From his well-wishers at the DNC’s Associated Press:

Ailing Castro gives power to brother

Fidel Castro temporarily relinquished his presidential powers to his brother Raul on Monday night and told Cubans in a statement that he had undergone surgery.

The Cuban leader said he had suffered intestinal bleeding, apparently due to stress from recent public appearances in Argentina and Cuba, according to the letter read live on television by his secretary, Carlos Valenciaga.

Castro said that extreme stress "had provoked in me a sharp intestinal crisis with sustained bleeding that obligated me to undergo a complicated surgical procedure."

Castro said he was temporarily relinquishing the presidency to his brother and successor Raul, the defense minister.

He said the move was of "a provisional character."

He said celebrations scheduled for his 80th birthday on Aug. 13 were to be postponed until Dec. 2, the 50th anniversary of Cuba’s Revolutionary Armed Forces.

Castro said he would also temporarily relinquish his duties as first secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba to Raul, who turned 75 in June and who has been taking on a more public profile in recent weeks.

If only we could have a smooth succession of power like that.

From the DNC’s Associated Press:

Gitmo guards often attacked by detainees

By JOHN SOLOMON, Associated Press
Monday, July 31, 2006

WASHINGTON — The prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay during the war on terror have attacked their military guards hundreds of times, turning broken toilet parts, utensils, radios and even a bloody lizard tail into makeshift weapons, Pentagon reports say.

Incident reports reviewed by The Associated Press indicate Military Police guards are routinely head-butted, spat upon and doused by "cocktails" of feces, urine, vomit and sperm collected in meal cups by the prisoners.

They’ve been repeatedly grabbed, punched or assaulted by prisoners who reach through the small "bean holes" used to deliver food and blankets through cell doors, the reports say. Serious assaults requiring medical attention, however, are rare, the reports indicate.

The detainee "reached under the face mask of an IRF (Initial Reaction Force) team member’s helmet and scratched his face, attempting to gouge his eyes," states a May 27, 2005, report on an effort to remove a recalcitrant prisoner from his cell.

"The IRF team member received scratches to his face and eye socket area," the report said.

Since its creation in early 2002, the U.S. detention camp on Cuba’s coast has been a controversial symbol of the Bush administration’s war on terror, bringing allegations of prisoner mistreatment, debates over civil rights and a landmark legal battle to win rights for the detainees.

At one point, more than 600 foreign men captured in the war on terror were kept there. Many have been released to their home countries, reducing the current population to about 450. Ten detainees have been accused of war crimes, but no one has been tried.

The Supreme Court has ruled that the men are entitled to lawyers and access to the courts and that the administration’s original plan to give them justice through military tribunals was illegal.

Guards currently stationed at Guantanamo describe a tense atmosphere in which prisoners often orchestrate violence in hopes of unnerving their captors, especially with attacks using bodily fluids.

"I mean, seeing a human being act that way, it’s terrifying. … You are constantly watching before you take your next step to see if something is about to happen," Navy Senior Chief Petty Officer Mack D. Keen told AP in an interview from Guantanamo.

"You see little signs. They kind of show their hand every once in a while. They’ll take their Quran and they’ll cover it up," he said. "When you see a group of detainees taking their Quran and putting it away, you know something is about to happen."

Moazamm Begg, 38, a prisoner for more than two years at Guantanamo before being released to Great Britain, said he was suspicious of the Pentagon’s description of incidents, especially allegations that Muslim men tore their Qurans or used sperm in attacks. The Pentagon continues to publicly question Begg’s claim of innocence.

"This just doesn’t make sense — especially since for Muslims this would be something that was disgusting, something that just wouldn’t be done," he said. He added that some detainees told him they had mixed toothpaste and spit in the cocktails to make it look like semen.

Begg, who has written a book and spoken frequently about his experience, said most incidents he witnessed were spontaneous reactions "when word spread" among prisoners that a guard had done something wrong.

"I rarely saw lone prisoners acting out on their own for no reason except if they had some sort of mental illness or if they were on medication," he said.

Nonetheless, the incident reports released under the Freedom of Information Act and reviewed by AP, provide a rare chronicle of events inside the prison from the guards’ perspective.

Entire wings of prisoners were reported to become riotous after complaints emerged that guards mishandled a Quran or mistreated prisoners. On two occasions, however, prisoners themselves were reported to have destroyed their Muslim holy books, the reports state.

"Detainee residing in cell (redacted) block tore his Quran into small pieces," a guard reported in May 2003. A month later, a prisoner "did intentionally destroy his Quran and throw (it) out of his cell," another report stated.

The reports detail more than 440 incidents between guards and prisoners from December 2002 through summer 2005 that resulted in recommendations of discipline, an average of about three per week. The names of guards and prisoners as well as the final discipline were blacked out by the Pentagon.

Often, guards went weeks without reporting problems; other times incidents were bunched together during times of frustration and tension.

For instance, nearly a quarter of the incidents occurred in July 2005, the month dozens of detainees started an extended hunger strike.

Tensions likewise flared during Christmas week 2004, with inmates frequently spitting on guards. On Christmas Eve, a prisoner who was angry that he couldn’t finish his meal was said to have used a plastic fork-spoon utensil — called a spork — to attack a guard collecting his tray.

"Detainee stabbed the MP guard … in the hand with his spork from chow meal," the report said, adding the prisoner later "made a slicing motion across his neck" and vowed to kill the guard.

With many nearing five years in U.S. captivity, the prisoners "have a Ph.D. in being a detainee" and "know our procedures and they try to turn them against us and try to make us question what we are doing," said Army Lt. Col. Michael J. Nicolucci, the prison’s executive officer.

"They’ll take the smallest things, be it a piece of rust," he said. "They told us they are going to take that piece of rust and they are going for the jugular, they are going for the eye. They know what our vulnerabilities are, anatomically speaking."

Meal plates, shower flip-flops, cleaning brushes and other items deemed harmless in civilian life also are commonly turned into weapons, the reports said. For instance:

–"Detainee in cell (redacted) grabbed the radio from an MP and then threw the radio at the MP. The detainee then threw rocks at the MP," a Dec. 23, 2003, incident report stated.

–A detainee "reached out of his bean hole and attacked MP (name redacted) with a piece of metal foot pad from toilet striking him on the left hip area," a July 15, 2005, report said.

–"Detainee broke off the top of his sink, subsequently broke out the window then began throwing the sink and pieces of pipes at the Block Guard," a March 25, 2005, report said.

One of the most unusual incidents detailed in the four-inch stack of incident reports occurred when a detainee in the prison recreation yard assaulted a guard with a bloody tail torn from a lizard.

The detainee "caught the iguana by the tail at which time the tail detached," the May 2005 report described. When the guard turned to talk to a commanding officer, "he felt something strike him in the lower right back" and then "saw the tail on the ground at his feet and blood was in the same area of his uniform." The detainee said he was "just playing."

Nicolucci said one of the most serious incidents occurred this May, too recent to be recorded in the Pentagon’s released reports. A prisoner staged an apparent suicide attempt while his inmates slicked the floors with human waste, seeking to overpower guards when they slipped, he said.

"We provide fans in order to keep them cool," Nicolucci recalled. "And they were using the basket, or the grate of the fan as a shield, the blades as machetes, the pole as a battering ram."

That disturbance was turned back in a few minutes with some guards and prisoners sustaining minor injuries, he said.

The Landmark Legal Foundation, a conservative legal group that fought to force the Pentagon to release the reports under the Freedom of Information Act, said it hopes the information brings balance to the Guantanamo debate.

"Lawyers for the detainees have done a great job painting their clients as innocent victims of U.S. abuse when the fact is that these detainees, as a group, are barbaric and extremely dangerous," Landmark President Mark Levin said. "They are using their terrorist training on the battlefield to abuse our guards and manipulate our Congress and our court system."

Though all detainees are foreigners, many are clearly Americanized when it comes to their insults and gestures. Male guards are frequently derided as "donkeys" while female guards are routinely called "bitches" or harassed by references to their breasts or genitalia, the reports said.

In all, nearly a quarter of incidents involved female guards, the reports show.

"They absolutely target female guards," Nicolucci said. "They have a lot of cultural biases about females, and we let them know in our culture that females do everything males do in a professional job environment, and we just hold firm."

James A. Gondles Jr., executive director of the American Correctional Association that sets standards for U.S. prisons, said much behavior inside Guantanamo mirrors that of civilian prisons though the attacks with bodily fluids seem more numerous.

"It happens from time to time at facilities here, but it seems the majority of … assaults at Gitmo were either spitting, or bodily fluids being thrown on the guards," said Gondles, who has visited Guantanamo twice at the Pentagon’s invitation and reviewed the reports at AP’s request.

The bodily fluid attacks are so numerous that guards now frequently wear specialized shields to protect their faces.

The incident reports show waves of orchestrated behavior.

For instance, prisoners repeatedly grabbed their guards’ whistles over a five-day period in June 2004. In July 2005, guards reported several instances of rock throwing, spitting and flip-flop hitting. Rocks were hidden under shower mats, the reports said.

The incident reports also are noteworthy for information that is missing. With redacted names, it is impossible to tell whether bad behavior is widespread or the work of a few repeat offenders. Likewise, the documents don’t tell whether certain guards are prone to confrontation.

Prisoners’ hunger strikes, suicide attempts and threats to injure themselves aren’t considered disciplinary matters and thus aren’t recorded in the incident reports. Yet the Pentagon acknowledges there have been scores of such incidents.

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., a prisoner of war during Vietnam, said the treatment of the guards has been overshadowed by the legal and political debates surrounding the detainees, but he has been impressed with the guards’ professionalism.

"Our personnel there have perhaps the most difficult task you can have in the military outside of being in a combat zone. … These are bad guys and some of the most hardened of hardened criminals. And some I think will need to be kept permanently," he said.

McCain said the detainees’ behavior and the likelihood of permanent confinement only hastens the need for the administration and Congress to finalize detention and trial policies consistent with the Supreme Court’s direction.

While Washington addresses those questions, the guards look to stay one step ahead of the detainees.

"Yes, you do get upset but you get somebody to take your place," Keen said in explaining how he survives the tensions of the cell block. "You go outside. You walk it off and you come back and (say) I want to be back in the fight."

Looks like the Associated Press thought this was a safe time to bring out a report like this, when everyone’s attention is focused on Lebanon.

That’s what they mean by balance.

(Thanks to 1sttofight for the heads up.)

From the DNC’s Associated Press:

An Iranian inmate peers from behind a wall as a guard walks by at the female section of Evin jail, north of Tehran, June 2006. Iranian student activist Akbar Mohammadi has died in Evin prison following a five-day hunger strike.

Iranian Dissident Dies After Hunger Strike

By NASSER KARIMI

TEHRAN, Iran - A jailed former student leader died in prison after a nine-day hunger strike, a human rights activist said Monday. Akbar Mohammadi, who died late Sunday, was arrested after taking part in anti-government protests at Tehran University in July 1999 — the country’s biggest domestic crisis since the 1979 Islamic revolution.

He was sentenced to death but the sentence was later reduced to 15 years in prison.

He was released on medical leave last year to seek treatment for a spinal-cord injury suffered after his arrest, said Kohyar Goodarzi, a member of the Student Committee of Human Rights Reporters of Iran.

Two months ago, toward the end of the yearlong leave, Mohammadi "was arrested without any explanation," Goodarzi said, and placed in Tehran’s notorious Evin prison.

Mohammadi went on a hunger strike to protest a lack of proper medical care, Goodarzi said.

"He suffered a heart attack as a result of his strike," Goodarzi said.

Senior prison official Sohrab Soleimani said Mohammadi had been receiving appropriate medical care.

"He was drinking water and tea and was under doctors’ supervision," the semiofficial Islamic Students News Agency quoted Soleimani as saying.

Some 25 Iranian political activists and prisoners issued a statement criticizing the government for its treatment of Mohammadi.

"Those who returned him to the prison should now be held responsible," for the consequences of his rearrest, it said.

There’s not even one wire service photo of this courageous Iranian.

And yet Cindy Sheehan’s smoothies and ice cream non-fast got all the headlines in our one party media.

From his fans at the Associated Press:

Hugo Chavez Receives Iran’s Highest Honor

By NASSER KARIMI

TEHRAN, Iran  — Iran awarded Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez its highest state medal on Sunday for supporting Tehran in its nuclear standoff with the international community, while Chavez urged the world to rise up and defeat the U.S., state-run media in both countries reported.

The leftist Venezuelan leader also condemned Israel for what he called the "terrorism" and "madness" of its attacks in Lebanon, Venezuelan state television reported.

"Let’s save the human race, let’s finish off the U.S. empire," Chavez said. "This (task) must be assumed with strength by the majority of the peoples of the world."

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad presented Chavez with the Islamic Republic Medal in a ceremony at Tehran University. The award was to show Iran’s gratitude for his "support for Iran’s stance on the international scene, especially its opposition to a resolution by the International Atomic Energy Agency," Iranian state-run television said.

"He is the one who has resisted imperialism for years and has defended the interests of his and other Latin American countries," Ahmadinejad was quoted as saying.

In February, Venezuela opposed an IAEA decision to report Iran to the U.N. Security Council over its disputed nuclear program.

A draft proposal Friday by permanent members of the U.N. Security Council gives Iran until the end of August to suspend uranium enrichment or face the threat of economic and diplomatic sanctions.

The U.S. accuses Iran of seeking nuclear weapons. Tehran maintains its program is purely peaceful and aimed at generating electricity.

 Chavez will save the human race just like his idol Castro has.

By enslaving it.

From the ever politically correct Associated Press:

Mass. Governor Sorry For ‘Tar Baby’ Comments

POSTED: 3:55 am HST July 31, 2006

BOSTON — Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney is apologizing for referring to the troubled Big Dig construction project as a "tar baby."

Romney made the comment during a speech at a fundraiser with Iowa Republicans on Saturday. Romney told the crowd "The best thing politically would be to stay as far away from that tar baby as I can."

Romney said he didn’t know anyone would be offended by the term some consider a racial epithet.

Black leaders were outraged. The term dates back to the 19th century Uncle Remus stories, referring to a doll made of tar that traps Br’er Rabbit. It has come to be known as a way of describing a sticky mess and has been used as a derogatory term for a black person.

Romney is considering a run for president in 2008 and acknowledges he’s taking a political risk by taking control of the project after a fatal tunnel ceiling collapse but said inaction would have been even worse.

The fact that a phrase has been wrongly co-opted by some for use as an epithet doesn’t make it so. (Or a lot of words would be off-limits.)

From the Oxford English Dictionary:

tar-baby

(a) the doll smeared with tar, set to catch Brer Rabbit (see quot. 1881); hence transf. , spec. an object of censure; a sticky problem, or one which is only aggravated by attempts to solve it ( colloq. )

1881 J. C. Harris Uncle Remus ii. 20 Brer Fox..got ’im some tar, en mix it wid some turkentime, en fix up a contrapshun what he call a *Tar-Baby.

Meanwhile, more from our watchdog media at the Associated Press:

Police Search For Witnesses in Illinois Tourist Shooting

MIAMI (AP) — Authorities urged witnesses to come forward Monday and provide information in the fatal shooting of an Illinois tourist who was killed while asking for directions.

Police believe several people witnessed 54-year-old Ronald Gentile’s killing Saturday afternoon, but only one has provided any information. That hasn’t been enough to find the suspect.

“People are telling us they want to take the streets back from the criminal element, but don’t seem to realize we can’t do it alone,” Miami police spokesman Lt. Bill Schwartz said Monday.

Authorities say Gentile - a furniture salesman from Homewood, Ill. - was here celebrating his son Paul’s 17th birthday. He dropped the teen off at his restaurant job at a shopping mall and the two planned to meet later Saturday to watch “Superman Returns.”

Police believe Gentile pulled over in the Coconut Grove area to ask for directions when a man dressed entirely in black approached the car, robbed and shot him.

“We are speculating that because he was not familiar with the area, he stopped to ask for directions," said Miami police spokesman William Moreno.

Police say Gentile was seen exiting his rented white Chevrolet Cobalt, running a short distance, then collapsing. He was pronounced dead en route to Jackson Memorial Hospital.

Authorities would not say where or how many times Gentile was shot. Schwartz said a diamond ring, a gold bracelet, a necklace and a wallet were stolen from the victim.

“There are many businesses and many people in the area,” Moreno said. “There are many witnesses, and only one stayed with the victim. We are asking those witnesses to realize that this is a human life, a great father.”

The victim’s family pleaded through the media to find the killer.

“This is a horrible crime,” said Gentile’s ex-wife, Cathy Girten-Gleber. “We are his family. We loved him. We need to find the person who did this.”

Shootings of tourists panicked many Florida vacationers in the early 1990s, but have subsided significantly since. The state’s tourism industry took two years to recover after 10 tourist-related slayings in 1992 and 1993; six of the killings were in the Miami area.

You see, the AP would like to help the Miami police get witnesses. They are, after all, crusaders for justice.

But not to the point of mentioning the fact that the perp is black.

That would be a tar baby, don’t you know.

From Israel Insider:

Hezbollywood? Evidence mounts that Qana collapse and deaths were staged

By Reuven Koret

July 31, 2006

It was to be a perfect Hollywood ending for Hezbollah. Just as the Israeli bombing of the village of Qana in 1996 brought a premature end to Israel’s Operation "Grapes of Wrath," so too a sequel of Qana II could change, once and for all, the direction of Israel’s current summer blockbuster, "Change of Direction." Ten years ago, world condemnation of an errant Israeli shell that hit a civilian compound forced then-PM Shimon Peres to curtail the offensive against terror bases.

The setting was also perfect: Kana was again being used as a primary site for launching rockets against Israeli cities. The IDF reported that more than 150 rockets had been launched from Qana and its vicinity at Israeli civilians, wreaking destruction in Kiryat Shmona, Maalot, Nahariya and Haifa. It was only a matter of time before the Israeli Air Force would come for a visit, using pinpoint targeting of the sites used to launch rockets, Hezbollah logistical centers and weapon storage facilities.

On the morning of July 30, according to the IDF, the air force came in three waves. In the first, between midnight and one in the morning, there was a strike at or near the building that eventually collapsed. There was a second strike at other targets far from the collapse building several hours later, and a third strike at around 7:30 in the morning. There too the nearest hit was some 460 meters away, according to the IDF. But first reports of a building collapse came only around 8 am.

Thus there was an unexplained 7 to 8 hour gap between the time of the helicopter strike and the building collapse. Brigadier General Amir Eshel, Head of the Air Force Headquarters, in a press briefing, told journalists that "the attack on the structure in the Qana village took place between midnight and one in the morning. The gap between the timing of the collapse of the building and the time of the strike on it is unclear."

Gen. Eshel appeared genuinely mystified by the gap in time. He "I’m saying this very carefully, because at this time I don’t have a clue as to what the explanation could be for this gap," he added.

The army’s only explanation was that somehow there was unexploded Hezbollah ordnance in the building that only detonated much later.

"It could be that inside the building, things that could eventually cause an explosion were being housed, things that we could not blow up in the attack, and maybe remained there, Brigadier General Eshel said.

Eshel reported that as recently as two days ago, military intelligence reported the building area had been used by the terrorists for storage or firing of weapons. It was a bad place to cram dozens of women and children.

There are other mysteries. The roof of the building was intact. Journalist Ben Wedeman of CNN noted that there was a larger crater next to the building, but observed that the building appeared not to have collapsed as a result of the Israeli strike.

Why would the civilians who had supposedly taken shelter in the basement of the building not leave after the post-midnight attack? They just went back to sleep and had the bad luck to wait for the building to collapse in the morning?

What we do know is that sometime after dawn a call went hour to journalists and rescue workers to come to the scene. And come they did.

While Hezbollah and its apologists have been claiming that civilians could not freely flee the scene due to Israeli destruction of bridges and roads, the journalists and rescue teams from nearby Tyre had no problem getting there.

Lebanese rescue teams did not start evacuating the building until the morning and only after the camera crews came. The absence of a real rescue effort was explained by saying that equipment was lacking. There were no scenes of live or injured people being extracted.

There was little blood, CNN’s Wedeman noted: all the victims, he concluded, appeared to have died while as they were sleeping — sleeping, apparently, through thunderous Israeli air attacks. Rescue workers equipped with cameras were removing the bodies from the same opening in the collapsed structure. Journalists were not allowed near the collapsed building.

Rescue workers filmed as they went carried the victims on the stretchers, occasionally flipping up the blankets so that cameras could show the faces and bodies of the dead.

But Israelis steeled to scenes of carnage from Palestinian suicide bombings and Hezbollah rocket attack could not help but notice that these victims did not look like our victims. Their faces were ashen gray. Their limbs appeared to have stiffened, from rigor mortis. Neither were effects that would have resulted from an Israeli attack hours before. These were bodies that looked like they had been dead for days.

Viewers can judge for themselves. But the accumulating evidence suggests another explanation for what happened at Kana. The scenario would be a setup in which the time between the initial Israeli bombing near the building and morning reports of its collapse would have been used to "plant" bodies killed in previous fighting — reports in previous days indicated that nearby Tyre was used as a temporary morgue — place them in the basement, and then engineer a "controlled demolition" to fake another Israeli attack.

The well-documented use by Palestinians of this kind of faked footage — from the alleged shooting of Mohammed Dura in Gaza, scenes from Jenin of "dead" victims falling off gurneys and then climbing back on — have merited the creation of a new film genre called "Palliwood."

There is increasing evidence that the Kana sequel is another episode in this genre, a variety which might be called Hezbollywood. The Hezbollah have evidently learned their craft well.

The current suspension of Israeli military air activity is supposedly intended, among other things, to be used for the investigation of what really happened at Qana. It is to be hoped that there are real journalists on the scene, and unbiased medical examiners, who will have the courage and intelligence to sort out the anomalies and contradictions, and get to the buried truth of what happened.

There is no shortage of victims in Lebanon and Israel these days. From this vantage point, at this time, it looks like in the case of Qana, the world’s media was duped in a cruel and colossal hoax by a terror organization that knows no moral bounds in its exploitation of suffering and anti-Israel hatred. But, as usual, the only party expected to pay the full price will be Israelis.

Yes, it would be a Hollywood ending for it all to end in Qana, exactly as it did a decade ago. But perfect endings, and perfect crimes, are rarely pulled off in real life.

Israelis will not be able to investigate this claim directly. The question remains whether honest men and women of other nationalities will let this likely lie stand or press for the revelation of the improbable and inconvenient truth.

As the author points out (like we have earlier) a strangely similar "atrocity" in Qana saved Hezbollah’s neck in 1996.

There is also the matter of the time gap, since the Israelis attacked at 1 am and the building collapsed hours later. And the inexplicable delay of the bodies not being removed until hours after that.

The light in the photos make it look like late morning or mid day or even later.

But, as the author also notes, the most compelling evidence is the photos of the bodies themselves. They simply don’t look like recently deceased bodies. But ones that have been dead for some time.

And this is certainly not something that one would put past the Hezbollah to stage.

There’s a long tradition.

  Update!

And there is the question as to how the locals got this four story poster printed up so quickly:

Hezbollah supporters place a banner showing US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and reading in Arabic: “The massacre of children in Qana 2, is the gift of Rice. The clever bombs..Stupid,” in downtown Beirut.

The time and date on this photo from the AFP is Sun Jul 30, 2:36 PM ET. Of course we don’t know when the photo was actually taken.

But even if it was taken just before it was filed at AFP, that is pretty quick production from such a war-torn area.

From the Kennebec Morning Sentinel:

Farmington group backs fast-for-peace effort

By BETTY JESPERSEN
Staff Writer

Saturday, July 29, 2006

FARMINGTON — For the past three Fridays, Julieanne Reed, who has never demonstrated for a cause before, has been driving from Mexico to Farmington to stand side-by-side with a small group at a silent vigil advocating the end to the war in Iraq.

Yesterday, she took another first step. She is among 14 or so men and women who have publicly committed to join a national fast for peace. The commitment is in solidarity with a nationwide grassroots movement, CODEPINK, that asks the American people to forgo food for at least 24 hours.

"I felt in the past I didn’t know enough to take a stand. Now I know I want the war to stop," Reed said as she joined her fellow fasters for a final meal at the gazebo in Meetinghouse Park on Main Street.

The movement, Troops Home Fast, started July 3 with a peace demonstration in Washington, D.C., and many activists are doing long-term fasts to galvanize public attention. According the Web site troopshomefast.org, as of Friday, over 4,120 people have signed on. The end date will be Sept. 21 when a week of non-violent anti-war actions are planned.

Joan Braun, a member of Farmington Women in Black, a group that holds the silent peace vigil in front of the Farmington Post Office every Friday at noon, said she received an e-mail this week that CODEPINK had a break-through.

She said long-term fasters, including Cindy Sheehan, whose son, Casey, was killed in the war in 2004, have been invited to meet with five members of the Iraqi Parliament in Amman, Jordan. The gathering will be to discuss the peace movement and publicly break their fast with the Iraqi peacemakers.

CODEPINK published an open letter to the Iraqi people in one of the county’s largest newspapers this month explaining the reasons behind the growing hunger strike movement.

The five Iraqi leaders are working on a Reconciliation Plan to end the violence in their country, Braun said.

Troops Home Fast demands the U.S. withdraw all troops from Iraq, leave no permanent bases in that country and fund a massive reconstruction effort with funds going to Iraqi — not American — contractors, according to the Web site, troopshomefast.org.

Craigen Healey of New Vineyard on Friday said she had already gone 16 hours without eating.

"I know a 24-hour fast is symbolic but I am doing it in solidarity with the troops and the people in Iraq who don’t have food, water or electricity and are under fire," she said.

Braun said, "Depriving yourself of eating for 24 hours reminds you of the suffering of the Iraqi people. There may be reasons to go to war but what is going on over there is counter-productive. It is making us more unsafe. We have unleashed the terror."

Lee Sharkey, a founding member of the Farmington Women in Black, said she hopes the national fast will "get people thinking about whether we should be going on with our normal lives while people are dying as a consequence of this government’s actions."

"Fasting for me brings the cost of the war home on a very personal level," she said. "I want to raise this question: Is ‘life as usual’ an acceptable stance while this immoral, illegal and incalculably costly war continues?"

So our troops are home and the war is over?

Or is Cindy Sheehan a liar?

From those lovers of freely elected governments at Reuters:

Supporters of Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador protest outside the Federal Electoral Tribunal in Mexico City.

Mexico left takes election protest back to streets

Sun Jul 30, 2006

By Catherine Bremer

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, the left-winger who claims he was robbed of victory in Mexico’s contested presidential election, will lead a massive protest rally on Sunday to press for a vote-by-vote recount.

Hundreds of thousands of people are expected to join the march across Mexico City to its central Zocalo, one of the world’s largest squares, where Lopez Obrador will announce details of a civil disobedience campaign to push his cause.

Mexico has been thrust into a political crisis by the election, which saw Lopez Obrador, the former mayor of Mexico City, beaten by ruling party conservative Felipe Calderon by just around 244,000 votes out of 41 million cast.

Lopez Obrador, who campaigned on promises to help Mexico’s poor with ambitious welfare and infrastructure programs, is challenging the result before Mexico’s highest electoral court. He says he will only accept the result if there is a recount.

While stressing his protests will stay peaceful, Lopez Obrador upped the ante last week by declaring he was the country’s legitimate president and warning his supporters had plenty of energy for more protests.

The protest on Sunday will be Lopez Obrador’s third since the election, and could be the biggest.

"We are working intensely. It’s going to be a historic march, supporters are coming from all over the country," said Jesus Ortega, a senior aide to the leftist candidate.

PEACEFUL PROTEST EXPECTED

Despite growing tensions, analysts expect the protests to remain peaceful as Lopez Obrador’s Party of the Democratic Revolution, or PRD, waits for the electoral court to make its call on allegations of vote-rigging over the next few weeks.

"The PRD is worried about the violence it could generate and is trying to avoid it. I don’t see violent organizations among Lopez Obrador’s backers," said political analyst Carlos Sirvent of Sunday’s march.

However large the protest, it is unlikely to directly influence the seven electoral court judges who have until August 31 to decide whether there is a case to reopen ballot boxes.

Lopez Obrador claims vote counts were fiddled at more than half the country’s roughly 130,000 polling stations.

The judges’ choices range from throwing out Lopez Obrador’s case and declaring Calderon the winner, to ordering a partial or full recount or even annulling the election and calling for a repeat. An annulment is thought highly unlikely and, without it, the court must formally declare Mexico’s president-elect by September 6.

Calderon insists the vote was clean and that no recount is needed. While his party’s lawyers are fighting the PRD at the electoral court, he is trying to pull support from other opposition parties for reforms he plans to push through once he takes office in December.

I hope Al Gore and the DNC are proud of themselves. And of course they are.

Obrador is their man in Mexico.

From Reuters:

Israel air strike kills 60 civilians

By Hussein Saad

An Israeli air strike killed more than 60 Lebanese civilians, including at least 37 children, on Sunday, fuelling world pressure for a ceasefire.

The raid on the southern village of Qana — the bloodiest single attack during Israel's 19-day-old war on Hizbollah — prompted Lebanon to tell U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice she was unwelcome in Beirut for talks.

Rescue workers dug through the rubble with their hands for hours, lifting out the twisted, dust-caked corpses of children.

A Lebanese foreign ministry official told an urgent session of the U.N. Security Council that more than 60 people were killed, mostly women and children. Police earlier put the toll at 54, 37 of them children.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan urged the Security Council to condemn the attack and call for an immediate end to hostilities. "I am deeply dismayed that my earlier calls for an immediate cessation of hostilities were not heeded," Annan said.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert expressed "deep sorrow" at the bombing, but vowed the war against Hizbollah would go on. He told Rice on Saturday the army needed another 10 to 14 days to press its offensive, a spokesman at his office said.

Israeli U.N. Ambassador Dan Gillerman told the Security Council that Qana was "a hub for Hizbollah" and said Israel had beseeched the residents of the village to leave.

As anger convulsed Lebanon and the Arab world, protesters smashed their way into the United Nations headquarters in downtown Beirut as thousands massed outside chanting "Death to Israel, Death to America."

MEDIATION IN TATTERS

Rice, who was in Israel, said she was saddened by the Qana air raid, but stopped well short of calling for an immediate ceasefire. Her mediation drive in tatters, Rice will leave for Washington on Monday to work on a U.N. resolution that could achieve what the White House called a "sustainable" ceasefire.

It also said the Qana raid showed the critical need for Israel to take "the utmost care" to avoid civilian casualties.

Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora said he would not hold negotiations before a ceasefire, scuppering Rice's visit. Rice later said she had called off her trip to Beirut.

Siniora, often at odds with Hizbollah, thanked its leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah and "all those who sacrifice their lives for the independence and sovereignty of Lebanon."

Qana is already a potent symbol of Lebanese civilian deaths at Israeli hands. In April 1996, Israeli shelling killed more than 100 civilians sheltering at the base of U.N. peacekeepers in Qana during Israel's "Grapes of Wrath" bombing campaign.

International outrage over that attack helped force Israel to end its 17-day campaign that killed more than 200 Lebanese.

SLAIN IN THEIR SLEEP

Police said Qana, about 11 km (seven miles) from the border with Israel, was bombed at 1:30 a.m. (2230 GMT Saturday). The raid flattened a three-storey building where more than 60 displaced people were in the basement. Many died as they slept.

"Why have they attacked one- and two-year-old children and defenseless women?" asked one bereaved man, Mohamed Samai.

The bodies were wrapped tightly in plastic sheets and assembled under an awning. Flowers were placed on the corpses.

Israel said it was unaware civilians were in the building and accused Hizbollah of firing rockets from Qana.

Hizbollah vowed to retaliate. "This horrific massacre will not go without a response," it said. The governing Palestinian movement Hamas also pledged to hit back with attacks on Israel.

Another Israeli air strike killed five civilians, including two children, in their house in the southern village of Yaroun.

About 146 rockets hit Israel on Sunday, wounding six people, police said. At least three slammed into the city of Haifa.

Rice said it was "time to get to a ceasefire," but insisted this required changing the status quo before the war, which erupted after Hizbollah seized two Israeli soldiers on July 12.

The United States says the priority is to remove the threat posed to Israel by Hizbollah, which is backed by Iran and Syria.

At least 561 people have been killed in Lebanon, although the health minister estimated the toll at 750 including unrecovered bodies. Fifty-one Israelis have also been killed.

Many Arab and European leaders condemned the Qana bombing — Syrian President Bashar al-Assad described it as state terrorism — and called for an immediate ceasefire. An exception was Britain, which continued to back the U.S. line.

Siniora demanded an immediate, unconditional ceasefire and an international investigation into "Israeli massacres."

In Qana, rescue workers lay a girl's body on the ground and ran to search for more. They heaved hunks of concrete off a dead child crushed underneath. The rigid corpse of a young boy, his bloody face disfigured, lay near a pulverized building.

Hours later, rescuers were still clambering over rubble using their hands to extract corpses. Two mechanical diggers, one provided by U.N. peacekeepers, eventually joined the effort.

Israeli troops pushed into southeast Lebanon on Sunday and battled Hizbollah fighters after crossing the border overnight.

A spokesman for U.N. peacekeepers said Israeli forces were near the villages of Kfar Kila, Taibe and Deir Mimas. Hizbollah hit an Israeli tank with a missile, lightly wounding four soldiers who were evacuated, the Israeli army said.

The army said five Hizbollah guerrillas killed. Hizbollah said it had lost three fighters, but did not say where or when they had died.

Of course this is what Hezbollah has been hoping for from the start. Some "atrocity" that they could pin on Israel to try to shame them into retreating and a ceasefire.

Never mind that technically all of the Hezbollah "soldiers" are civilians. Never mind that they have always purposefully hidden amongst the civilian population even while firing their rockets. (See a telling video here.)

Never mind that their fellow Shiites are killing Sunnis in Iraq at a rate averaging around 100 a day. Our media call that an "insurgency."

Our one party terrorist-loving media have their Israeli "atrocity" at last.

The "Paper Of Treason," the New York Times:

Former President Bill Clinton and Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn  during a Lieberman campaign rally in Waterbury, Conn., Monday July 24, 2006.

After Sluggish Start, Lieberman Heeds Alarms

[The editorial page of The New York Times on Sunday endorsed Mr. Lamont over Mr. Lieberman, arguing that the senator had offered the nation a “warped version of bipartisanship” in his dealings with Mr. Bush on national security.]

They haven’t posted the editorial yet.

But, really. Too bipartisan?

They hate this country so much it has poisoned their minds.

From United Press International:

Democrats call for ‘new realism’ abroad

WASHINGTON, July 29 (UPI) — New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, establishing the Democratic Party’s platform for the upcoming election, called for a "new realism" in U.S. foreign policy.

Richardson delivered the party’s Saturday radio address, and knocked the Bush administration for failing to understand "that while diplomacy without power is weak, power without diplomacy is blind."

The New Mexico governor went through a litany of international problem spots — from Iraq to North Korea and the Middle East in general.

He went over the Democratic plan for "a new realism in our foreign policy." The main points are energy independence; rebuilding alliances; focusing on the "real dangers," which involves a redeployment of U.S. troops in Iraq; dealing directly with Iran and North Korea; passing a comprehensive immigration plan; facing "global environmental threats" and respecting "human rights and American values."

"Every American wants safety and security," Richardson said. "We can continue to wait for Republicans in Washington to lead or we can make a change.

"We are Democrats and we stand for diplomacy not threats; bridges not walls; alliances not isolation."

Mr. Richardson makes a great point. International diplomacy is vitally important to the survival of our nation and it should only be entrusted to the very best people we have to offer.

From the Starr Report:

VII. There is substantial and credible information that President Clinton endeavored to obstruct justice by helping Ms. Lewinsky obtain a job in New York at a time when she would have been a witness against him were she to tell the truth during the Jones case.

The President had an incentive to keep Ms. Lewinsky from jeopardizing the secrecy of the relationship. That incentive grew once the Supreme Court unanimously decided in May 1997 that the case and discovery process were to go forward.

At various times during the Jones discovery process, the President and those working on his behalf devoted substantial time and attention to help Ms. Lewinsky obtain a job in the private sector.

A. Evidence

… The Ambassador to the United Nations, Bill Richardson, said that Mr. Podesta told him that Ms. Currie had a friend looking for a position in New York.

According to Ms. Lewinsky, Ambassador Richardson called her on October 21, 1997, and interviewed her soon thereafter. She was then offered a position at the UN. Ms. Lewinsky was unenthusiastic.

In hindsight it’s really too bad for Monica that she didn’t take the job. She didn’t think it was enough money.

But Monica could have "delivered pizza" to Kofi Annan and gotten a slice of that oil for food swag.

Still, isn’t suborning perjury against the law? Isn’t bribing grand jury witnesses illegal? Why isn’t Mr. Richardson in jail?

Oh, that’s right. He’s a Democrat.

From the Seattle Post-Intelligencer:

Naveed Afzal Haq’s 1994 yearbook entry.

‘I am a Muslim American, angry at Israel’

Six shot, one killed at Seattle Jewish Federation

Saturday, July 29, 2006

By CAROL SMITH, PHUONG CAT LE AND AMY ROLPH

On the eve of the Jewish Sabbath, a 31-year-old man claiming he was upset about "what was going on in Israel" opened fire at the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle building, killing one person and wounding five women, one of them pregnant.

Three of the women were in critical condition Friday night with gunshot wounds to the stomach.

The gunman, brandishing a large-caliber semi-automatic pistol, forced his way through the security door at the federation, on Third Avenue downtown, after an employee had punched in her security code.

"He said, ‘I am a Muslim American, angry at Israel,’ before opening fire on everyone," said Marla Meislin-Dietrich, a database coordinator for the center. "He was randomly shooting at everyone."

The man was booked into King County Jail at 10:38 p.m. as Naveed Afzal Haq on one count of investigation of homicide and five counts of investigation of attempted homicide, according to King County Jail records.

The man apparently was from the Tri-Cities area, and authorities there confirmed Friday night that they had visited two residences in the area and were preparing to go into a third with the assistance of the FBI. A bomb squad was standing by in Kennewick. Local media reported he had a misdemeanor lewd conduct charge pending in Benton County. He allegedly exposed himself in a public place.

The shootings come just weeks after Jewish leaders told Congress that there was a "critical threat" to their institutions nationwide because of escalating tensions in the Middle East.

The FBI has labeled the shootings a "hate crime" based on what the gunman told police in a 911 call.

"I feel sick to my stomach," said Becki Chandler, 35, who has been a volunteer for the Jewish Federation for seven years. She came to Harborview Medical Center as soon as she heard about the shootings. "It feels like a personal attack."

Police apprehended the lone gunman without incident at 4:15 p.m. after officers talked him out of the building.

The man was arrested at the corner of Third Avenue and Lenora Street, near the federation building.

"We believe … it’s a lone individual acting out his antagonism," said David Gomez, an FBI assistant special agent in charge of counterterrorism in Seattle.

In Seattle, FBI agent Fred Gutt said the agency sent out two generalized warnings to Washington law enforcement, on July 21 and on Wednesday, listing general scenarios to be alert for. Places of religious significance were mentioned, including mosques, synagogues and churches, but the warning was not specific, he said.

Gutt said the FBI is helping Seattle police assess whether the gunman was a "lone wolf" or part of a wider plan. If evidence of a terrorist plot evolved, the FBI would become the lead agency, but as of Friday night the case remained Seattle’s, Gutt said.

Authorities did not release any details about the suspect and would not discuss possible motives.

In a news conference, police Chief Kerlikowske said the man was a U.S. citizen, but not from Seattle. His relatives were being contacted and interviewed.

"There’s nothing to indicate that it’s terrorism-related," Gomez said. "But we’re monitoring the entire situation."

"This is a sad day in the city of Seattle," Mayor Greg Nickels said. "This is a crime of hate, and there’s no place for that in Seattle."

The mayor and Kerlikowske said the city will be providing outreach assistance to the local Jewish community, and added patrols will be on duty to protect synagogues and other Jewish facilities.

Seattle mosques will also be protected by police as a safeguard against possible retaliation from outraged citizens.

Harborview spokeswoman Pamela Steele said five victims were taken to the hospital. "I’ve never seen such a swarm of people," Steele said of the scene as the victims and medics arrived at the trauma center.

The women ranged in age from the 20s to the 40s. Each suffered gunshot wounds to the abdomen, knee, groin or arm. Three were in surgery and in critical condition Friday night. Two were in satisfactory condition.

A hospital spokesman identified the pregnant woman as Dayna Klein. She was in satisfactory condition with a gunshot wound in her left forearm and was scheduled for surgery. Carol Goldman was in satisfactory condition with injuries to her knees.

Cheryl Stumbo, director of marketing and communications for the federation, also was identified as one of the victims and was in critical condition Friday night.

Kathryn Bush said Friday night that her daughter, Layla Bush, had been injured in the shooting.

"She’s out of surgery, but that’s all we know," she said in a call Friday night from her Florida home. "We’re taking it moment by moment. I’m really in shock right now, but I’m trusting in the Lord to bring me through."

She said her daughter, 23, was "really bright" and always wanted to work for non-profits and foundations. She joined the federation as the office manager and receptionist about six months ago.

Police got the first 911 call of shots fired at the Jewish Federation at 4:03 p.m. Friday just as people were preparing to leave work for the weekend. About 10 people were left in the building. Witnesses said the shooter indicated he was acting because of Israel’s actions in Lebanon.

The initial call authorities received reported the shots and a possible hostage situation, assistant Seattle police Chief Nick Metz said at an early evening news conference.

Witnesses to the shooting and people who work at the federation described a chaotic, terrifying scene.

Kami Knatt works at the federation’s Holocaust center. As she exited the building, she saw a wounded co-worker fall down. Knatt took her sweater off and tried to stop the bleeding.

"I asked her, ‘Are you OK?’ She said, ‘No, I’ve been shot.’ I kept saying it’s going to be OK."

The victim told Knatt: "I’m going to black out, I’m going to black out." Knatt replied: "You’re going to be all right."

Several workers and victims ran toward a nearby Starbucks. There was a small pool of blood outside the coffee shop.

Nathaniel Mullins, 43, was turning onto Lenora Street with his 19-year-old daughter when he heard police say, "Get back! Get back!"

Mullins said he saw two shooting victims. "They were covered in blood," he said.

Rachel Hynes works in the building. "I was in the back of the building when I heard gunshots. It sounded like balloons, but they were really loud," she said. "I picked up my purse and I walked out of the building."

Zach Carstensen, who is the director of government relations for the Jewish Federation, said he heard shots and screams.

"People started running, and I started running with them," Carstensen said.

Asked whether he thought his office had been targeted because of the conflict in the Mideast, Carstensen said he wasn’t sure. "We’re all a little shaken, he said.

Jesse Black, general manager of Nyberg Locksmiths on Third Avenue diagonally across from the building, heard the shots and went to the sidewalk.

The cops yelled at him, "Get off the street because there’s a sniper on the roof." He looked up and saw a figure in a white shirt on the rooftop.

Immediately after the shooting, a SWAT team searched the federation building for any other victims, anyone hiding or any other possible shooters, said police spokesman Rich Pruitt.

Police blocked off several city blocks to investigate. The suspect’s vehicle was recovered near the shooting scene, Metz said. Police spent some time checking it for bombs before having it towed.

The federation issued a statement:

"Our federation colleagues so unmercifully and viciously attacked were spending their day as they normally do, providing for social and humanitarian services that benefited all of metropolitan Seattle. The hatred and violence visited upon them today offends the values that drove their work and passion for improving their neighbors’ lives."

Early in July, Jewish non-profit organizations received more than half the federal homeland security grants to "harden" such "at-risk" non-profit groups against terrorist threats. Jewish groups received about $14 million of $25 million earmarked by Congress in 2005.

The federation building is known for its security, with gates and buzzers. Jacobs said the federation has an electronic security system that allows it to control access to the office. The shooter could not have simply entered the building unseen, said Anti-Defamation League leader Robert Jacobs.

The Muslim community in the region watched in horror as news broke of the shooting.

"We categorically condemn this and any similar acts of violence," the Council on American-Islamic Relations said in a joint statement with the Ithna-Ashari Muslim Association of the Northwest, the Muslim Association of Puget Sound, the Islamic Educational Center of Seattle, American Muslims of Puget Sound and the Arab American Community Coalition.

"We pray for the safety and health of those injured and offer our heartfelt condolences to the family of the victims of this attack. … We refuse to see the violence in the Middle East spill over to our cities and neighborhoods. We reject and categorically condemn any attacks against the Jewish community and stand in solidarity with the Jewish Federation in this tragedy."

The Seattle City Council issued a statement Friday offering its condolences to the victims and their families.

"There is too much hate and violence in the world and we do not wish to bring it to Seattle," said council President Nick Licata in the statement.

Just hours before the shooting, Jacobs ate lunch with shooting victim Dayna Klein.

"She’s just a wonderful, ebullient, energetic person," said Jacobs, ADL’s Pacific Northwest regional director. "She heads up major gifts and development for the federation."

He called shooting victim Cheryl Stumbo, a non-Jewish Unitarian, "a warm, good human being. She really brought a tremendous understanding of marketing to the federation."

Iantha Sidell, past board chairman of the federation, went to Harborview after the shootings to lend her support.

"This is just a disaster," she said. "We value every life. I don’t know what we’re going to do about it. We believe in life."

It always seems that the local papers are more willing to be slightly less politically correct than the major wire services like the Associate Press.

(Though they did neglect to mention the fact that this Jewish center had helped organize a large rally last weekend to demonstrate support for Israel in its fight against Hezbollah.)

But the Post-Intelligencer did dare to include this unbelievable bit of information in their photo gallery for the shooting:

Frank, who did not want his last name used, debates on Friday with Ali, who also did not want his last name used, about the conflict in the Mideast. Frank was upset that demonstrators were gathering in front of the Westlake Center in downtown Seattle while a man had shot six people, killing one, at the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle building.

That’s right. There were anti-Israeli demonstrators gathering in front of a nearby center moments while the shootings were still going on.

What a world.

By the way, ever notice how many of these terrorist acts occur on a Friday — the closest thing to a Muslim Sabbath?

It could be that the perpetrators are whipped up by the fervent words of their Imams. Or it could be that they get extra credit (maybe extra virgins) for killing infidels on their holy day:

Friday is an important day in the life of a Muslim and it is believed that any devotional acts done on this day gain a higher reward.

For instance:

SUV Plows Through UNC Gathering Spot, Six Slightly Hurt

March 3, 2006

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. — A sport utility vehicle raced through a popular gathering spot on the University of North Carolina campus on Friday, clipping and scattering startled bystanders before it sped away, authorities said.

Six people — five students and a visiting scholar — were treated at UNC Hospitals, though a hospital spokesman said none was seriously injured. Three other people declined treatment at the scene, police said.

Mohammed Reza Taheriazar, 23, a UNC student as recently as fall 2005, was being held Friday by campus police, who planned to charge him with multiple counts of assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill, the university said in a statement….

Funny how this bonus points day is never mentioned.

From the (Vermont) Burlington Free Press:

Peace activist Cindy Sheehan cancels Vermont visit

July 28, 2006

Peace activist Cindy Sheehan has canceled her visit to Vermont because she plans a trip to Jordan for peace talks there, organizers announced today.

Sheehan was to have attended a rally Sunday at Montpelier’s Unitarian Church.

The rally will still be held, with Vermont organizers planning to address renewed efforts to end the war in Iraq and pursue impeachment of the Bush administration.

The event is scheduled to begin at 7 p.m. and is free and public.

It’s sort of like Ike saying he would go to Korea. Only different.

Of course Eisenhower was saying what he would do if he were elected President. Mother Sheehan, being a private citizen would be (like John Kerry before her) breaking the law:

TITLE 18 > PART I > CHAPTER 45 > Sec. 953.

Any citizen of the United States, wherever he may be, who, without authority of the United States, directly or indirectly commences or carries on any correspondence or intercourse with any foreign government or any officer or agent thereof, with intent to influence the measures or conduct of any foreign government or of any officer or agent thereof, in relation to any disputes or controversies with the United States, or to defeat the measures of the United States, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both.

But as we all know, if you hate America enough you never have to worry about its petty laws.

The following is a translation of a newly posted Iraqi document done by an unofficial translator. The document, posted in Arabic, is from a Department Of Defense program.

In the document an Iraqi opposition source working in Syria reports on the movement of Iraqi trucks to Syria before the start of the US invasion of Iraq. It is his understanding that the trucks contained proscribed weapons of mass destruction.

The translation is dated July 13 — probably 2003. But the original document is dated March 14th, 2003. (Moharram 10th is the tenth day of the Muslim New Year, which in 2003 began on March 4th.) The International Coalition Forces attacked Iraq on March 20, 2003.

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Here is one page from the pdf file showing the original document in Arabic:

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I’m sure our one party media will have a field day investigating this development.

(Just kidding of course.)

  Update!

It turns out that the translation of this document was actually done by the heroically tenacious JVeritas of Free Republic. (And I had even perused the thread he posted about it. I thought it looked familiar.)

More of JVeritas’ excellent work can be found here.

The longest Mahatma Gandhi ever fasted was for 21 days, in a hunger strike for Hindu-Muslim unity in September 1924.

On July 4th, Cindy Sheehan began a proclaimed two month fast. She announced to the press that she would "drink only water" throughout the summer.

(Mother Sheehan has subsequently admitted to partaking of "smoothies" of fruit juice and protein powder.)

The following photos of Cindy Sheehan were taken while she was on days 21 and 22 of her "hunger strike."

Compare and contrast:

Surely it must be the righteousness of her cause that keeps her so in the pink.