as well,” he said.

He added: “Crucially, the final design produced by the software could have been made by a manufacturer in Bach’s time without too much difficulty.”

Sound of the lituus: here.

Sea slug newcomer to Dutch waters

The sea slug species Facelina auriculata was first observed in Dutch waters in 1992. This year, there were more observations than in earlier years; though the species is stil scarce, and all observations are from the Oosterschelde.

Long-tailed tit and mating frogs

Like yesterday, today again to the nature reserve.

A female great spotted woodpecker on an oak tree above me.

This video says about itself:

Males of the Edible Frog (Rana kl. esculenta)singing together to attract a female. These frogs were filmed in Belgium.

I have often seen edible frogs in and near the “dream pond”. Usually, those sightings have been extremely brief: frogs which one only starts to note as they jump away from cover just before one’s feet very quickly, then disappearing. However, this morning, quite some edible frogs are sitting quietly on a small log in the middle of the dream pond. Two of them, on the right hand side of the log, are mating: the female is darker green and bigger than the male.

Then, a long-tailed tit. Maybe it is close to its nest, as I hear the sound of young birds.

On the waterlily leaves, like yesterday, red-eyed damselflies.

A wren, sitting just three metres away on a conifer branch, calling.

On the meadow: shelduck, lapwing. An oystercatcher drives a carrion crow away.

Barn swallows. Grey heron.

A song thrush on the path.

Sounds of green woodpecker, chiffchaff, robin, and chaffinch.

A speckled wood butterfly.

Orange hawkweed flowering.

Painted lady butterfly.

Tree frogs in the Netherlands: here.

Sick games with Rosa Luxemburg’s dead body exposed

From British daily The Independent:

Why ‘Red Rosa‘s’ fans got the wrong grave

Pathologist says headless body in mortuary belongs to Luxemburg

By Tony Paterson in Berlin

Saturday, 30 May 2009

She was nicknamed “Red Rosa” and millions of Germans still make the pilgrimage to an unremarkable suburb of east Berlin to pay their respects at her grave. But now it has emerged that the body of the assassinated revolutionary heroine, Rosa Luxemburg, may never have been buried at all.

Pathologists at Berlin’s main Charité hospital claimed yesterday that a headless, handless and footless “mystery corpse” that had been lying unidentified deep in its mortuary for decades was almost certainly that of the early 20th century leftist leader who was shot in the head in 1919. “The corpse reveals evidence which bears a striking similarity to the body of the real Rosa Luxemburg,” said Dr Michael Tsokos, head of the hospital’s pathology department. “I doubt that she was ever buried.”

Polish–born Luxemburg was one of Germany’s foremost Marxist theorists and founded the German Communist Party, the DKP, on 1 January, 1919.

No: the German communist party then founded was the KPD, not the DKP. After the Second World War, in 1956, West Germany (the Federal Republic) banned the KPD. The DKP was founded later, in 1968, in West Germany; and is active today throughout re-unified Germany.

But just a fortnight later, the 47-year-old was captured, allegedly tortured, and finally shot in the head by right-wing militiamen. Her body was dumped in the city’s Landwehr canal, but later retrieved, with records showing that she was buried in Friedrichsfelde cemetery five months after her death.

However, the post-mortem carried out on the body before it was interred did not show evidence of her being hit by rifle butts or shot in the head, according to Dr Tsokos. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, the corpse was exhumed to allow a second autopsy and that raised more doubts. Hospital records showed that Luxemburg was born with a hip deformation that resulted in her legs being different lengths, but the buried corpse showed no such limb variation.

The body discovered in the Charité’s vault was only discovered by chance as Dr Tsokos was working on putting together an exhibit. A computer scan has revealed the body of a woman aged between 40 and 50, who had suffered from arthritis and had one leg slightly longer than the other. Dr Tsokos said he was now hoping to obtain a personal item of Luxemburg in order to do a DNA test and definitively confirm the body was hers. “A hat would be nice,” he said, as it could contain strands of her hair.

Luxemburg was assassinated along with fellow revolutionary Karl Liebknecht. She died at the height of a post World War One leftist uprising in Berlin at the hands of German soldiers [rather, ex soldier privateers] still supporting the exiled and defeated Kaiser Wilhelm II. The historian Isaac Deutscher described her murder as “Nazi Germany’s first triumph”, the celebrated playwright Berthold Brecht wrote a poem in her honour and Communist East Germany named a central Berlin square after her.

Most of the German left – ranging from Social Democrats to hard-line former East German Communists – have a special place in their heart for “Red Rosa“. The notion that millions of her fans have been duped for 90 years by going on pilgrimages each January to a grave that does not contain her body was greeted with shock and consternation yesterday.

The Rosa Luxemburg Foundation said that it was “deeply dismayed” to learn that the body of an unknown woman appeared to have been passed off as Luxemburg. It blamed Germany’s then Minister for the Army, Gustav Noske, for playing a ” disgusting game with the dead” and urged the government of Chancellor Angela Merkel to “clear up the mystery and finally lay Rosa Luxemburg’s corpse to rest”.

See also here. And here.

Damselflies, shelduck, and fish

Yesterday in the nature reserve.

Speckled wood.

A great crested grebe with two chicks on its back in the castle pond.

Also, coots and mallards with chicks.

On white waterlily leaves, red-eyed damselflies.

Red-eyed damselfly species: here.

In the meadow: hares. And oystercatchers, a shelduck, and lapwings.

Pied wagtail.

Carp and schools of many smaller fish in the castle pond.

A young grey heron in a treetop nest.

September 2010. New research shows that European brown hares can develop a second pregnancy before the previous litter is delivered. This superconception increases their reproductive success: here.

North American hares: here.

Secret photos of rape of Iraqis

This video from the USA is an interview with Major General Antonio M. Taguba on torture in Abu Ghraib.

By Tom Eley in the USA:

Torture photos: US soldiers raped, sodomized Iraqi prisoners

29 May 2009

In an interview with the British newspaper the Daily Telegraph published Wednesday, former US General Antonio Taguba said that photographs the Obama administration is seeking to suppress show images of US soldiers raping and sodomizing Iraqi prisoners. Taguba, who conducted the military inquiry of prisoner abuse at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison in 2004 after some photos of US soldiers torturing prisoners became public, said that among the photos are images of soldiers raping a female prisoner, raping a male detainee, and committing “sexual assaults on prisoners with objects including a truncheon, wire and phosphorescent tube,” according to the Telegraph.

Gen. Taguba said even the description of the photos is explosive. “These pictures show torture, abuse, rape and every indecency,” Taguba said. “The mere description of these pictures is horrendous enough, take my word for it.”

Also from the USA: Members of the 101st Airborne Division were ordered to suspend regular operations at the Fort Campbell, Kentucky, Army base Wednesday after the suicide toll rose to 11 for the year: here.

Foreign Office abandoned me to Iraqi jail torture, Briton says: here.

Nearly 50,000 rapes take place in the UK every year, but only a few are covered by the media: here.

Iraq faces the mother of all corruption scandals: here.

Busted, Pentagon: Why The Photos Probably Do Show Detainees Sodomized and Raped, by Naomi Wolf: here.

RELEASE THE ABU GHRAIB RAPE PHOTOS: here.

U.S. Soldiers Accused Of Raping Iraqi Women Escape Prosecution: here.

IVAW Calls For Release of Detainee Abuse Photos: here.

Cabinet wants British troops to stay [in Iraq] to guard Gulf oil: here.

Denials of involvement in torture, such as those by Tony Blair, are not enough. A full judicial inquiry is needed: here.

Oystercatcher and parakeet

Yesterday, along the railroad, as I watched a poppy, a ring-necked parakeet overhead, screaming.

A bit later, an oystercatcher flying. Then, a redshank sound.

The white storks were on their nest near the nature reserve.

This is a marsh warbler video.

This morning, the sound of a marsh warbler along the railroad.

US, British, economic crisis

A series of reports have painted a grim picture of the British economy following the bailout of the banks, with mounting public debt pointing to the threat of savage public spending cuts: here.

USA: There is little in the legislation passed by Congress to aid the large numbers of working and middle class people who are being crushed by credit card debt: here.

Crisis, but not for war profiteers

By Mike Blanchfield, Canwest News Service in Canada:

Recession won’t slow military spending: MacKay

Published: Wednesday, May 27, 2009

OTTAWA — The global economic downturn won’t prevent the Canadian Forces from spending $60 billion on new equipment, Defence Minister Peter MacKay told the defence industry elite on Wednesday.

As he reiterated the Conservative government‘s ambitious spending plans for new military hardware — planes, ships and armoured vehicles — MacKay touted military contracts as a major stimulus for jobs in Canadian communities during hard economic times.

This is extreme Right voodoo economics (to quote United States President G. H. W. Bush just for once), Mr MacKay. Of course, the money going to the war profiteers now, will not go to other economic activities. Which will suffer, costing probably a lot more jobs than there will be in the war profiteers‘ corporations.

“The funding will be there, I assure you. It’s locked in,” MacKay told an audience of hundreds of industry and military representatives attending Canada’s largest security and defence trade show.

Yeah right. Unlike other funding, which actually benefits people instead of killing them, and which is not “locked in”.

Earlier this week, the finance minister said Canada’s deficit this year would soar to $50 billion, beyond the $34 billion in his most recent budget.

The report of MacKay’s speech continues, noting that he spoke about “the sustainable economic benefits” of throwing taxpayers’ money into the bottomless pit of war profiteering. Yeah right. MacKay is stealing the language of pro environment economists. However, the only thing “green” about wars is some of the military uniforms. Armed forces are destructive from an environmental viewpoint; even more so in ruinous wars.

MacKay said the government’s long-term defence strategy would grow this year’s $19-billion annual defence budget to $30 billion by 2027. Over that time, that will mean close to $490 billion in defence spending, including $60 billion on new equipment.

If Conservatives are still in power by 2027, then it may turn out even worse. And, oh yeah, cut the hypocritical cant about “defence”; as Canadian soldiers are not dying while stopping foreign armies from occupying Canada, but for pipelines thousands of miles away in Afghanistan.

That means [United States] American defence giants such as Boeing and Lockeed [sic; Lockheed] Martin, who have received more than $1.5 billion in contracts in the last 18 months must now spend that much money in Canada, he said.

How would Boeing, Lockheed, and other US war profiteers respond if McKay would ever try to make that pious wish reality, not just propaganda words? They will say that it is against “free enterprise” for big corporations; to which Mr MacKay and his party themselves subscribe.

The president needs to ban Lockheed Martin and all other government contractors that get more than half their revenues from government from engaging in any political activities at all. Taxpayers shouldn’t be paying for this lobbying: here.