via Huffington Post:
Conspiracy theorists need theorize no more. In pages from a fiction novel brought to life, the strangest twists in popular folklore have been winding through our government corridors. In this case I wouldn't blame you for being tempted to run it by Snopes. Fabled as a secret society, Freemasons see themselves as an esoteric fraternity; an ancient brotherhood of initiates who are voted into membership for the purpose of sharing enlightenment through the use of exclusive teachings....So why then is an exclusive group collecting our children's DNA, with support of police and the government across the USA and Canada?
You know them as MasoniChip, or perhaps you've been led to believe it was a state and provincial endeavor intended to protect your little ones. They set up fairs, forge partnerships with law enforcement and even strive to distribute their services through North American public school systems...What is MasoniChip you ask? It begins on the surface as a child identification project, in case your loved ones are ever to be horrendously abducted. Parents are familiar with at-home kits to record their kids' vital information, for protection against the greatest of all fears to be inflicted on a family. Normally height, weight, hair and eye colour are recorded, along with a set of fingerprints and hopefully a current photograph. It's just the good folks at your local Masonic Lodge saw fit to take things further.
With advances in technology, they began to offer digital fingerprints, digital imaging, digital video, dental impressions and DNA mouth swabs. This data processing is managed by their proprietary software that's designed to be compatible with local and national law enforcement. This is after all, a campaign created by police in the brotherhood regardless of its private funding...Parents are asked to trust an intriguing, private fraternity; to ensure that quality standards are met and family privacy is legally respected without any kind of oversight. Because Freemasons fund 100 per cent of the initiative, there is no opportunity to discuss issues regarding data ownership or how they feel about those technicalities in the privacy of their meetings...In Canada the situation is even more colluded, as the federal government won't consent to a missing persons DNA database whatsoever. They cite privacy law and cost concerns as a barrier to its establishment; so the 50,000 families that already participated have shared their biometric markers with Freemasons for apparently no good reason. It is therefore peculiar the Masonic Grand Lodge of Canada would make bold claims to be working with Canadian law enforcement agencies to gain the trust of parents...This DNA collection program is planned to be extended to the disabled community and seniors, but who benefits when it's inadmissible to a certified registry of any sort?
And why is the face of government through public schools or police through public events, being placed on an effort from private organizations to mislead parents? Sharing one's fingerprints and biometrics is a serious decision. For public safety we must insist that brokers of such events become transparent and regulated.
Thursday, September 27, 2012
Honduran human rights lawyer murdered hours after declaring charter cities unconstitutional
via Huffington Post:
TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras — A prominent Honduran human rights lawyer gunned down after a weekend wedding had long complained about death threats, including in documents filed last year seeking protection from a powerful billionaire landowner.
Antonio Trejo Cabrera, 41, who died early Sunday after being ambushed by gunmen, was a lawyer for three peasant cooperatives in the Bajo Aguan, a fertile farming area plagued by violent conflicts between agrarian organizations and land owners. The most prominent is Dinant Corporation owned by Miguel Facusse, one of Honduras' richest men. Thousands of once-landless workers hold about 12,000 acres (5,000 hectares) of plantations they seized from Dinant.
Trejo, who was shot six times after attending a wedding, reported threats in June 2011, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press, including photocopies of a BlackBerry message he received saying: "Trejo, you dog, you have 48 hours to get out or you're dead."...Before his death, Trejo had publicly said that if he were killed, Facusse would be responsible...Honduras, considered to be one of the world's most dangerous countries, is plagued by assassinations of journalists, lawyers and public officials, very few of which are ever prosecuted...More than 60 people, most of them farmers, some of them Facusse employees, have been killed over the past three years in the conflict over the Bajo Aguan Valley, according to activists, police and Facusse's company...Trejo had also helped prepare motions declaring unconstitutional a proposal by the Honduran government and a U.S. company, MGK Group, to build three privately run cities with their own police, laws and tax systems.
Just hours before his murder, Trejo had participated in a televised debate in which he accused congressional leaders of using the private city projects to raise campaign funds.
Also related, via Honduras News:
Honduras signed a deal for an initial investment of 15 million dollars to create the first “Private City” in the country. (Also referred to as “Free Cities”, “Charter Cities”, “Model Cities”, or in Spanish, “RED – Regiones Especiales de Desarollo”, and “Ciudades Modelo”.) The city will be built in Trujillo, in the Department of Colón, where it does not have the full support of the Garifuna people, as they fear that the loss of their land may be on the agenda.
Carlos Pineda, the president of Coalinza, stated that this was not just an agreement, but the most important project for the development of the country in 50 years...Michael Strong, an executive with the MKG Group that was granted this project, stated that the objective is to create a secure and prosperous community for Hondurans....The new Model Cities will have their own police force, and will enlist a highly-reputable policing authority to train police officers and hold the police leadership accountable for fair and effective policing. In addition, there will be an audit committee that is overseen by a Transparency Commission, which is an independent body, with the power to gather and evaluate such information and statistics on crime rate, and the efficiency in handling of crimes by the legal system, as well as police misconduct.
Honduran President Porfirio Lobo appointed the initial members of the Transparency Commission:
George Akerlof - Professor of Economics at the University of California at Berkeley, Senior Resident Scholar at the International Monetary Fund, and Nobel Prize Winner
Harry Strachan - Former President of INCAE Business School, Director Emeritus at Bain & Co., and Managing Partner at Mesoamerica Partners and Foundation in Cost Rica
Ong Boon Hwee - Former Chief Operating Officer of Singapore Power and Former Brigadier General in the Singapore Armed Forces
Nancy Birdsall - President and Co-Founder of the Center for Global Development , former Senior Associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and former Executive Vice President at the Inter-American Development Bank
Paul Romer (Commission Chair) – Professor of Economics at the New York University Stern School of Business
The Cryptogon domain owner dug up a bio about Smart, a libertarian entrepreneur, from Smart's own website:
More information is provided via Climate Connections:
The Afro-indigenous struggle for land against charter cities and mega-tourism
On August 27, the Garífuna human rights organization Fraternal Black Organization of Honduras, OFRANEH and their allies around the world launched the Land Recovery Campaign in the village of Vallecito which, with 2,500 acres, is the largest single landholding of the Garífuna people. There, they are occupying land that has been taken from them to build mega-tourism projects and an autonomous Charter City that is slated for development on the legal and ancestral Garifuna territory. The peaceful occupiers have faced constant intimidation from paramilitary groups, most likely hired by local developers...
TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras — A prominent Honduran human rights lawyer gunned down after a weekend wedding had long complained about death threats, including in documents filed last year seeking protection from a powerful billionaire landowner.
Antonio Trejo Cabrera, 41, who died early Sunday after being ambushed by gunmen, was a lawyer for three peasant cooperatives in the Bajo Aguan, a fertile farming area plagued by violent conflicts between agrarian organizations and land owners. The most prominent is Dinant Corporation owned by Miguel Facusse, one of Honduras' richest men. Thousands of once-landless workers hold about 12,000 acres (5,000 hectares) of plantations they seized from Dinant.
Trejo, who was shot six times after attending a wedding, reported threats in June 2011, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press, including photocopies of a BlackBerry message he received saying: "Trejo, you dog, you have 48 hours to get out or you're dead."...Before his death, Trejo had publicly said that if he were killed, Facusse would be responsible...Honduras, considered to be one of the world's most dangerous countries, is plagued by assassinations of journalists, lawyers and public officials, very few of which are ever prosecuted...More than 60 people, most of them farmers, some of them Facusse employees, have been killed over the past three years in the conflict over the Bajo Aguan Valley, according to activists, police and Facusse's company...Trejo had also helped prepare motions declaring unconstitutional a proposal by the Honduran government and a U.S. company, MGK Group, to build three privately run cities with their own police, laws and tax systems.
Just hours before his murder, Trejo had participated in a televised debate in which he accused congressional leaders of using the private city projects to raise campaign funds.
Also related, via Honduras News:
Honduras signed a deal for an initial investment of 15 million dollars to create the first “Private City” in the country. (Also referred to as “Free Cities”, “Charter Cities”, “Model Cities”, or in Spanish, “RED – Regiones Especiales de Desarollo”, and “Ciudades Modelo”.) The city will be built in Trujillo, in the Department of Colón, where it does not have the full support of the Garifuna people, as they fear that the loss of their land may be on the agenda.
Carlos Pineda, the president of Coalinza, stated that this was not just an agreement, but the most important project for the development of the country in 50 years...Michael Strong, an executive with the MKG Group that was granted this project, stated that the objective is to create a secure and prosperous community for Hondurans....The new Model Cities will have their own police force, and will enlist a highly-reputable policing authority to train police officers and hold the police leadership accountable for fair and effective policing. In addition, there will be an audit committee that is overseen by a Transparency Commission, which is an independent body, with the power to gather and evaluate such information and statistics on crime rate, and the efficiency in handling of crimes by the legal system, as well as police misconduct.
Honduran President Porfirio Lobo appointed the initial members of the Transparency Commission:
George Akerlof - Professor of Economics at the University of California at Berkeley, Senior Resident Scholar at the International Monetary Fund, and Nobel Prize Winner
Harry Strachan - Former President of INCAE Business School, Director Emeritus at Bain & Co., and Managing Partner at Mesoamerica Partners and Foundation in Cost Rica
Ong Boon Hwee - Former Chief Operating Officer of Singapore Power and Former Brigadier General in the Singapore Armed Forces
Nancy Birdsall - President and Co-Founder of the Center for Global Development , former Senior Associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and former Executive Vice President at the Inter-American Development Bank
Paul Romer (Commission Chair) – Professor of Economics at the New York University Stern School of Business
The Cryptogon domain owner dug up a bio about Smart, a libertarian entrepreneur, from Smart's own website:
In order to create an educational system capable of improving the happiness and well-being of humanity, we need to reduce, and ultimately eliminate, government involvement in education at all levels, as well as government restrictions on the free pursuit of whatever occupation one desires. Government financing and regulation of education at all levels prevents the emergence of the more authentic, humane, and effective forms of education that we need. Thus around the world we need to move towards a principled separation of school and state, occupation and state, and research and state.
More information is provided via Climate Connections:
The Afro-indigenous struggle for land against charter cities and mega-tourism
On August 27, the Garífuna human rights organization Fraternal Black Organization of Honduras, OFRANEH and their allies around the world launched the Land Recovery Campaign in the village of Vallecito which, with 2,500 acres, is the largest single landholding of the Garífuna people. There, they are occupying land that has been taken from them to build mega-tourism projects and an autonomous Charter City that is slated for development on the legal and ancestral Garifuna territory. The peaceful occupiers have faced constant intimidation from paramilitary groups, most likely hired by local developers...
Tuesday, September 25, 2012
Coping with trauma: the mind/body connection: updated again 9/26/12
This blog typically deals with a lot of conspiracy research that can be very draining on both an emotional and physical level if not counterbalanced by more, for lack of a better word, positive thoughts and actions. This problem has been on my mind a bit lately, since I've noticed that most people who deal with the subject of trauma-based mind control tend to burn out after a short length of time due to the emotional weight of dealing with difficult subject matter. Since many regular readers here have ongoing issues with physical and psychological health, I thought it might be useful to share some of the strategies I've used to cope with these problems.
TMI warning: This post contains gross details about some of my ongoing physical health problems so skip ahead if that bothers you. First of all, I've always had physical health problems, from a very early age, and these only became worse as I got older. By the time I was in my mid-twenties, I'd had to deal with heart disease, a stroke from a speed overdose, crippling staph infections, extremely painful endometriosis, chronic fatigue syndrome, PTSD, and the list goes on. Yet, strangely enough, over the past 6 years or so I've gradually been getting healthier, until now I'm probably the healthiest I've ever been despite a long history of problems which were exacerbated by years of substance abuse. One of the most powerful things I have on my side is that I've always believed in the power of holistic health modalities to treat the body and mind, and have almost never succumbed to the lure of pharmaceutical drugging, even though it might have provided some relief in the short term.
About 4 years ago I hit a turning point when I came down with a dental abscess. The pain had been excruciating for weeks, my heart had begun racing, I was having alternating chills and hot flashes, and felt that I would pass out if I stood up or moved around for any length of time. Most reasonable people would have gone straight to the emergency room, but I was determined to avoid it and am so glad I did. I must warn people here that it is only advisable to forgo Western medicine if you are knowledgeable about the alternatives and committed to following what might be a strict regimine. Instead of taking antibiotics and undergoing surgery, I found an article on treating dental abscesses in cats with homeopathic medicine, and immediately adopted an alkaline diet, under the principle that overly acid environments encourage the proliferation of infectious disease.
The pain was gone almost overnight and has since to return, although for about a month afterwards, anytime I ate acidic restaurant food it would come back temporarily. The alkaline diet, for those who don't know, is typically promoted as being centered around fruits and vegetables, with minimal consumption of animal products. Here is a list of alkaline foods, however there is one very crucial fact that almost all of these lists omit, which is that bone broth is an alkaline substance. I take the acid-alkaline lists with a grain of salt, since it seems that many of them are based on dogma about vegetarianism as opposed to chemical analysis of the food. In my experience many animal products such as butter and organ meats did not cause problems although consuming the smallest amount of refined vegetable oil resulted in immediate pain. One addition to the list that was very important in healing the abscess was baking soda, which acts very quickly to alkalize the body. Baking soda alone can't solve long term deficiencies but it can be a short term life-saving medicine that stops the proliferation of infectious pathogens of all kinds. It's best to drink the baking soda solution (one teaspoon dissolved in a glass of water, no more than 3 times a day) on an empty stomach, otherwise it can produce nausea.
Up until this point, I had achieved great success with the Weston Price diet, which emphasizes the consumption of high quality saturated fats that come from pastured animals raised without synthetic growth hormones. Holistic health practitioners often stress the need to reduce saturated fats and animal products in one's diet and, while some have achieved helpful results this way, going the route of vegetarianism can also result in deficiencies for many, particularly in those individuals with a history of depression and/or chronic fatigue syndrome. Previous to adopting the Weston Price protocols, I had been a vegetarian for 15 years and always had low energy and issues with depression and anxiety. Afterwards, my energy levels shot through the roof, my moods improved and, contrary to what mainstream medicine preaches will happen with increased saturated fat consumption, my resting heart rate went down by about 25 beats per minute while my aerobic capacity increased exponentially.
Switching to an alkaline diet which was less focused on muscle meats and more focused on bone broth and organ meats was the final addition which fine-tuned this system, although homeopathy played a very important role in healing as well. The other crucial factor was the addition of lacto-fermented foods, which could be a post in and of itself. Many people rely on pre-packaged probiotics to supply beneficial bacteria, but in my experience home fermentation produces far better results, and in greater quantity. The most versatile product I make is whey from raw cow's milk, although many other recipes can be found here.
On another level, cleansing the body can also have the unintended side effect of releasing toxic emotions in a sometimes dramatic, noticeable way. One of my friends regained memories of trauma-based mind control after undergoing a 30-day fast while incarcerated. Personally, I would not recommend this strategy because drastic cleanses can be dangerous and even life-threatening. The same effect can also be achieved in a safer, yet slower way by emphasizing foods that are pungent or bitter, such as hot peppers, onions, dandelion root, grapefruit peel or lemon, although not all of these foods will help every person. I've been incorporating large quantities of these foods into my diet on a daily basis as a way to treat fibroid cysts, which Ayurvedic medicine interprets as a kapha imbalance. Since adopting these protocols, I've begun expelling thick scar tissue during my menstrual cycle (you were warned!). Healing with Whole Foods is a great, thoroughly researched reference book for tailoring a diet to a person's unique constitution, while emphasizing particular emotional issues that go along with each physical pathology. The author's vegan extremism may not work for many readers so I've found it best to combine the information it contains with that of Nourishing Traditions, a book based on the Weston Price diet. Another useful book which is focused on how thought affects the body is You Can Heal Your Life, by Louise Hay.
In my opinion it is impossible to truly heal unless you are able to address both the mind and body simultaneously. To cite one example, people with adrenal exhaustion or chronic fatigue syndrome are often subconsciously drawn to conflict-laden situations because, like a cup of coffee, these scenarios provide a temporary rush of energy to get them through the day. In the long run, this pattern can result in toxic relationships, substance abuse, or preoccupations with catastrophic scenarios such as economic collapse or end times predictions. So, it is imperative to address problems of the body and mind in a holistic fashion, to prevent systemic imbalances from being allowed to thrive at the expense of your own health and sanity.
The system outlined above is the result of years of trial and error, such as adopting extreme diets like macrobiotics or raw foods which only exacerbated the problems I was dealing with. I still have a lot to learn but have no doubt that the protocols I'm using have improved my quality of life. It would be nice if it was possible for me to be a healthy vegetarian, but unfortunately it simply is not. Actually, this is one of several reasons why the Gnostic idea of Earth being a fallen world makes some sense to me, although thankfully many indigenous cultures do provide an ethical system for relating to this world as it is. But that's a topic for another time. I hope the information contained here has been helpful.
TMI warning: This post contains gross details about some of my ongoing physical health problems so skip ahead if that bothers you. First of all, I've always had physical health problems, from a very early age, and these only became worse as I got older. By the time I was in my mid-twenties, I'd had to deal with heart disease, a stroke from a speed overdose, crippling staph infections, extremely painful endometriosis, chronic fatigue syndrome, PTSD, and the list goes on. Yet, strangely enough, over the past 6 years or so I've gradually been getting healthier, until now I'm probably the healthiest I've ever been despite a long history of problems which were exacerbated by years of substance abuse. One of the most powerful things I have on my side is that I've always believed in the power of holistic health modalities to treat the body and mind, and have almost never succumbed to the lure of pharmaceutical drugging, even though it might have provided some relief in the short term.
About 4 years ago I hit a turning point when I came down with a dental abscess. The pain had been excruciating for weeks, my heart had begun racing, I was having alternating chills and hot flashes, and felt that I would pass out if I stood up or moved around for any length of time. Most reasonable people would have gone straight to the emergency room, but I was determined to avoid it and am so glad I did. I must warn people here that it is only advisable to forgo Western medicine if you are knowledgeable about the alternatives and committed to following what might be a strict regimine. Instead of taking antibiotics and undergoing surgery, I found an article on treating dental abscesses in cats with homeopathic medicine, and immediately adopted an alkaline diet, under the principle that overly acid environments encourage the proliferation of infectious disease.
The pain was gone almost overnight and has since to return, although for about a month afterwards, anytime I ate acidic restaurant food it would come back temporarily. The alkaline diet, for those who don't know, is typically promoted as being centered around fruits and vegetables, with minimal consumption of animal products. Here is a list of alkaline foods, however there is one very crucial fact that almost all of these lists omit, which is that bone broth is an alkaline substance. I take the acid-alkaline lists with a grain of salt, since it seems that many of them are based on dogma about vegetarianism as opposed to chemical analysis of the food. In my experience many animal products such as butter and organ meats did not cause problems although consuming the smallest amount of refined vegetable oil resulted in immediate pain. One addition to the list that was very important in healing the abscess was baking soda, which acts very quickly to alkalize the body. Baking soda alone can't solve long term deficiencies but it can be a short term life-saving medicine that stops the proliferation of infectious pathogens of all kinds. It's best to drink the baking soda solution (one teaspoon dissolved in a glass of water, no more than 3 times a day) on an empty stomach, otherwise it can produce nausea.
Up until this point, I had achieved great success with the Weston Price diet, which emphasizes the consumption of high quality saturated fats that come from pastured animals raised without synthetic growth hormones. Holistic health practitioners often stress the need to reduce saturated fats and animal products in one's diet and, while some have achieved helpful results this way, going the route of vegetarianism can also result in deficiencies for many, particularly in those individuals with a history of depression and/or chronic fatigue syndrome. Previous to adopting the Weston Price protocols, I had been a vegetarian for 15 years and always had low energy and issues with depression and anxiety. Afterwards, my energy levels shot through the roof, my moods improved and, contrary to what mainstream medicine preaches will happen with increased saturated fat consumption, my resting heart rate went down by about 25 beats per minute while my aerobic capacity increased exponentially.
Switching to an alkaline diet which was less focused on muscle meats and more focused on bone broth and organ meats was the final addition which fine-tuned this system, although homeopathy played a very important role in healing as well. The other crucial factor was the addition of lacto-fermented foods, which could be a post in and of itself. Many people rely on pre-packaged probiotics to supply beneficial bacteria, but in my experience home fermentation produces far better results, and in greater quantity. The most versatile product I make is whey from raw cow's milk, although many other recipes can be found here.
On another level, cleansing the body can also have the unintended side effect of releasing toxic emotions in a sometimes dramatic, noticeable way. One of my friends regained memories of trauma-based mind control after undergoing a 30-day fast while incarcerated. Personally, I would not recommend this strategy because drastic cleanses can be dangerous and even life-threatening. The same effect can also be achieved in a safer, yet slower way by emphasizing foods that are pungent or bitter, such as hot peppers, onions, dandelion root, grapefruit peel or lemon, although not all of these foods will help every person. I've been incorporating large quantities of these foods into my diet on a daily basis as a way to treat fibroid cysts, which Ayurvedic medicine interprets as a kapha imbalance. Since adopting these protocols, I've begun expelling thick scar tissue during my menstrual cycle (you were warned!). Healing with Whole Foods is a great, thoroughly researched reference book for tailoring a diet to a person's unique constitution, while emphasizing particular emotional issues that go along with each physical pathology. The author's vegan extremism may not work for many readers so I've found it best to combine the information it contains with that of Nourishing Traditions, a book based on the Weston Price diet. Another useful book which is focused on how thought affects the body is You Can Heal Your Life, by Louise Hay.
In my opinion it is impossible to truly heal unless you are able to address both the mind and body simultaneously. To cite one example, people with adrenal exhaustion or chronic fatigue syndrome are often subconsciously drawn to conflict-laden situations because, like a cup of coffee, these scenarios provide a temporary rush of energy to get them through the day. In the long run, this pattern can result in toxic relationships, substance abuse, or preoccupations with catastrophic scenarios such as economic collapse or end times predictions. So, it is imperative to address problems of the body and mind in a holistic fashion, to prevent systemic imbalances from being allowed to thrive at the expense of your own health and sanity.
The system outlined above is the result of years of trial and error, such as adopting extreme diets like macrobiotics or raw foods which only exacerbated the problems I was dealing with. I still have a lot to learn but have no doubt that the protocols I'm using have improved my quality of life. It would be nice if it was possible for me to be a healthy vegetarian, but unfortunately it simply is not. Actually, this is one of several reasons why the Gnostic idea of Earth being a fallen world makes some sense to me, although thankfully many indigenous cultures do provide an ethical system for relating to this world as it is. But that's a topic for another time. I hope the information contained here has been helpful.
Saturday, September 22, 2012
Italy upholds convictions of 23 CIA agents in absentia
via France 24
Italy's top court Wednesday confirmed guilty verdicts against 23 CIA agents for the 2003 abduction of an Egyptian imam in Milan and ordered a re-trial for five Italian ex-spies accused of taking part. The CIA agents were all being tried in absentia in one of the world's biggest court cases against the US "extraordinary rendition" programme to interrogate alleged Islamist militants after the September 11, 2001 attacks. The 23 CIA agents were originally sentenced in November 2009 to five to eight years in prison and in December 2010 had their sentences increased to seven to nine years on appeal and ordered to pay damages to the imam. Italy's justice ministry is now obliged to make a formal request for the extradition of the agents, legal sources said, but the United States has already refused. All the agents remain at liberty but risk arrest if they travel to Europe.
As part of the ruling, the court ordered the seizure of the Italian home of one of the agents, Bob Seldon Lady, former head of the CIA station in Milan. Osama Mustafa Hassan, a radical Islamist opposition figure better known as Abu Omar, was snatched from a street in Milan in 2003 in an operation coordinated by the CIA and the Italian military intelligence agency SISMI. Abu Omar, who enjoyed political asylum in Italy at the time, was then allegedly taken to the Aviano US air base in northeastern Italy, flown to a US base in Germany, and on to Cairo, where he says he was tortured.
In Wednesday's ruling, the court also said that two former heads of SISMI, Nicolo Pollari and Marco Mancini, should be re-tried. The two had been acquitted by the appeals court in 2010 in a ruling that said producing evidence against them would have violated state secrecy laws...
Italy's top court Wednesday confirmed guilty verdicts against 23 CIA agents for the 2003 abduction of an Egyptian imam in Milan and ordered a re-trial for five Italian ex-spies accused of taking part. The CIA agents were all being tried in absentia in one of the world's biggest court cases against the US "extraordinary rendition" programme to interrogate alleged Islamist militants after the September 11, 2001 attacks. The 23 CIA agents were originally sentenced in November 2009 to five to eight years in prison and in December 2010 had their sentences increased to seven to nine years on appeal and ordered to pay damages to the imam. Italy's justice ministry is now obliged to make a formal request for the extradition of the agents, legal sources said, but the United States has already refused. All the agents remain at liberty but risk arrest if they travel to Europe.
As part of the ruling, the court ordered the seizure of the Italian home of one of the agents, Bob Seldon Lady, former head of the CIA station in Milan. Osama Mustafa Hassan, a radical Islamist opposition figure better known as Abu Omar, was snatched from a street in Milan in 2003 in an operation coordinated by the CIA and the Italian military intelligence agency SISMI. Abu Omar, who enjoyed political asylum in Italy at the time, was then allegedly taken to the Aviano US air base in northeastern Italy, flown to a US base in Germany, and on to Cairo, where he says he was tortured.
In Wednesday's ruling, the court also said that two former heads of SISMI, Nicolo Pollari and Marco Mancini, should be re-tried. The two had been acquitted by the appeals court in 2010 in a ruling that said producing evidence against them would have violated state secrecy laws...
Tuesday, September 4, 2012
Memorial for a Hero
My dog Ari passed away over Labor Day weekend. She was 12, which is considered to be advanced age for large breeds. She had stopped eating on Thursday and within 24 hours was unable to stand. When she finally passed, it was in the cab on the way home from the emergency vet clinic, the visit to which had been less than useful to say the least. When I realized she had stopped breathing it was a relief because she had really been suffering and it seemed there wasn't much I could do about it. It was also very messy and nasty, but the less said about that the better. The cab driver was an angel. He kept suggesting I get a piece of wood to carry her on, and when I said there wasn't any he went over to the abandoned house next door and scrounged up an old three-legged table, which she is resting on in the drawing above, propped up in one corner by a milk crate. He also didn't charge me for the mess in the backseat, although that might just be because most of it was all over my pants. Upon arriving home, the first thing I did after taking a bath was to start working on the drawing. This would be my last opportunity before she was buried in the backyard late Sunday night.
I first picked Ari up over 9 years ago at the Mesa, an off-the-grid community full of Viet Nam vets, meth addicts and creative types. She had been given to a junkie couple who weren't paying much attention to her, so off she went roaming around with a pack of semi-feral dogs. Since Animal Care and Control refuses to visit the Mesa, the dogs there are such a problem that anyone who doesn't want them leaping straight through their solid glass windows needs to erect a sturdy 6 foot tall fence which must be surrounded by buried chicken wire. Some of them are mixed with coyote, according to the rumours. When I first met Ari I thought she wasn't quite big enough or aggressive enough for me. At the time she was about 95 pounds. I was so frightfully ignorant then that I didn't realize that a casually aggressive dog is one which would be a danger to me, to others and to itself. As it was, I am incredibly lucky that her temperament was mild enough that my inability to physically control her didn't result in a lawsuit or worse. Later, she mellowed with age enough that I developed the ability to manage her, but that was years down the line. On that first day, I was so disappointed by her placid disposition that I went to go look at an even bigger dog, which growled at me and hid under a car. He could obviously tell I was spoken for. When I came back to get Ari with resignation, her original owner offered to go find her puppy pictures and I told her I didn't care one way or another. I don't even like to think about the scandalous things I would do for those puppy pictures today!
Throughout the duration of her career as my protector, she has stopped 3 attempted robberies and saved one of my friend's lives. Well, maybe I should say 2 and a half robberies, since I'm not 100% certain that the second was intended to be one. But when a man in a ski mask rushes at me diagonally from across a dark abandoned street in the middle of the night, it shouldn't be much of a surprise that he was going to get bitten, and lightly, if I might add. My roommate and I were joking afterwards that the guy needed to go back to Mugging 101 so someone could remind him not to go after the target with the ginormous rottweiler mix. The first robbery was my fault because the guy was twitching so much I already knew he was a crackhead who would not be able to sell me any quality weed. When he tried to snatch my money and hand me a little balled up piece of paper with a crack rock in it, Ari intercepted his attempt. Again, little damage was done and no belongings were lost. The last thwarted robbery was two years ago, at a point where I was starting to think she was too feeble to be an effective guard dog. That time I was in my bedroom on the computer when I heard a thin crashing sound and ran outside to see a man with a metal implement trying to break the window. When he saw me he continued with the attempt until Ari ran out and started barking. He then immediately turned around and ran away. There is still a long winding crack running down the window from that day.
But the time when Ari saved someone's life was her crowning achievement. A friend of mine, who was accustomed to walking her and playing with her, had tried to break up a huge fight involving at least a dozen people, bare minimum. When my friend was lying on the ground in a pool of blood after getting walloped on by a skateboard, she ran up to the scene and the crowd dispersed. At the hospital the doctor said my friend would have died if the assault had gone on for any longer than it did. The doctors had to give my friend injections to make his eyelids swell up, because the bones around that area had been shattered and they were concerned his eyeball would fall out. Ari was generally a very quiet dog although she would bark at anyone who was being aggressive, so I also used her to break up fights on several other occasions. Actually, it might be a stretch to say that I did much of anything at all since the only action required was for me to stand in the general vicinity of an altercation while she lunged to the end of her leash. I never had to train her for that, either. Her response to belligerence was pure instinct, or maybe just personality. And on top of all that, she was never once aggressive with children and did nothing but cringe when she got punched in the face by a random toddler after I smuggled her on the BART train.
Ari has also protected me in ways that are less obvious. There have been many times throughout the years when there was little besides her aging process to keep me from returning to homelessness, since wandering around the country with few goals was a habit that was starting to be a little too comfortable. The thing about rottweilers, or rottweiler mixes, is that, unlike more gregarious breeds, they tend to be one person dogs. Ari's separation anxiety was so bad that, if I left her tied up outside a store for even a few minutes, she would ignore people who tried to pet her and howl so loud you could hear it from blocks away, and that is no exaggeration. Around the house, she would whine if a door separated us for more than a few minutes and was almost always less than 5 feet away from me. I might have been able to shift a golden retriever or a lab off onto somebody else, but with her it was not an option. She taught me a lot about commitment and responsibility.
Over the past few years her effectiveness as a guard dog has become somewhat of a running joke. It's been nice to have an elderly dog hanging around because, unlike with younger animals, I knew I could walk away from a delicately arranged work area and not come back to a disaster zone. But I shouldn't have underestimated her capacity for protection. During this summer I've had two dreams where a robber tried to crawl through the window and she chased them away, once even biting the man in the face! After awakening from one of these dreams I saw that she was sleeping on the floor directly beneath the window, which she never does. What's interesting is that, right after those dreams occurred I was reading a novel, Heart Shaped Box, which I discovered midway through contains a protagonist whose two dogs have shadow spirits that act as his guardians in the spirit world. When the dogs were killed protecting him, they were reincarnated in a new set of puppies. However relevant that story may be, Ari was too perfect for replacement. I guess I'll get a new dog eventually since the neighborhood I live in kind of requires it. For now, I hope I can stop with the inappropriate displays of public emotion sometime soon. I've been acting like a leaky faucet and it's really embarrassing.
Here is another interesting thing that makes me feel slightly better. While transporting Ari to and from the vet, not one but two cabs pulled up and refused to take her. That's not the part that makes me feel better, obviously. When I called the cab dispatcher back I could not help but to step outside and start yelling about this incompetence because every second can make a difference in an emergency. She was very apologetic and nice, and after sending another cab she informed me that she owned a website about breed specific raw food diets for dogs, which is beyond strange because Ari was on a raw food diet for 6 years. What is the likelihood? O_O I'm interpreting this interaction as an omen to continue with the adoption plan (eventually), even though I feel like a giant exposed nerve right now.
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