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BEWARE OF THE KOOKS

http://counterspin.blogspot.com/2003_04_13_counterspin_archive.html#200163334

April 19, 2003 [is]The 10th anniversary of the burning of the Branch Davidian compound in Waco. April 19th is also the date of the Oklahoma City bombing, and the Elian Gonzalez raid. And, for good measure, "patriot" militia nuts know that April 19th is also the date of the Battle of Lexington and Concord. In other words...crank your Domestic Terrorist Alert systems up to Code Orange.

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BACK ON THE PAYROLL PART 1

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,5944-651577,00.html

THE half-brother of Saddam Hussein, captured by special forces on Thursday, has disclosed valuable information about the former regime, American military sources said yesterday. Barzan Ibrahim Hasan al-Tikriti, who worked closely with Saddam for more than two decades, was said to have been instantly co-operative.

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BACK ON THE PAYROLL PART 2

http://www.albawaba.com/news/index.php3?sid=247299&lang=e&dir=news

Testimonies recently heard by Al Bawaba [news agency] from homebound Jordanians who fought in Iraq as volunteers [Mujahideen] revealed some aspects of a possible ‘deal’ that may have been concluded by the Iraqi commander of the Republican Guard General Maher Al Tikriti, and the US forces. The alleged agreement led to the staged ‘defeat’ of Baghdad by coalition forces in return for the commander’s safety, after he was ‘sure’ that his cousin - Saddam Hussein - had concluded a much larger one guaranteeing his safety as well.

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BACK ON THE PAYROLL PART 3

http://www.cbc.ca/stories/2003/04/17/iraq_police030417

BAGHDAD - Some Iraqis say the U.S. military is putting Saddam Hussein's henchmen back in power by reassembling Baghdad's police force… A noisy crowd of demonstrators gathered in front of the Palestine Hotel to protest against reinstating the police. They held banners reading, "We refuse Saddam's policemen" and "Open the prisons."

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SADDAM LIBERATED

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/2959399.stm

US intelligence officials are studying television pictures of what is said to be an appearance by Saddam Hussein in Baghdad on 9 April - the day American forces moved into the city. The pictures were shown on Abu Dhabi TV, who said they had been given the tape by an unidentified person.

...The videotape was shot from a distance and alternated between zooming in on the man and panning the crowd that was rushing him. He has a large gold chain around his neck and appears both pleased and haggard... The television station said the pictures, taken in the Azamiyah neighbourhood of the capital, "showed that there were parts of Baghdad that hadn't fallen at that day" and that still had an Iraqi security presence... The US is still searching for Saddam Hussein inside Iraq.

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LIFE IN IRAQ

http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/04/18/1050172760147.html

Life for Iraq's 25 million people has become a struggle to find food and their feet after the Americans ripped away Saddam's regime and then stood back as the only form of life and government most of them knew was destroyed in a looting rampage that many believe was a part of the invasion plan - all functions of government are paralysed. Americans might be offended by a comparison with September 11. But if that traumatised the US, how do we measure the impact of such a high-powered military invasion in Iraq.

...The people of Baghdad were subjected to constant bombing... They sat through long nights trembling in fear without electricity as errant bombs wreaked death and destruction... Any movement around the country was potentially lethal as US forces adopted a shoot-to-kill policy against a population that did not understand orders yelled in English, such as "stop" or "freeze". Iraq's highways and Baghdad's streets were littered with the dead. In the city's hospitals, patients coped without drugs, while families lined up to collect the dead from over-crowded morgues... Torched government buildings still smoulder and the smell of death lingers... Baghdad's power supply is still not restored and health professionals fear an epidemic of disease because there is little safe drinking water.

...Amid this heartbreak, when CNN asked marine Edward Langello about the looting, he said: "You Iraqis need to get up and take care of your own nation. That's what the American people did a long time ago and look where we are."

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KUWAIT TO THE RESCUE

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/2958081.stm

As Basra struggles to cope with the after effects of war, the local Red Crescent is handing out ration packs to the most needy citizens. The rations themselves are supplied by aid convoys from Kuwait… The ration pack handed out by the Red Crescent relief agency is a fairly minimal affair: a tin each of oil and milk powder, a box of tea and packet of salt, eight cartons of fruit juice, a dozen packets of crisps, two bars of soap, and, most important of all, six bottles of water. The packs are enough to prompt a near riot outside the gates of the feeding station in Basra… These handouts are done on a "once only basis" for each eligible person.

…While Basra's predicament is grim, the story behind the aid itself is more heartening. Supplied by the Kuwaiti Red Crescent, it is a mark of how many in the small but wealthy neighbouring Arab state are seeking to help.

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ZOO AID STYMIED BY U.S.

http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?ao=13399

An international team of zoologists and veterinarians led by Lawrence Anthony of the Royal Zulu National Park arrived in Kuwait on Friday but were prevented from entering Iraq.

The team left South Africa on Wednesday night on an emergency mission to assess the welfare of zoo animals in a number of Iraqi zoos… The mission is currently funded entirely by the members of the team in their private capacities and a corporate sponsor but, following the initial assessment, funds will be raised internationally to save the animals from starvation, and to counteract the infections already reported in some of the animals in the Iraqi National Zoo.

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GOOD GUYS KILLED IN BANK ROBBERIES

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=398514

A wave of brazen bank robberies has swept through the centre of Baghdad in the past few days in full view of the occupying American forces... A tour of 20 banks in the city by The Independent yesterday found 15 wrecked, torched and looted.

...A US Abrams tank, several armoured fighting vehicles and a company of marines have finally been stationed at the Iraqi Central Bank, unsubtly marking their presence by flying the US flag in front of the towering, fortress-style building. But they were deployed only on Thursday afternoon, eight days after the US troops arrived in the city centre. For at least two days, the bank, and two others that adjoin it – the headquarters of the Rasheed and Rafidian banks – had been looted.

...Within hours of the marines' deployment at the bank, they shot dead three Iraqi men on the street with their tank's 7.62mm machine-guns. No one knows how many civilians have been shot by American soldiers in Baghdad in similar circumstances. The dead men were not connected with the people raiding the bank. "Unfortunately, we killed the good guys," said Lieutenant Patrick Spencer, 35, of the US Marines 13/4 company.

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JUST PRACTICING

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/02/24/iraq/main541815.shtml

U.S. Army soldiers - who are taking over the Marines' security duties in Baghdad - practiced crowd-control tactics Saturday on hundreds of Iraqis swarming the Palestine Hotel in hopes of obtaining jobs with the transitional government.

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VOICES STIFLED

http://electroniciraq.net/news/677.shtml

Less than 24 hours after issuing a press release highlighting the failures of the U.S. military's attempts to oversee humanitarian intervention in Iraq, [the peace group] Voices in the Wilderness was banned from meeting with the U.S. Civil Military Operations Center, or with international journalists working out of the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad.

If the freedom to critique U.S. policies in Iraq regarding humanitarian issues is being curtailed already, then exactly what does this mean for building "democracy" here?

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FBI DEMONSTRATES SUDDEN CONCERN

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=398511

The FBI has sent a team of agents to Baghdad to help find artefacts stolen from the city's museums after US troops came under intense criticism... The US media has shown limited interest in a cultural disaster with few precedents... Donald Rumsfeld, the Defence Secretary, has sounded notably unmoved, suggesting that, while the looting was regrettable, it was a normal consequence of war. "It happens and it's unfortunate," he said this week.

...Participants at a Unesco meeting on Thursday suggested the pillaging had been carefully organised. Some of the looters had keys to vaults and safes, and some items are already said to have turned up on the international art black market.

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DON'T FORGET TO WASH YOUR HANDS

http://abcnews.go.com/sections/GMA/Primetime/Iraq030417LostViruses.html

Dangerous strains of cholera, black fever, HIV, polio and hepatitis may have been lost during the postwar looting of Iraq's key disease-control facility, ABCNEWS has learned... Scientists say looters took refrigerators full of the deadly viruses last Friday, but they're not sure what's actually missing. "They are in containers, all of these things taken together, cholera, AIDS and black fever," chemist Rasa Al-Alaq said. "The viruses that are lost, we have no idea where they went." U.S. Marines were sent to guard the facility today after Iraqi scientists reported the dangerous material had been removed by looters... Marines said they saw the looting taking place last Friday but they had no instructions to protect the building... "I didn't know what this facility was," said Lt. Matthew Danner. "I probably should have done something..." As escaped laboratory animals roamed the compound, a new sign was posted in Arabic reading: "Stay away, extremely dangerous. Lab is polluted with viruses."

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FLASHBACK

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,929976,00.html

British welcome in Baghdad: City plundered by Turks. Friday March 16, 1917. Our vanguard entered Baghdad soon after nine o'clock this morning… Crowds of Baghdadis came out to meet us: Persians, Krabe, Jew, Armenians, Chaldeans and Christians of diverse sects and races. They lined the streets, balconies and roofs, hurrahing and clapping their hands. Groups of schoolchildren danced in front of us, shouting and cheering, and the women of the city turned out in their holiday dresses.

…It appears that the enemy abandoned all hope of saving the city when we effected the crossing of the Tigris… As soon as the gendarmery left at two o'clock this morning, Kurds and others began looting. As we entered from the east this morning, they were rifling… Regiments were detailed to police, the bazaar, and houses and pickets and patrols were allotted, but there was much that it was too late to save. Many shops had been gutted… No functionaries came out to meet us. There was still fear of reprisals. Our own attitude was characteristic. There was no display, or attempt at creating an impression.

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LOVE AND MARRIAGE

http://www.harpers.org/weekly-review/

[In Baghdad,] the German Embassy and the French cultural center were both ransacked as well; in the German Embassy, wives were observed making selections as their husbands carried furniture down the stairs.

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UNDERSTATEMENT O'THE DAY

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2003/04/19/wbagh19.xml/

...Tens of thousands of demonstrators flooded the streets of Baghdad yesterday, demanding the immediate withdrawal of US forces... the demonstrations showed that hatred for Saddam does not necessarily translate into support for America's presence in Iraq.

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SHIITE PROTESTS

http://english.aljazeera.net/topics/article.asp?cu_no=1&item_no=2826&version=1&template_id=277&parent_id=258

A cleric at one of Shia Islam’s holiest shrines in the Iraqi city Karbala denounced the presence of US troops in the country during Friday prayers... “We reject this foreign occupation, which is a new imperialism. We don’t want it anymore,” Sheikh Kaazem Al-Abahadi Al-Nasari told thousands of Muslim faithful at the mausoleum of Imam Hussein... the grandson of the Prophet Mohammad. “We don’t need the Americans. They’re here to control our oil. They’re unbelievers, but as for us, we have the power of faith,” he said... Sheikh Nasri denounced “those politicians who are coming back to Iraq supported by the Americans and British, who given the opportunity would only obey American orders.” ...Sheikh Nasri also called on Shias to back the Hawza, the Shia religious school in another holy city Najaf.

...[In Baghdad,] Hundreds of thousands poured out of mosques and demonstrated against Washington’s presence... At the Al-Hikma mosque Sheikh Mohammad Fartusi said the Shia would not accept a brand of democracy “that allows Iraqis to say what they want but gives them no say in their destiny.” ...He also urged the faithful to follow the Hawza in Najaf.

...Lebanon’s top Shia cleric Sheikh Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah urged Iraqis on Friday... “We call on the oppressed good people of Iraq…to prevent the birth of a new dictator from inside and abroad and to open their eyes to the methods of the occupier,” said Fadlallah in his sermon... Fadlallah warned that Washington would use the chaos in Iraq to show that Iraqis could not govern themselves.

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LESS THAN ENTHUSED ABOUT SYRIA

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/politics/story.jsp?story=398520

Colin Powell, the US Secretary of State, confirmed that he would soon travel to Syria. He said he would read the riot act to the President, Bashar al-Assad... The Bush administration's pressure on Syria appears, if anything, to be producing a counter-reaction in the region.

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MIDEAST SEES WRITING ON WALL

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2003/04/19/wneigh19.xml/

Egypt led calls for a boycott of any US-led administration of Iraq yesterday as regional states gathered in a belated attempt to exert influence on the outcome of the war. Six neighbouring states of Iraq put aside their rivalries and sent foreign ministers to Riyadh, the Saudi Arabian capital... The "emergency regional conference" was originally expected to last one day, but the enormity of the task of establishing a consensus among Iraq's neighbours is likely to force it to continue... All Iraq's neighbours - Iran, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria and Turkey - as well as Egypt and Bahrain, current chairman of the Arab League, are present.

Turkey is determined to curb the power of the Kurds in northern Iraq and keep them away from controlling the Kirkuk oil fields. Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, which both have Shi'ite Muslim minorities, do not want to see Iraq's Shi'ites, the majority in the country, gain their natural position of power. Iran and Syria, leaders of the radical camp in the Middle East, are likely to be surrounded by US-allied states once Iraq has a pro-Washington government... For the oil-exporting nations there is yet another fear - that the new Iraqi government will flood the world with crude to pay the bills of American construction companies and drive down the price.

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PENTAGON'S PET THIEF SHOT AT

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=398525

As Ahmed Chalabi, the Pentagon's candidate for leader of Iraq, was being asked if he was a thief, the sound of gunfire interrupted the press conference. Mr Chalabi insisted his conviction for embezzling $60m (£38m) was all a plot. Outside, one of his supporters, Haqi Ismail, sat in shock dabbing the graze on his nose from one of the eight bullets fired into his pick-up truck... The shooting was just a vignette of post-Saddam politics in the Iraqi capital. Mr Chalabi, who left Iraq 45 years ago at the age of 12... has just been flown back by the Americans.

...Mr Ismail, a kinsman from Nasiriyah, had been attacked for having a Chalabi poster on his windscreen, and was lucky to escape with his life on his first day of campaigning. Not that there was any reason to campaign. In his press conference Mr Chalabi acted as if he already ran the country, while insisting, all the while, that he had no interest in standing in any election... In an increasingly surreal atmosphere he refused to explain what the flag of his movement – yellow, green and blue with what looked like red cluster bombs in the middle – symbolised. It was being carried by the Free Iraqi Forces, he said. But who exactly were they? "They are brave volunteers who are part of the coalition forces. Just like the British they are under General Tommy Franks," he responded.

How did he explain that these volunteers have told journalists that they were in fact being paid around $300 a month by him, Mr Chalabi. "It is not $300, that is not the right figure," said Mr Chalabi looking rather alarmed, perhaps at the prospect that he was overpaying them by mistake.

Outside, Mr Ismail was examining bullet holes on the headrest of his seat. What did he think? "I think maybe some people do not like Mr Chalabi too much," he ventured.

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IF ONLY SHE'D BEEN WHITE

http://truthout.org/docs_03/041603H.shtml

This is the tale of two privates… They were roommates at Fort Bliss military base in Texas; tentmates in the Gulf, and close friends at all places in between. Then they (and 13 other members of the US Army's 507th Maintenance Company) took a wrong turn in the southern Iraqi city of Nassiriya and were ambushed. One, Jessica Lynch, 19, was injured, hospitalised and then rescued… The other, Lori Piestewa, 23, was killed, with the gruesome distinction of being the first native American in the US army to be killed in combat and the only American servicewoman to die in this war.

On the face of it, Piestewa, from the Hopi tribe, does not fit the bill for the all-American war hero or heroine. She was a single mother of two who left her four-year-old son, Brandon, and three-year-old daughter, Carla, with her parents who live in a trailer in Tuba City, Arizona while she went to fight in the Middle East… Tuba City is home mostly to Navajo people although it sits on the edge of a Hopi reservation - a piece of land returned to native Americans by the federal government. In theory, they are independent nations entering into bilateral treaties with the US government; in practice most reservations are situated on poor land with limited independence and home to the most impoverished minority in the country.

…[She] joined the army partly out of an interest in the job, neighbours say, but primarily to provide a secure income with which to raise her children. This community of 8,200, which according to the census is almost 95% native American, is tight-knit and tight-lipped. Since just about everyone knew her or her parents, nobody has been unaffected… Evidence of her absence is everywhere. Small shrines with huge pictures of Piestewa have sprung up in the supermarket and outside her house. Shops have put donation buckets on display to raise money for her children, and two radio talk-show hosts in Phoenix are starting a trust fund to pay for the children's education.

…Tim Johnson, the executive editor of the country's leading weekly paper on native American affairs, Indian Country Today, [says]… the army's sensitivity to native American culture leaves much to be desired... "They still talk about 'going into Indian country', meaning enemy territory," he says. They continue to dwell on the stereotype of native Americans as warriors, giving their missiles names like Apache and Tomahawk… Yet after African-Americans, native Americans are the ethnic group represented most strongly in the military.

…The American military [is] more reliant on the poor, and therefore non-whites, than ever… This growth has been particularly marked among women. In the army, black women, who make up only 16% of the female civilian population, actually outnumber white women… The family of Shawna Johnson, a black female prisoner of war in Iraq, say she wanted to be a chef but couldn't afford the training. Not long after Piestewa's disappearance became known, the commanding officer of Tuba City high school's ROTC programme told the Arizona Republic she was no longer so keen on the military. "This is definitely teaching me the reality of life," said 16-year-old Dezbah Begay. "Maybe I'll become a chef or a police officer or a doctor instead."

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CONGRESS URGES BUSH TO ESCALATE MIDEAST TENSION

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=285022&contrassID=2&subContrassID=1&sbSubContrassID=0&listSrc=Y

For the past two weeks, a letter initiated by supporters of Israel and explicitly calling on the administration not to make demands of Israel in the framework of the road map ["for peace"]has been doing the rounds among members of both houses of Congress. The letter, already bearing the signatures of 75 senators and 250 members of the House of Representatives, will be sent to President George W. Bush in the coming weeks... In light of the fact that the initiators of this one have managed to collect the signatures of so many members of Congress, the document has become politically significant and, as such, has an effect on the administration too.

...Last week, Senator Richard Lugar (Republican from Indiana) added an amendment to the State Department Authorization Bill that... includes the following demands [of the Palestinian authorities]: A promise that the Palestinian Authority will not be tainted by terror; a call for the Palestinians to demonstrate an ongoing and active commitment to the war against terror; dismantling of the terrorist infrastructure; collection of illegal arms; and the establishment of a security mechanism that will cooperate with the Israeli defense establishment... The Authorization Bill deals only with the principles of the State Department budget and cannot prevent the transfer of funds, as this issue is governed by the Allocations Bill.

...An additional stage in the action on Capitol Hill against the road map could come in the next few weeks, in the framework of direct legislation that will stipulate non-recognition of an independent Palestinian state without it first meeting a series of conditions, or, alternatively, legislation that will be tied to the Budget Bill and hence be of a more binding nature. The purpose of the activities in Congress is to signal that the legislature is not happy with the administration's steps, believing that they are making too many demands of Israel.

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INTIFADA OVER: NEW PALESTINIAN PRIME MINISTER RESTORES PEACE AND PROSPERITY [just kidding]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-2578572,00.html

The United States has been asking Israel to support the designated Palestinian prime minister, Mahmoud Abbas, also known as Abu Mazen... once Abbas takes power and forms his Cabinet. That could happen as early as Sunday.

...Israeli measures, intended to help ease Abbas into power, were drawn up in recent weeks by Israel's army... The confidence-building measures would include a gradual withdrawal of Israeli troops from Palestinian areas, the release of Palestinian prisoners and the transfer of tax revenues to the Palestinian Authority... During 2 years of violence, Israel has frozen $534 million in taxes and customs collected from Palestinian laborers and merchants... The plan would also allow thousands of Palestinian laborers to return to jobs they haven't been able to reach in Israel.

...Israel's military recommended transferring control of an area of Abbas' choosing to Palestinian security forces, who would be responsible for controlling militant activity there. The first withdrawal would likely be in the Gaza Strip. According to Maariv [newspaper], the army would refrain from "military operations that are not essential to the war on terror." ...The West Bank and Gaza Strip, meanwhile, remained under a tight closure Friday.

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GROWING UP IN PALESTINE

http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=284208&contrassID=2&subContrassID=5&sbSubContrassID=0&listSrc=Y

At midnight on February 20 [2003], the soldiers "came down to the village from the mountains," surrounded Ja'far's house, banged hard on the door, woke everyone up and demanded that Ja'far come along for interrogation… Two brothers, Nader and Mamduh, were [also] arrested that way in July 2002.

Presumably these four arrests were included in due course in routine Israel Defense Forces updates… to reappear afterward in the morning news bulletins: "The IDF last night arrested 13 suspects and others wanted for interrogation throughout the West Bank." But Ja'far and Nader were 15-and-a-half when detained.

The urgent interrogation requiring that they be hauled off in the middle of the night usually involved the suspicion that they'd been throwing stones at Israeli vehicles… Israeli jails, prisons and detention facilities now hold some 300 Palestinian minors… During the past two years, the average age of detained minors has dropped, while the severity of the alleged offenses has increased… The principal new element: Some of these minors, including some younger than 16, are sent to administrative detention: no actual charges, no rights, not even a minimal defense of their rights.

…"Dad woke me up and said, `The army wants you,'" recounted Nader last week… His father woke them, Nader and his brother dressed and went outside where the soldiers waited. Their mother followed and saw the soldiers cuffing their hands and feet and blindfolding them. The soldiers had almost to lift them bodily into the Jeep… They rode to "I don't know where." Evidently to the police substation at Givat Ze'ev.

The blindfolds were removed… "There were two soldiers and an interrogator (a policeman). The interrogator began questioning me: `You throw rocks?' I said, `No, maybe once, when I was little.' He started shouting at me. He pushed me. He said I threw 300 rocks. He insisted I did, and I kept saying no. I told him again that I did when I was little, but not now. He wrote something on a paper and said I had to sign. I don't know what I signed."

They fingerprinted him, took him outside and then it was his brother's turn to be questioned... Then they were taken to a detention facility at the IDF base at Beit El. There, says Nader, "the soldiers beat us." Outside the cell, and in the cell itself. A few soldiers all at once, and sometimes only one. The reports of beatings are recurrent: especially in the detention cells at army bases. A slap here, a fist there, a kick, pushing, a blow to the head. The lawyers know it's pointless to make specific complaints: They wait so long to see the prisoner and have so little time with him; the matter of beatings falls by the wayside.

Nader sat in detention for 15 days; at first alone, then with another four youths… The conditions were so terrible in the cells and the fear of beatings so great that, when he was moved… close to the area where the adults were, he saw it as a significant improvement.

He doesn't say much about the trial… Nader was sentenced to four months in prison, allegedly because: "...in the year 2002 or thereabouts... on five different occasions... he threw rocks at Israeli vehicles traveling on the road, with the intent of harming them or their passengers."

… Ja'far doesn't talk about what Attorney Quzmar says about the first time he saw Ja'far, on February 24, in a military courtroom where he was defending other minor detainees. Quzmar saw a child who looked about 11, in clothes that hung from his frame, "like a jacket on a matchstick." That same cold night, under interrogation, Ja'far had confessed to having thrown stones "in 2001 and 2002," as the charge sheet claimed. In other words, when he was 13 and 14 years old. The military prosecutor was willing to make do with one month's imprisonment. Quzmar reported this to Ja'far, but Ja'far doubled over in his chair and began to cry. "Go back - to that cell, for a month? Oh, no." …"Maybe he threw stones, but he's also a kid - look at him," said Quzmar.

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BUSHLEXIA O'THE DAY

http://www.harpers.org/weekly-review/

Faced with the unlikelihood of finding any nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons in Iraq, the Bush Administration was beginning to suggest that Saddam Hussein had moved all his weapons of mass destruction to Syria. Asked whether Syria was "next," Donald Rumsfeld said: "It depends on people's behavior. Certainly I have nothing to announce."

President George W. Bush, asked whether Syria has weapons of mass destruction, replied: "I think that we believe there are chemical weapons in Syria, for example, and we will — each situation will require a different response, and of course we're — first things first. We're here in Iraq now, and the second thing about Syria is that we expect cooperation."

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HISTORY OF HEZBOLLAH

http://www.monkeytime.org/archive/Apr2003.html#hezbollah

I've tried to gather a few thoughts and links about Hezbollah. I was motivated by an astonishing quote from Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage in a syndicated op-ed piece in today's N&O. Armitage claims that Hezbollah may be the terrorist "A-team," while Al Qaida "may be actually the B-team." The jaw-dropping reversal flies in the face of so many facts it's difficult to know where to begin…

The history of Hezbollah… The Shiite militant organization, also a political party, arose as a specific response to Israel's misguided 1982 invasion of Lebanon [see http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/1908671.stm]. Hezbollah was fueled by the horrific civilian massacres at Sabra and Shatilla and by the Israeli army's bungled handling of the local Shiite population, many of whom, believe it or not, intitially greeted the Israelis with support [see http://www.biu.ac.il/Besa/meria/journal/1997/issue3/jv1n3a3.html].

…Is Hezbollah really more of a threat to the U.S. mainland than Al Qaida? Get real. Throughout its history, Hezbollah has focused primarily on a military campaign in and around Lebanon… Meanwhile, Al Qaida has repeatedly stated its intent to continue bringing terror to Western civilians in their own countries.

…Sadly, Armitage has company. Florida Senator Bob Graham has been calling Hezbollah "the No. 1 threat" to the U.S. for months now, citing the 1983 suicide bombings that killed 260 Marines and 59 French paratroopers as proof that we need to send missiles into Hezbollah's Syrian training camps right away… Today's N&O op-ed also uses the 1983 bombings, but neither source bothers to mention that those horrible deaths were in part the result of a number of confused moves by Ronald Reagan's White House, which may have been deliberately manipulated by Ariel Sharon to force the Marines to take sides in a conflict in which they were supposed to be neutral [see http://www.washington-report.org/backissues/0395/9503079.htm]. As if that wasn't enough, the Marines were given absurdly restrictive rules of engagement and left as sitting ducks for terrorists already angry at outside invaders in their land. Don't believe me; here's Caspar Weinberger, Reagan's equivalent to Donald Rumsfeld, telling it to PBS' Frontline:

"So you have a force that was almost a sitting duck in one of the most dangerous spots in the Mideast, and therefore one of the most dangerous spots in the world, unable to protect itself. It was a disaster waiting to happen… Marines that are properly armed and have rules of engagement that allow them to defend themselves are quite a different thing than Marines who are forced to sit on a Beirut Airport and not do anything effectively… Beirut was an absolutely inevitable outcome of doing what we did, of putting troops in with no mission that could be carried out." [transcript at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/target/interviews/weinberger.html]

Once again: Hezbollah arose after Israel 1) invaded Lebanon in what Israelis themselves call "a war of choice," [see Menachim Begin saying this at http://www.washington-report.org/backissues/0794/9407073.htm] 2) aided a group of thugs who "raped, tortured, mutilated and massacred" hundreds, if not thousands, of unarmed Palestinian civilians at Shabra and Shatilla [see http://www.globalpolicy.org/intljustice/general/2001/sab&shat.htm] , and 3) began treating the local Shiites like crap [see link above]. And now people are suggesting that the United States should take on the job of dealing with the mess Israel created for itself? Absurd.

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JOURNALIST LIBERATED IN PALESTINE

http://www.albawaba.com/news/index.php3?sid=247356&lang=e&dir=news

Dozens of Israeli soldiers raided Nablus's old city on Saturday, encountering scores of Palestinian youths who began throwing stones, Palestinian witnesses said. Palestinian fighters also opened fire, and a fierce gun battle with the soldiers ensued, [witnesses and medics] said. A group of Palestinian journalists, including a Reuters cameraman and photographer, said they were trying to film the clash when soldiers opened fire on them. One Palestinian cameraman from another news organization was killed in the shooting, the Reuters journalists and Palestinian medics said. Witnesses said he was wearing a jacket marked "press". Hospital officials said at least 17 Palestinians were injured in this incident.

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IRAQIS: ASHCROFT'S NEW PALS

http://www.washtimes.com/national/20030418-4772890.htm

Interviews by the FBI of nearly 11,000 Iraqi nationals in this country to find terrorists or other potential security threats resulted in the arrest of one Iraqi Intelligence Service official... "During the past few weeks, Iraqis in the United States have become our unheralded partners in Operation Iraqi Freedom," Mr. Ashcroft said at a Justice Department press conference.

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BUSH SR. APOLOGIA ERASED FROM TIME

http://www.thememoryhole.org/mil/bushsr-iraq.htm

On 21 September 2002, [website]The Memory Hole posted an extract from an essay by George Bush Sr. and Brent Scowcroft, in which they explain why they didn't have the military push into Iraq and topple Saddam during Gulf War 1. Although there are differences between the Iraq situations in 1991 and 2002-3, Bush's key points apply to both.

But a funny thing happened. Fairly recently, Time [magazine] pulled the essay off of their site. It used to be at this link [http://www.time.com/time/magazine/1998/dom/980302/special_report.clintons_29.html] which now gives a 404 error. If you go to the table of contents for the issue in which the essay appeared (2 March 1998) [http://www.time.com/time/magazine/toc/list/0,11627,1101980302,00.html ], "Why We Didn't Remove Saddam" is conspicuously absent. Because of this erasure, we're posting the entire essay. [see site for essay.]

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TROUBLE IN KOREA PART 1

http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=FT.com/StoryFT/FullStory&c=StoryFT&cid=1048313873726&p=1012571727088

Yesterday... Pyongyang dropped a diplomatic bombshell just days before it was due to join negotiations with its arch enemy, the US, in the Chinese capital, Beijing. North Korea announced that it had already begun reprocessing some 8,000 spent fuel rods, an essential step in resuming the country's efforts to build a nuclear arsenal, although doubts remain as to the truth of the statement.

The US and China - which opposed each other in the Korean war that ended in 1953 - are united in their determination to prevent Kim Jong-il, North Korea's leader, from realising his ambition to turn his famine-scoured nation into a possessor of nuclear weapons. Washington's main aim in next week's Beijing talks - the status of which is now in doubt - was to initiate a dialogue that would keep North Korea from pursuing the very step it says it has now taken... "There doesn't seem to be a safety net in place to rescue the situation if diplomacy fails," says Scott Snyder, Seoul representative of the Asia Foundation, a US think-tank... "There is absolutely no way that Kim Jong-il will give up his nuclear programme. It is the only thing he has. The whole economy, the whole hierarchy is geared towards it," says one foreigner who travels regularly to Pyongyang and has met many senior members of the government there.

...The bleak outlook for diplomacy is complemented by the picture obtained by visitors to China's border region with North Korea... Several people with special permission to visit North Korea said yesterday that the country appeared to be preparing for war. "They are all talking about war with America," said one visitor who returned from Rajin Sombong, the country's only special economic zone. "They are all going around yelling 'war with America', 'overthrow America'." Another visitor, who declined to be identified, said young men and some young women were being drafted into the country's militia, a support force for the country's vast standing army. "They all think there will be war with the US and they seem to really believe it," said one ethnic Korean Chinese citizen who returned this week.

Exacerbating tensions within the country is an economy in free-fall towards mass starvation, according to other recent visitors.

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TROUBLE IN KOREA PART 2

http://www.motherjones.com/commentary/columns/2003/17/we_360_01.html

The good news is that China has now actively rejoined Korean diplomacy to prevent a new war there. The bad news is that the American envoy assigned to conduct the talks is James A. Kelly, the assistant secretary of state for Asia and the Pacific. The New York Times describes him as "a longtime Asia hand." This is not a characterization that any single leader in East Asia would recognize. He is an unknown Republican Party hack who has repeatedly insulted South Korean leaders by his lack of understanding of the meaning of diplomacy. Unfortunately, the United States is not using any of its experienced Korean hands like Selig Harrison of the Carnegie Foundation, former ambassador to the Republic of Korea Donald Gregg, or Professor Bruce Cumings of the University of Chicago, who could solve this problem fairly easily if unencumbered by the Bush administration's ideological baggage.. Given that this delicate situation is still in amateur hands on the American side, another pointless war, this time in Korea, a much more formidable country than Iraq, is still a possibility.

...A little history might be in order. Back in 1994, the United States discovered that the Pyongyang regime was producing plutonium as a by-product of an old Russian-designed reactor for generating electric power. A crisis over the possibility that North Korea might be able to produce a few atomic bombs was resolved within the year by the oddly titled "Agreed Framework." In return for Pyongyang's pledge to mothball its old reactor and allow inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.S. and its allies promised to build two new reactors that would not produce weapons-grade fissionable material, and to open some form of diplomatic and economic relations with the isolated North. The U.S. also agreed to supply the North with fuel oil to replace the energy lost by shutting down the reactor (since the country has no independent sources of energy of any kind). For three years the Clinton administration stalled on implementing the agreement, hoping that the highly militarized North Korean regime, its people suffering from starvation, would simply collapse.

...In June 2000, the president of South Korea, Kim Dae-jung, acting on his own initiative and without consulting the United States, undertook a historic journey of reconciliation to Pyongyang, in an effort to eradicate the last vestiges of the Cold War on the Korean peninsula. His visit produced a breakthrough, and won him the Nobel Peace Prize... On a visit to Washington in March 2001, Kim was rudely brushed off by Bush, who promptly included North Korea in his increasingly bellicose statements about the world. In his State of the Union address of January 2002, Bush identified North Korea as one of three nations belonging to an "Axis of Evil." Needless to say, he did not consult his South Korean allies before making this provocative declaration... In September 2002, the Bush administration asserted in its "national security strategy" a right to wage "preventive war." ...In the face of Iraq's destruction by the world's richest and most heavily armed country, North Korea prepared to defend itself in the only way it thought the Americans could understand. It withdrew from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, expelled international inspectors, and restarted its old power reactor.

...The men (and woman) of the Bush administration made no effort to back down from or soften their positions. Kim Jong-il's regime thus reached the almost unavoidable conclusion that it was likely to be the next victim of a bully and began trying to "deter" the Americans. It insisted on a non-aggression treaty with the U.S. in return for shutting down its dangerous reactor and halting its nuclear weapons development program. It also initially offered to allow the expelled inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency to return to monitor its nuclear facilities.

After the U.S. invaded Iraq -- without any form of international legitimacy, with only a couple of Anglophone allies, and with virtually unanimous condemnation from all the democratic countries of the world -- North Korea pulled back from even this offer. On April 6, 2003, it seemed to accept the logic of the Bush administration and announced that only by arming itself with a "tremendous military deterrent" could it guarantee its own security: "The Iraqi war shows that to allow disarming through inspection does not help avert a war but rather sparks it. . . . This suggests that even the signing of a nonaggression treaty with the U.S. would not help avert a war."

...The prosperous and well-informed people of the South know that their fellow Koreans -- hungry, desperate, oppressed but exceedingly well armed -- are trapped by the ironies of the end of the Cold War and by the harshness of the Kim Jong-il regime... The South no longer much fears the North -- at least a North not pushed to extreme acts by Washington. They fear instead the enthusiasm for war emanating from Washington and the constant problems generated by American troops based in South Korea over the past fifty years.

...To ease these insecurities [South Korean] President Roh, like President Kim Dae-jung before him, continues to stress a "sunshine policy" of greater openness toward the North. I believe that in order for this policy to work, President Roh must do more to separate himself from the Americans and their intransigent, warlike posture -- and he must do it quickly... If President Roh were to ask American troops to leave South Korea altogether, with perhaps only a treaty promising an American "nuclear umbrella" in case the North ever did use nuclear weapons, I believe a reconciliation between the two Koreas might come very speedily... On the other hand, if it sticks with the Americans, it risks everything.

I believe the bellicosity of North Korea has been greatly exaggerated. It is, today, a failed Communist regime and much of its population hovers on the edge of starvation. In the "black-versus-white" worldview of the Bush administration, it has become commonplace to characterize leaders such as Saddam Hussein and Kim Jong-il as simply "evil doers," which lifts them out of history. In addition, Kim Jong-il is sometimes portrayed as being mentally deranged or, alternatively, as a gangster. It is interesting that Bush and Kim Jong-il have at least one thing in common -- both owe their current jobs to their daddies.

...[Bush's] fundamentalist and apolitical beliefs not only seriously underestimate Kim Jong-il and his advisers, but also short-circuit all historical understanding of why such a leader may be revered as well as feared and hated by his countrymen, and why even a disaffected or poorly fed population might be willing to fight for him. In the case of North Korea, it is simply ahistorical and culturally ignorant to suppose that its people, especially its highly disciplined, heavily regimented armed forces, will not fight back -- and fight hard -- to retain control of their homeland.

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US ECONOMY IN THE SHITTER

http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=Z4DKHWJ15IR3YCRBAE0CFFA?type=politicsNews&storyID=2590648

President Bush's advisers are playing down prospects for a postwar economic rebound... Republican insiders say the White House is genuinely concerned after the Senate scaled back the president's tax cuts to a level that they see as having little -- if any -- stimulative effect near-term.

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MILITARY NEEDS COOLER PLANES-- SEND MONEY

http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=20030418-040154-7913r

The U.S. Air Force wants to lift a congressionally imposed cost cap on its troubled F/A-22 fighter plane... The ambitious F/A-22 program has been plagued by problems since its inception in 1986... Congress in 1998 capped the procurement program at $36,800,000,000.00. The Air Force needs to spend more than $43,000,000,000.00 to complete its current buy of 276 aircraft, and wants permission to spend much more. Development so far has cost $21,900,000,000.00. Originally the Air Force intended to buy more than 700 of the supersonic and stealthy fighters, but spiraling costs have forced that number down multiple times.

...The [anonymous] official said he expects the F/A-22 to be... a darling of Congress and the Pentagon... "It's absolutely awesome," the senior official said.

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IMPERIUM NEEDS A FEW GOOD MEN-- SEND $2 BILLION MONTHLY PLEASE

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=398254

The war in Iraq has already cost the United States around $20,000,000,000.00 (£12.7bn) – $3,000,000,000.00 of that in munitions – and the cost of keeping troops in the country will run at $2,000,000,000.00 a month, the Pentagon says... Pentagon planners acknowledge that the US military is already preparing the groundwork for an extended stay.

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DUBYA QUEST TO SHIELD CHENEY-- FAILED

http://www.truthout.org/docs_03/041903H.shtml

A federal appeals court today questioned the Bush administration's request to stop a lawsuit delving into Vice President Dick Cheney's contacts with energy industry executives and lobbyists. Appeals Judges Harry Edwards and David Tatel suggested the White House had no legal basis for asking them to block a lower court judge from letting the case proceed. The Bush administration took the unusual step of coming to the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in the midst of the case.

U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan has ruled that the Sierra Club and Judicial Watch may be entitled to a limited amount of information about the meetings Cheney and his aides had with the energy industry in formulating the White House's energy plan… Tatel, an appointee of President Clinton, said the administration has failed to show that it is suffering legal harm at the hands of the lower court. Edwards, a Carter-era appointee, told a government attorney flatly that "you have no authority" to ask the appeals court to intervene in the middle of the lawsuit… The third member of the panel, Appeals Judge A. Raymond Randolph, expressed doubt that the Cheney task force is required to disclose information about its inner workings. However, Randolph, an appointee of Bush's father, also questioned whether the administration should be seeking appeals court intervention.

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PERLE, SWINE, ETC.

http://truthout.org/docs_03/040303H.shtml

John Conyers Jr., Letter to Rumsfeld: Requesting Financial Disclosure from Defense Policy Board

April 1, 2003 Dear Mr. Secretary: I am writing to request copies of the financial disclosure forms submitted by the members of the Defense Policy Board as well as the minutes of all past Board meetings. As the Ranking Member of the House Judiciary Committee, which has jurisdiction over conflict of interest rules, I have a strong interest in insuring that our laws are being complied with, particularly those which touch on the integrity of our ethical requirements at a time of war… Review of these filings would no doubt lead to greater public trust and confidence in your Defense Policy Board.

The alternative is to face a continuing and damaging disclosure of the potential business conflicts of the Board Members. Just yesterday, my own investigation revealed that Perle is on the board of directors for Onset Technology. Onset is the world's leading provider of message conversion technology. The company's customers include Bechtel - a government contractor widely considered the leading candidate for rebuilding the Iraqi infrastructure and Raytheon Company which is a provider of defense electronics including the patriot and tomahawk missiles. I also found out that Perle holds a directorship in DigitalNet, a Virginia-based communications company with Army and Defense Department contracts.

I would appreciate your office responding to this letter at your earliest convenience.

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CAVEAT EMPTOR

http://www.prwatch.org/spin/index.html

An anti-Semitic web site called the "Barnes Report" is distributing fake whistleblower memos on media bias in the Iraq war that attempt to exploit public skepticism about the accuracy of U.S. news coverage. Excerpts from the alleged memos appear on a series of web pages titled "Controlling the News." [see http://tbrnews.org/Archives/a294.htm] The "memos" instruct reporters to avoid showing scenes of violence from the war and to stress images that depict U.S. policy in a favorable light. Peace activists tempted to believe the hoax should note that the "Barnes Report" is an anti-Semitic web site whose primary propaganda goal is disparagement of Jews and denial that the Nazi Holocaust ever occurred.

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MEDIA BIAS IN ACTION

http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=politicsNews&storyID=2590734

HAVANA (Reuters) - Communist-run Cuba said on Friday it would not allow a visit by a U.N. envoy to probe alleged human rights abuses on the island following the worst crackdown in decades on opponents of President Fidel Castro.

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ANOTHER VERSION

http://www.canoe.ca/EdmontonNews/es.es-04-19-0042.html

The UN Human Rights Commission voted against condemning his country's recent crackdown on opposition and the Cuban government dismissed the possibility of U.S. punitive steps. The top United Nation rights watchdog rejected a proposed resolution criticizing Cuba's recent moves against opponents, instead approving a milder resolution Thursday calling for a UN rights monitor to visit the island.

...Earlier this month, Cuban tribunals sentenced 75 opponents of the government to prison terms ranging from six to 28 years on charges they were mercenaries working with the U.S. government to harm the island's socialist system.

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CUBA PUTS 2 MORE HUMAN RIGHTS ISSUES ON TABLE

http://www.granma.cu/ingles/abril03/vier18/16alarcon-i.html

SHORTLY before announcing that the first of two amendments presented by Cuba to the Human Rights Commission (HRC) - urging an immediate end to the U.S. blockade – had been rejected, Parliamentary President Ricardo Alarcón stated that such a vote would allow members of the Human Tights Commission (HRC) to demonstrate whether they really are concerned about the human rights situation on the island, or whether this is merely part of an annual ritual acted out against the island.

The other amendment to be added to the anti-Cuban resolution condemned acts of terrorism committed against the island from the United States.

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HIGH-TECH CUBA

http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0417/p14s03-stct.html

[Cuba] is chipping away at a longtime US embargo with an unlikely tool: biotechnology. More than three years ago, Smith-Kline Beecham PLC - a charter member of the capitalist world's pharmaceutical sector - signed an agreement with Cuba's Finlay Institute to market the institute's vaccine against meningitis B - the world's first. Now called GlaxoSmithKline PLC, the second-biggest pharmaceutical com-pany in the world is running trials for the Cuban vaccine in Europe and Latin America. If those trials are successful, the company says it plans clinical trials in the US. For Cuba, the deal was a tiny crack in the door that might open up lucrative new markets for its biotechnology products.

…Cuban officials like to quote something Fidel Castro said in 1960 just after he marched into power: "The future of our homeland must be that of men of science." Ironically, the 42-year-old US trade embargo might actually have spurred the island's pursuit to science. Imposed in 1960 by President Kennedy after Mr. Castro infuriated the US by nationalizing $1 billion worth of US-owned property in Cuba, the embargo remains in place decades later. Unable to import some of the medicines it wanted, Cuba began making its own generic drugs… From there sprang a state pharmaceutical industry and later, a biotechnology offshoot.

Cuban officials say the country now produces 80 percent of the types of drugs and medicines used by its 11 million people… The healthcare strategy is straightforward: The government develops the drugs and vaccines according to the demands of Cubans. It then tests them and dispenses them across the population through a network of neighborhood family doctors, polyclinics, and hospitals.

…Although the US has granted Cuba 24 patents, the embargo has so far prevented it from selling any of the products in America… Scientists have limited access to Western journals and can't always afford the latest equipment. They are often denied US visas for scientific exchange… But perhaps the biggest hurdle to Cuba's biotechnology plan is the political climate in the US.

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ONE WAY TO CURE DISEASE

http://reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=healthNews&storyID=2587194

The United States changed the way it classifies patients with the deadly respiratory virus SARS on Thursday, and said the number of probable cases dropped to 35 from 208… Health officials [had] been forced to define the illness by its symptoms, which include fever, a dry cough and a certain pattern of pneumonia as seen in an X-ray. The CDC said probable cases would now be defined as patients who had developed pneumonia.

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WHAT IS SARS LIKE?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/2955655.stm

Nguyen Thi Men, the only health worker at the centre of Vietnam's Sars outbreak to fall severely ill and survive, tells her story to the BBC Vietnamese Service's Nga Pham. "…My whole body was aching, but I told myself it was just fatigue, maybe a cold…On the night of 5 March I developed a high fever. So they put me in the hospital… The American patient had been transferred to Hong Kong, where he died. We were told we might have contracted something from our contact with him.

…My situation started getting worse at an amazing speed. Breathing was difficult and I had to be under a respirator for about 10 days. I was unconscious most of the time… Some of my colleagues have already died.

…My lungs haven't got back to normal and I still feel tight in the chest. But I suffer from a bad insomnia; most nights I can only sleep for a couple hours. My muscles are so weak I can hardly lift anything, and my eyes are swollen and red. But the thing that disturbs me most is my right leg. I can't walk, can't even move the leg without feeling an excruciating pain in my joints. I used to be very active."

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MORE SARS NEWS

http://www.harpers.org/weekly-review/

Officials in Singapore and Hong Kong warned that SARS may never go away. Dr. Leung Pak-yin, the deputy health director of Hong Kong, was not optimistic: "We believe that every citizen could become a carrier of the virus." Health experts have also speculated that "contaminated objects" could be spreading the disease, and that cockroaches might be tracking contaminated sewage from one apartment to another. In Singapore the Roman Catholic Church suspended confessions because of the SARS epidemic and declared a "general absolution" of sins for the Easter season. Singapore's government issued electronic wrist tags to help authorities keep track of SARS patients who have been placed under quarantine; the tags set off an alarm if the patient leaves the house or disables the device.

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YET MORE SARS NEWS

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/2956147.stm

A group of East Asian countries is due to hold a summit to discuss ways to tackle the Sars crisis… Thai Public Health Minister Sudarat Keyuraphan said the the meeting, which will be attended by all 10 member countries of the Association of South East Asian Nations (Asean), would be held on 29 April in Bangkok. He said that delegates from the World Health Organization (WHO) and China, where the virus has hit hardest, may also attend… The WHO has accused China of failing to report the full extent of the Sars virus.

…An official report into the Sars outbreak in Hong Kong's Amoy Gardens apartment block, where more than 300 people were infected with the disease, has concluded that the virus spread through a sewage pipe. A Sars patient with diarrhoea inadvertently infected others when the virus was transmitted through the building's drainage system, said health secretary Dr Yeoh Eng-kiong.

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SCIENCE SHOWS CURRY BEST FOOD IN WORLD

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/2308745.stm

A spicy ingredient of many curries may be an effective treatment for radiation burns, according to a study. Researchers in the United States believe it may prevent skin blistering and redness associated with cancer radiation therapy. The compound, which gives the spice turmeric its yellow colour, was effective in tests on mice.

Turmeric is found in everything from mild Kormas to the hottest Vindaloos. The crucial chemical - curcumin - has long been used as a traditional medicine. It is now being investigated for the treatment of colon cancer and Alzheimer's disease as well as burns… The spice is thought to work as an anti-inflammatory agent.

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THE MIRACLE OF PSYCHOPHYSIOLOGICAL THEORY

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/2865009.stm

Whether we believe in a God may not just be a matter of free will. Scientists now believe there may be physical differences in the brains of ardent believers. Inspiration for this work has come from a group of patients who have a brain disorder called temporal lobe epilepsy. In a minority of patients, this condition induces bizarre religious hallucinations.