Air Force Two Involved In Minor Mid-Air Collision
Vice President Cheney Gets The Bird
As Air Force Two, carrying Vice President Dick Cheney and his daughter,
Liz,
neared O’Hare International Airport on Friday, it was involved in a
mid-air
collision — with a bird.
After the C-32 transport (the military version of a Boeing 757, shown
above)
landed without incident, mechanics checked the engine over while the
vice
president proceeded to his speaking engagement at the annual leadership
conference of the Heritage Foundation.
“A bird hit the right engine of the plane upon landing,” said Megan
McGinn,
a spokeswoman for Cheney. “He was told after he delivered his remarks.”
The incident did not delay the VP’s return to Washington.
FMI: www.whitehouse.gov/vicepresident/
aero-news.net
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=M2JhMTAxOTVkNTI5MWM5MmYyNzE0YWM3NTE1ODM4OTk=
[a snippet, showing that the 1998 Fatwa by OBL, was to protect Iraq...........more dots connected, hard for the “No al-qaeda connection to Iraq, before we started the war” crowd]
First, for over seven years the United States has been occupying the lands of Islam in the holiest of places, the Arabian Peninsula, plundering its riches, dictating to its rulers, humiliating its people, terrorizing its neighbors, and turning its bases in the Peninsula into a spearhead through which to fight the neighboring Muslim peoples. If some people have in the past argued about the fact of the occupation, all the people of the Peninsula have now acknowledged it. The best proof of this is the Americans’ continuing aggression against the Iraqi people using the Peninsula as a staging post, even though all its rulers are against their territories being used to that end, but they are helpless. Second, despite the great devastation inflicted on the Iraqi people by the crusader-Zionist alliance, and despite the huge number of those killed, which has exceeded 1 million... despite all this, the Americans are once against trying to repeat the horrific massacres, as though they are not content with the protracted blockade imposed after the ferocious war or the fragmentation and devastation. So here they come to annihilate what is left of this people and to humiliate their Muslim neighbors. Third, if the Americans’ aims behind these wars are religious and economic, the aim is also to serve the Jews’ petty state and divert attention from its occupation of Jerusalem and murder of Muslims there. The best proof of this is their eagerness to destroy Iraq, the strongest neighboring Arab state, and their endeavor to fragment all the states of the region such as Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Sudan into paper statelets and through their disunion and weakness to guarantee Israel’s survival and the continuation of the brutal crusade occupation of the Peninsula.
http://hereticallibrarian.blogspot.com/2007/04/fatwa-frenzy-in-malaysia.html
Friday, April 13, 2007
Fatwa Frenzy in Malaysia
If today’s Middle East Times is any indication, it must be fatwa season in Malaysia:
-First, a museum exhibit on ghosts and the supernatural was canceled after a fatwa was issued against it:
The National Fatwa Council Thursday reportedly ruled that exhibitions on ghosts, ghouls, and supernatural beings were forbidden, as they could undermine the faith of Muslims.
“Supernatural beings are beyond the comprehension of the human mind. We don’t want to expose Muslims to supernatural and superstitious beliefs,” council chair Abdul Shukor Husin was quoted as saying in the Malay-language daily Berita Harian Friday.
Abdul Shukor said that the council’s decision would be presented to all of Malaysia’s state governments for gazetting as religious law.
“Only state governments have the power to take action, especially concerning the ghostly exhibitions,” he said.
So, if I read this correctly, the National Fatwa Council (NFC) wants Malaysia’s state governments to ban any future exhibits on the supernatural. If they succeed, I wonder what other types of exhibits would fail to pass muster as well.
But that’s only half the fatwa fun, for the NFC also found time to decry Internet trading:
National Fatwa Council chairman Abdul Shukor Husin said that non-Muslim investment schemes accessed through the Internet pay interest and guarantee a steady profit, which is banned under Islamic or Sharia law.
“We advise those making investments via the Internet to stop immediately,” Abdul Shukor was quoted as saying in Malay-language daily Berita Harian.
“There are many alternative investment schemes based on Islamic principles initiated by the government which Muslims can participate in,” he said.
Islamic funds ban the earning of interest and cannot invest in companies associated with tobacco, alcohol, or gambling, which are considered taboo by Muslims.
Yes, these are relatively minor and even silly instances of Islamist censorship and intolerance. What makes them important is that they are symptoms of a broader culture war within most Islamic societies. For the last several decades, Islamist extremism exported from the Middle East has encroached on traditionally tolerant customs and practices throughout the Muslim world. The rise of jihadist terror organizations such as Al Qaeda is merely a reflection of this process. If radical Islamists succeed in remaking the Muslim world in their image, the consequences for intellectual freedom worldwide would be disastrous.
posted by Dave at 11:02 PM
http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2007/04/baal-and-palestinian-arabs.html
Ba’al and the Palestinian Arabs
Commenter ER mentioned a strange chapter of PalArab history that I was unaware of.
Palestinian Arabs, especially their terror leader Arafat, have always claimed that today’s PalArabs are descendants of the ancient Canaanites. Just as the PalArabs want to deny Jewish history they also have a habit of making up their own. While the Canaanite claim is of course nonsense (Canaanites were not Arab,) a funny episode occurred as a result.
Embracing their fake Canaanite origins, the PA issued a postage stamp honoring an ancient Canaanite god, known as Ba’al.
There were in fact a number of local dieties named Ba’al, but the characteristics of the Ba’al worshipers are perhaps appropriate for today’s Palestinian Arab death cult.
Ba’al Hammoun and Ba’al of Moloch were said to sacrifice their children. This could be why Ba’al was such an attractive symbol to Arafat, as the PalArab tradition of sacrificing their own children in the name of Jihad is entrenched if not quite as ancient.
Ba’al Peor, in Jewish tradition, was worshipped via excrement, also an appropriate symbol for a people who prefer to use sewage pipes to create rockets.
Interestingly, the Italian Muslim Association known to be pro-Israel issued a fatwa against any Muslim owning or using this stamp. What is amazing is that no principled Arab Muslim issued any similar fatwa as far as I can tell, which makes it appear as if Muslim religious law is more concerned about politics than religion. It cannot be denied that Islam would consider Ba’al as a false god and the sin of blasphemy is deserving of death in Islamic law.
posted by Elder of Ziyon at 6:34 AM
Muslims Charged With Firebombing Montreal Jewish Center
Here’s a surprise about the recent firebombing attack in Montreal: apparently it was Muslims who did it:
Two Montreal men have been accused of a raft of attacks against the city’s Jewish community, including the firebombing of a Snowdon community centre that police are treating as a hate-related crime.
Omar Bulphred, 21, and Azim Ibragimov, 23, appeared briefly in Quebec Court on Friday to be arraigned on charges stemming from incidents that began last fall. Both were denied bail.
Azim Ibragimov, left, and Omar Bulphred face nine charges each stemming from events that began last fall.
The case is due back in court on Monday, at which time a date could be set for a bail hearing. In addition to their alleged roles in a rash of firebombings, the two are accused of conspiring to commit kidnapping and armed robbery. But it’s not known who or what their potential victims were.
Of course, the authorities are still stuck on stupid, thinking that Muslim terror requires group membership, a terror leader issuing orders, and a secret handshake. No one has apparently mastered the fact that the only group membership required for constant propaganda to commit anti-Semitic violence is in mainstream Islam:
The pair were arrested Thursday morning and questioned. The investigation did not turn up links to any terrorist or hate groups, said Constable Christian Emond, of the Montreal police fraud and arson squad.
If you want to look this hatred in the eye, see this jaw-dropping video about an anti-Semitic mini-intifada in Montreal:
Confrontation in Concordia
This has been an extremely popular video, which Muslims and Leftists have managed to have censored from video sites such as YouTube.
Via: Little Green Footballs
Posted by Barak at 18:11 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)
Protesters, police clash in Russia
Associated Press
Sunday, April 15, 2007
By STEVE GUTTERMAN, Associated Press Writer
Club-swinging riot police clashed Sunday with opposition supporters as
an anti-Kremlin protest dispersed in Russia’s second-largest city,
chasing small groups of demonstrators, beating some on the ground and
hauling them into police buses.
It was not immediately clear what sparked the violence after the rally,
which city authorities had authorized and took place under a heavy
police presence with at least one helicopter hovering above.
Although city authorities gave permission for the rally in a square on
the edge of central St. Petersburg, they had banned plans for the
demonstrators to march afterwards to the city government headquarters.
Police trucks and helmeted officers blocked the planned march route. At
the end of the 90-minute-long rally, organizers did not exhort them to
conduct the banned march but suggested they go on their own to the city
government building over the next few days. When the rally dispersed,
most participants went to a nearby subway station, where clashes broke
out.
In one, police chased a group that included Sergei Gulyayev, a member
of the city legislature who had been arrested at a protest in March.
Police grabbed some members of the group and pounded them in the head with
nightsticks before putting them on buses; it was not immediately known
if Gulyayev was among those taken away.
In another clash, police charged a group holding a banner professing
love for the city.
The violence came a day after clashes at a similar opposition protest
in Moscow, where police detained at least 170 people, sometimes with
harsh force. The protests in both cities were called to focus on
complaints that Russia under President Vladimir Putin is strangling democracy
ahead of presidential and parliamentary elections.
“Yesterday, it became clear that the authorities won’t be making any
concessions. They have started a war on people,” Eduard Limonov, head of
the National Bolshevik Party, told the rally.
“Putin and his team are sitting on sacks of gold, at the same time the
country is breaking apart in all spheres,” said demonstrator Sergei
Niluopv, a 56-year-old teacher.
One of the rally organizers, Olga Kurnosova, told The Associated Press
that police detained her near her home a few hours before the rally.
She said by telephone from a police station that she was held for
distributing brochures about the rally, which she said was an artificial
pretext because city authorities had given permission for the
demonstration.
“It’s clear that the reason was to keep me away from the
demonstration,” she said.
The weekend protests were part of a series of “Dissenters’ Marches”
called by the Other Russia umbrella group that brings together an array of
opposition factions including one led by former world chess champion
Garry Kasparov.
Kasparov was among those arrested in Moscow and was released late
Saturday night after being fined $38 for disrupting public order. He did not
go to St. Petersburg for the Sunday rally.
Kurnosova, who heads the St. Petersburg branch of Kasparov’s United
Civil Front, had said Saturday that she expected the tough police action
in Moscow to provoke a large turnout in St. Petersburg. But the crowd
appeared to be less than organizers had hoped for, filling only about
half of the area marked off by metal barricades for the rally.
Putin, whose second and last term ends in 2008, has created an obedient
parliament, and the government has reasserted control over major
television networks, giving little air time to its critics.
Copyright © 2007 The Associated Press.
I heard the son last night on Coast to Coast, he says he has a tape about the JFK murder, at this stage we will never know the truth, so one story is as true as the next, in my opinion....LOL
This can be a useful site, it is mainly death reports, all kinds of the famous of the world, or connected with history...granny]
The Sunday Times
April 15, 2007
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article16...
The secrets and lies that a Cold-War warrior took to his grave
The disgraced spymaster, a movie star, the assassination of JFK, and a
dubious confession
When the old spymaster thought he was dying, his eldest son came to
visit him at his home in Miami. The scourges had been constant and
terrible recently: lupus, pneumonia, cancers of the jaw and prostate,
gangrene, the amputation of his left leg. Long past were his years of
heroic service to his country.
In the CIA, he had helped to mastermind the violent removal of a duly
elected leftist president in Guatemala and assisted in subterfuges
that led to the murder of Che Guevara. But no longer could you see in
him the suave, pipe-smoking, cocktail-party-loving clandestine
operative whose cold-war exploits he himself had, almost obsessively,
turned into novels. Diminished too were the old bad memories, of the
Bay of Pigs debacle that derailed his CIA career for good, of the
Watergate hotel fiasco, of his first wife’s death, of 33 months in US
prisons. But his first-born son – he named him St John; Saint, for
short – was by his side now. And he still had a story or two left to
share before it was all over.
They were in the living room, him in his wheelchair, watching Fox
News. He had Saint wheel him into his bedroom and hoist him onto his
bed. It smelt foul in there; he was incontinent; but he was beyond
caring. He asked Saint to get him a diet root beer, paper and a pen.
Saint had come to Miami from California. Though clean now, he had been
a meth addict for 20 years, and a source of frustration and anger to
his father for much of his life. He had two convictions to his name,
for drugs. The old spymaster was a convicted criminal too, but that
was different. He was Everette Howard Hunt, a true American patriot,
who had served his country. That the country repaid him with almost
three years in jail was something he could never understand, if only
because the orders that got him in such trouble came right from the top.
For years, he and Saint had hardly spoken. Then Saint came to him
wanting to know if he had any information about JFK’s assassination.
His father had sworn in two government investigations that he didn’t.
But now, in August 2003, propped up in his sick bed, he began to write
down the names of men who participated in a plot to kill the
president. He had lied during those two federal investigations. He
knew something after all. He told Saint about his own involvement,
too. It was explosive stuff, with the potential to reconfigure the
JFK-assassination-theory landscape. And then Hunt got better and went
on to live for four more years.
They don’t make White House bad guys the way they used to. It seems a
little nutty now, but in 1972 it was serious business. These guys
meant to take the powers of the presidency and run amok. Hunt, an
ex-CIA man who loved operating in the shadows and joined Nixon’s
special investigations unit (aka “the Plumbers”) as a $100-a-day
consultant in 1971, specialised in political sabotage. Among his first
assignments: forging cables linking the Kennedy administration to the
assassination of South Vietnam’s president. After that, he began
sniffing around Ted Kennedy’s dirty laundry. But of all his
subterfuges, in the end, only one mattered: the failed burglary at the
Watergate hotel in Washington, DC, in spring 1972.
Hunt enlisted Cuban pals from his Bay of Pigs days to bug the
Democratic National Committee HQ, which was located inside the
Watergate. Also on the team were a couple of shady ex-government
operators, James McCord and Frank Sturgis. The first attempt ended
when the outfit’s lock picker realised he’d brought the wrong tools.
The next time, Hunt was stationed in a hotel room across the way,
communicating with the burglars by walkie-talkie as the team entered
the office. Unfortunately, on the way into the building, they had
taped open an exit door to allow their escape, and when a night
watchman found it, he called the cops. The burglars were arrested on
the spot. One of them had Hunt’s phone number, at the White House, no
less, in his address book. Following this lead, police arrested Hunt
and charged him with burglary, conspiracy and wiretapping. Abandoned
by his bosses at the White House, he began trying to extort money from
them to help pay his mounting bills – the deal being that if the White
House paid, all those arrested would plead guilty and maintain silence.
His wife, Dorothy, was staunchly loyal to him and, after his arrest,
helped him with his plans to blackmail the White House. In December
1972 she boarded a flight to Chicago, carrying $10,000 in what is
regarded as extorted hush money and, some say, evidence that could
have got Nixon impeached. The plane crashed, killing all on board,
including Dorothy. Foul play was suspected but never proved.
Two years later, impeachment imminent, Nixon resigned his presidency.
And in 1973, Hunt, who had set all these events in motion, pleaded
guilty and spent 33 months in prison. After his release, he moved to
Miami, where he remarried, had two more children and spent 30 years
living an unexceptional life, refusing to talk about Watergate, much
less JFK’s assassination.
His connection to the assassination came about almost serendipitously,
when in 1974 a researcher stumbled across a photo of three tramps
standing in Dallas’s Dealey Plaza. It was taken on November 22, 1963,
the day of Kennedy’s shooting, and one of the tramps looked like Hunt.
Hunt always denied any involvement. Then, earlier this year, aged 88,
he died, but not before writing an autobiography, American Spy: My
Secret History in the CIA, Watergate & Beyond. Not surprisingly, those
things he wrote down about JFK’s death and gave to his eldest son
don’t appear in the book, at least not in any definitive way. Hunt had
apparently decided to take them to the grave. But Saint still has the
memo – “It has all this stuff in it,” he says, “the chain of command,
names, people, places, dates. He wrote it out to me directly, in his
own handwriting, starting with the initials ‘LBJ’ ” – and he’s decided
it’s time that his father’s last secrets finally see some light.
At the moment, Saint doesn’t have a job; his criminal records have got
in the way. “I’d have loved to have lived a normal life,” he says.
“I’m happy with who I am, but all that shit that happened really spun
me over.” And not only him but his siblings too – a brother, David,
who has had his own problems with drugs, and two sisters, Kevan and
Lisa, who still hold their father responsible for the tragedy of their
mother’s death. “My parents had lots of marital problems,” Saint says,
“but when it came down to it, she had his back and could hang in there
with the big dogs. She was really pissed at Nixon, Liddy, all those
guys, and was saying, ‘We’re not going to let them hang you out to
dry. We’re gonna get them.’ So I’ve never held what happened against him.”
At times, he even seems to think of his dad with pride: “Did you hear
that the character Tom Cruise plays in the Mission: Impossible movies
is named after him? Instead of Everette Hunt, they named him Ethan
Hunt. My dad was a really good spy.” But then he starts talking about
what it was like growing up the eldest son of Hunt, and a different
picture emerges. “He loved the glamorous life, cocktail parties,
flirting, all that,” Saint says. “He was unfaithful to my mom, but she
stayed with him. He thought of himself as a cool dude, sophisticated,
intellectual. He was Mr Smooth. A man of danger. He was perfect for
the CIA – he never felt guilt about anything.”
At the start of the cold war, the CIA’s mandate was simple: to contain
the spread of communism by whatever means necessary. For much of the
cold war, it was answerable to nobody. And if you were lucky enough to
become one of its agents, you had every right to consider yourself a
member of an elite corps. The middle-class son of a New York attorney,
Hunt graduated from Brown University in 1940 with a bachelor’s in
English, joined the navy in the second world war, served in the North
Atlantic, slipped and fell, took a medical discharge, then wound up in
China working in the newly formed Office of Strategic Services. When
the OSS was transformed into the CIA, Hunt jumped on board. He was
instrumental in planning the 1954 coup in Guatemala that overthrew the
left-leaning, democratically elected president, Jacobo Arbenz, and
ushered in 40 years of military repression that cost 200,000
Guatemalans their lives. Later he said: “Deaths – what deaths?”
In the early 1950s, Hunt could be seen cruising around in a white
Cadillac convertible; he loved that car. He also loved his cigars and
his wine and his country clubs. He had quite an imagination, too. When
he wasn’t off saving the world from reds, he spent much of his time in
front of a typewriter, hacking out espionage novels, some 80 in all.
He and his family lived lavishly and well, all presumably to lend
credence to his cover job as a high-ranking embassy official. Sadly,
he treated his children the way he and the CIA treated the rest of the
world. They were supposed to bend to his will and otherwise be
invisible. “He was a mean-spirited person and an extremely cruel
father. I was his first-born son, and I was born with a club foot and
had to have operations. I suffered from petit-mal seizures. I was
dyslexic and developed a stutter. For the super-spy not to have a
super-son was the ultimate disappointment.”
Later, Hunt moved the family to the last home it would occupy as a
family, in Potomac, Maryland. Hunt wanted Saint to attend a top-flight
prep school, St Andrew’s, and took him to a dinner there to get him
enrolled. During the meal, Saint leant over to his dad and whispered:
“Papa, I have to go to the bathroom.” His father glared at him. Soon
Saint was banging his knees together under the table. “Sit still,” his
father hissed. Saint said: “Papa, I really have to go.”
“I ended up pissing in my pants at the dinner,” Saint says. “Can you
imagine how humiliating that was? Unbelievable.”
In 1970 his father retired from the CIA after being relegated to the
backwaters for his role in the Bay of Pigs. The following year, his
lawyer pal Chuck Colson, who was special counsel to Nixon, called him
up with an invitation to join the president’s special investigations
unit as a kind of dirty-tricks consultant. He signed on.
Around the time of Saint’s Miami visit in 2003 to talk to his father
about JFK, other people were also trying to get things out of Hunt,
including the actor Kevin Costner, who played a
JFK-assassination-obsessed district attorney in the Oliver Stone film
JFK. Saint believed there could be up to $5m on offer for his father
telling the truth about what happened in Dallas. As Saint later
discovered, Costner had already met Hunt once. That meeting didn’t go
well. That meeting ended with Hunt grumbling to himself about Costner:
“What a numbskull.”
But then Saint got involved, and he knew better how to handle the
situation. For one thing, he knew his stepmother wanted to forget
about the past. Consequently, she and her sons often found themselves
in conflict with Saint. “Why can’t you go back to California and leave
well enough alone?” they asked him. “How can you do this? He’s in the
last years of his life.”
But Saint’s attitude was: “This has nothing to do with you. This stuff
is of historical significance and needs to come out, and if you’re
worried that it’ll make him out to be a liar, everyone knows he’s a
liar already.” So when Saint arrived in Miami to talk to his dad, the
two men spent a lot of time waiting for Laura to leave the house. And
when Laura left, they talked.
Afterwards, another meeting was to be arranged with Costner, this time
in Los Angeles, where the actor was thought to have had 50
assassination-related questions ready to go. (The actor declined to
comment for this article.) Though the $5m figure was still floating
around, Saint said Costner only wanted to pay Hunt at this point for
his time. Saint recalls telephoning Costner and saying: “That’s your
offer? A hundred dollars a day? That’s an insult. You’re a
cheapskate.” “Nobody calls me a cheapskate,” said Costner. “What do
you think I’m going to do, just hand over $5m?”
They could not agree terms for the meeting and discussions broke down,
with Costner saying: “I can’t talk to you any more, Saint.” And that
was the end of that. It looked like what Hunt had to say would never
get out.
One evening, Saint explained how he came to suspect that his father
might be involved in the Kennedy assassination. “Around 1975, I was in
a phone booth in Maryland when I saw a poster on a telephone pole
about who killed JFK, and it had a picture of the three tramps. I saw
that picture and I f***ing? like a cartoon character, my jaw dropped,
my eyes popped out of my head? It looks like my dad. There’s nobody
that has those same facial features. Then, like an epiphany, I
remember ’63, and my dad being gone, and my mom telling me he was on a
business trip to Dallas. I’ve tried to convince myself it’s some kind
of false memory, something I heard years later. But his alibi for that
day is he was at home with his family. I was in the fifth grade. We
were at recess. I was playing on the merry-go-round. We were told to
go home, because the president had been killed. I remember going home
but I don’t remember my dad being there. Then he has this whole thing
about shopping for Chinese food with my mother that day, so they could
cook a meal together.” His father testified to this in court on more
than one occasion, saying he and his wife often cooked meals together.
Saint pauses. “I can tell you that’s the biggest load of crap in the
f***ing world. He was always looking at things like he was writing a
novel; everything had to be just so glamorous. He couldn’t even be
bothered with his children. James Bond doesn’t have children. So, my
dad in the kitchen? Chopping vegetables with his wife? I’m so sorry,
but that would never happen. Ever.”
Not that it was all bad back then, in Potomac. Hunt played the trumpet
and his son was into music too, so sometimes the pair went down to
Blues Alley in Georgetown to hear jazz.
Back home, Hunt would slap Benny Goodman’s monster swing-jazz song
Sing, Sing, Sing on the turntable. Sometimes he would jump to his
feet, lick his lips and play the air trumpet for all he was worth.
“I’d sit there in awe,” Saint says. But the best was yet to come.
It was well past midnight on June 18, 1972. Saint, 18 years old, was
asleep in his basement bedroom, surrounded by his Beatles and Playboy
posters, when he heard someone shouting: “You gotta wake up! You gotta
wake up!” When he opened his eyes, Saint saw his father as he’d never
seen him before: he was a sweaty, dishevelled mess. “I don’t need you
to ask a lot of questions,” his father said. “I need you to get your
clothes on and come upstairs.”
He disappeared into the darkness. Saint changed out of his pyjamas.
Upstairs he found his father in the master bedroom, labouring over a
green suitcase jumble-filled with microphones, walkie-talkies,
cameras, tripods, cords, wires, lots of weird stuff. His father
started giving him instructions. Saint went to the kitchen and
returned with window cleaner, paper towels and rubber dishwashing
gloves. Then the two of them began wiping fingerprints off all the
junk in the suitcase. After that, they loaded everything into Hunt’s
Pontiac Firebird and drove over to a lock. Hunt heaved the suitcase
into the water, and it gurgled out of sight. They didn’t speak on the
way home. Saint still didn’t know what was going on. All he knew was
that his dad had needed his help, and he’d given it, successfully.
The next day, dressed in one of his prep-school blazers, he drove to a
Riggs Bank in Georgetown and met his father inside the
safety-deposit-box cage. His father turned him around, lifted his
blazer and shoved about $100,000 cash down the back of his pants. The
boy made it home without being followed. Then his father made him get
rid of a typewriter. Saint put the typewriter in a bag and tossed it
into a pond.
“Don’t ever tell anybody that you’ve done these things,” his father
said later. “I could get in trouble. You could get in trouble. I’m
sorry to have to put you in this position, but I really am grateful
for your help.”
“Of course, Papa,” Saint said. Standing there with his father, hearing
those words of praise, he was the happiest he’d ever been.
Years later, when Saint started trying to get his father to tell him
what he knew about JFK, he came to believe the information would be
valuable. He both needed money and thought he was owed money, for what
he’d been through. Also, like many a conspiracy nut before him, he was
more than a little obsessed. “After seeing that poster of the three
tramps,” he says, “I read two dozen books on the JFK assassination,
and the more I read, the more I was unsure about what happened. I was
trying to sort out things that had touched me in a big way.”
Touched him and turned him upside down, especially the death of his
mother. He had been particularly close to her, but Saint also felt he
had never got to know her. She told him that during the second world
war, she’d tracked Nazi money for the US Treasury Department, and
Saint believes that early in her marriage to his father, she may have
been in the CIA herself.
Once his father went to prison, Saint moved to Wisconsin, where he
worked in a potato-processing plant and spent the rest of his time
dropping acid. In 1975 he moved to the Oakland, California area,
started snorting coke and for five years drove a bakery truck. He was
in a band and hoped to become a rock star, though touring alongside
Buddy Guy was about the biggest thing that ever happened. Then he gave
up coke and took up meth and a while later started dealing meth.
Twenty years flew by. He had wild sexual escapades; he shacked up with
two sisters – “nymphs”, he calls them. But mainly his life, like his
father’s, was a rolling series of misfortunes. He received insurance
money after his mother died, and bought a house; a week later it burnt
down in some drug-related fiasco.
Finally, in 2001, on the heels of two drug busts, Saint decided to go
straight. With his ex-girlfriend, their daughter and her son, he
stayed in a series of shelters, then took them to live in Eureka,
several hours north of Oakland. He has since earned a certificate in
hotel management, but jobs don’t last. And the questions about his
father continue to circulate in his head.
That time in Miami, with Saint by his bed and him thinking he was six
months from death, Hunt finally put pen to paper. He scribbled the
initials “LBJ”, standing for Kennedy’s vice-president, Lyndon Johnson.
Under “LBJ”, connected by a line, he wrote the name Cord Meyer. Meyer
was a CIA agent whose wife had an affair with JFK; later she was
murdered, a case that has never been solved. Next, his father
connected to Meyer’s name the name Bill Harvey, another CIA agent;
also connected to Meyer’s name was the name David Morales, another CIA
man and a well-known, vicious black-operations specialist. Then his
father connected to Morales’s name, with a line, the framed words
“French Gunman Grassy Knoll”.
So there it was: according to Hunt, LBJ had Kennedy killed. It had
long been speculated upon, largely because he was ambitious almost
beyond words and it would enable him to rise to the presidency without
having to campaign for it. Now Hunt was saying that’s the way it was.
And that Lee Harvey Oswald wasn’t the only shooter in Dallas. There
was also, on the grassy knoll, a French gunman, presumably the
Corsican mafia assassin Lucien Sarti, who has figured prominently in
other assassination theories.
“By the time he handed me the paper,” Saint says, “I was in a state of
shock. His whole life, to me and everyone else, he’d always professed
to not know anything about any of it. But I knew this had to be the
truth. If my dad was going to make anything up, he’d have made
something up about the mafia, or Castro, or Khrushchev. He didn’t like
Johnson. But you don’t falsely implicate your own country, for
Christ’s sake. My father is old-school, a dyed-in-the-wool patriot,
and that’s the last thing he’d do.”
Later that week, Hunt gave Saint two sheets of paper that contained a
fuller narrative. It starts out with LBJ again, connecting him to Cord
Meyer, then goes on: “Cord Meyer discusses a plot with [David Atlee]
Phillips who brings in Wm Harvey and Antonio Veciana. He meets with
Oswald in Mexico City? Then Veciana meets w/Frank Sturgis in Miami and
enlists David Morales in anticipation of killing JFK there. But LBJ
changes itinerary to Dallas, citing personal reasons.”
David Atlee Phillips, the CIA’s Cuban operations chief in Miami at the
time of JFK’s death, knew Hunt from the Guatemala-coup days. Veciana
is a member of the Cuban exile community. Sturgis, like Saint’s
father, is supposed to have been one of the three tramps photographed
in Dealey Plaza. Sturgis was also one of the Watergate plotters, and
he is a man whom Hunt, under oath, has repeatedly sworn to have not
met until Watergate.
In the next few paragraphs, Hunt describes the extent of his own
involvement. It revolves around a meeting he claims he attended in
1963 with Morales and Sturgis. It takes place in a Miami hotel room.
Here’s what happens:
Morales leaves the room, at which point Sturgis makes reference to a
“big event” and asks Hunt: “Are you with us?”
Hunt asks Sturgis what he’s talking about.
Sturgis says: “Killing JFK.”
Hunt, “incredulous”, says to Sturgis: “You seem to have everything you
need. Why do you need me?” In the handwritten narrative, Sturgis’s
response is unclear, though what Hunt says to Sturgis next isn’t: he
says he won’t “get involved in anything involving Bill Harvey, who is
an alcoholic psycho”.
After that, the meeting ends. Hunt goes back to his “normal” life and
“like the rest of the country? is stunned by JFK’s death and realises
how lucky he is not to have had a direct role”.
After reading what his father had written, Saint was stunned. A few
weeks later, Saint received in the mail a tape recording from his dad.
Hunt’s voice on the cassette is weak and grasping, but he essentially
remakes the same points he made in his handwritten narrative.Soon
afterwards, Laura found out what had been going on, and with the help
of Hunt’s attorney put an end to it. Saint and his father were kept
apart and never got a chance to finish what they’d started. Instead,
Hunt set about writing his autobiography and turned his back on his
son. He wrote him a letter in which he said that Saint’s life had been
nothing but “meaningless, self-serving instant gratification”, that he
had never amounted to anything and never would. He asked for his JFK
memos back, and Saint returned them, though not before making copies.
There is no way to confirm Hunt’s allegations – all but one of the
co-conspirators he named are long gone. Saint, for his part, feels his
father was lucid when he made his confession and believes, if
anything, his father was holding out on him, the old spy keeping a few
secrets in reserve, just in case. “There were probably dozens of plots
to kill Kennedy, because everybody hated Kennedy but the public,”
Saint says. “The question is, which one of them worked? My dad always
said, ‘Thank God one of them worked.’ ”
In Eureka, Saint has been reading an advance copy of Hunt’s
autobiography, American Spy. In it, his father looks at LBJ as only
one possible person behind the JFK killing, and then only in the most
half-hearted, couched and cloaked way. He brings up various other
possibilities, too, then debunks each of them.
But of all the shadings and omissions in the book, the only one that
truly upsets Saint has to do with the happiest moment in his life,
that time in 1972, on the night of the Watergate burglary, when he
helped his father dispose of the spy gear, then ran money for him and
ditched the typewriter. The way it unfolds in the book, Saint doesn’t
do anything for his dad. And it’s Hunt himself who dumps the typewriter.
“That’s a complete lie,” Saint says, almost shouting. “I’m the one who
helped him that night. Me! And he’s robbing me of it. Why?”
Like so many other things, he will never know why, because on January
23, in Miami, the spymaster dies. Later in the day, Saint started
reading a few of the obituaries. One starts off: “Sleazebag E Howard
Hunt is finally dead.”
“Oh, God,” Saint says and goes looking for how The New York Times
handled his father’s death. The obit reads: “Mr Hunt was intelligent,
erudite, suave and loyal to his friends. But the record shows that he
mishandled many of the tasks he received from the CIA and the White
House. He was ‘totally self-absorbed, totally amoral and a danger to
himself and anybody around him. . . ’ ”
“Wow,” Saint says. “I don’t know if I can read these things. That is
one brutal obituary.”
But the Times is right, of course. Hunt was a danger to anybody around
him, and any list of those in danger would always have to include,
right at the top, his first-born son, Saint.
Are these the men who plotted to kill JFK?
The lead players in the assassination of President John F Kennedy,
according to the late CIA spymaster E Howard Hunt
The successor: Lyndon B Johnson
Hunt’s theory: changes JFK hit site from Miami to Dallas
As a Texan, LBJ had the connections to lure JFK down to Dallas. As a
Freemason, he secured the cover-up by packing the Warren Commission
full of fellow masons (including Gerald Ford and Allen Dulles) to
stand by the lone-gunman story.
The lInchpin: Cord Meyer
Hunt’s theory: sets plot in motion with David Atlee Phillips
Never linked to the assassination before, Meyer was the CIA agent in
charge of the domestic propaganda programme.
The Middleman: David Atlee Phillips
Hunt’s theory: recruits William Harvey and Antonio Veciana
CIA lifer involved in Guatemala and the Bay of Pigs. When Lee Harvey
Oswald visited Mexico City, Phillips was in charge of the CIA station
there.
The spook: William K Harvey
Hunt’s theory: dreamt of leading the CIA under LBJ
Longtime CIA honcho. Loathed JFK for not invading Cuba and for
demoting him.
The recruiter: Antonio Veciana
Hunt’s theory: enlists Frank Sturgis and David Morales
A Cuban-born would-be assassin who testified before the White House
that he saw his CIA contact in Dallas travelling with Lee Harvey
Oswald in August 1963.
The mercenary: Frank Sturgis
Hunt’s theory: tried to recruit Hunt into the plot
A hired gun working as a go-between for the CIA and the mob. Was
quoted as saying that Watergate was part of the JFK cover-up.
The hitman: David Morales
Hunt’s theory: brings in shadowy ‘French gunman’
CIA thug who first worked for Hunt in Guatemala. Tight with the mob
but liked to get drunk and talk. Died mysteriously in 1978.
The French gunman: Lucien Sarti
Hunt’s theory: the second assassin on the grassy knoll
Could Hunt’s “French gunman” have been the Corsican drug trafficker
Sarti? If so, he would be the most dubious name in Hunt’s scenario.
Hardly anything concrete is known about him. He was killed by the
police in 1972.
—
[take a look at the photo in link #2, he has jihadi eyes]
Body of North Naples man found behind motorcycle shop
By Ryan Mills contact
Thursday, April 12, 2007
http://www.naplesnews.com/news/2007/apr/12/body_north_naples_man_foun...
A garbage collector working behind a Fort Myers Harley-Davidson store
early Thursday morning found the body of a 23-year-old North Naples
man in the driver’s seat of his luxury car, Fort Myers police reported.
http://media.naplesnews.com/img/photos/2007/04/12/070412NS-HallerMatt...
Matthew Haller
The body of Matthew Haller, 15513 Monterosso Lane, was discovered by
the garbage collector around 3:43 a.m., authorities said. Haller had
been shot and was found in his blue 1985 Mercedes. The Mercedes was
taken from the scene at 2160 Colonial Blvd., to a Florida Department
of Law Enforcement facility for processing, police said.
Investigators are attempting to piece together a timeline of what may
have occurred overnight and determine why Haller was behind the store
in the first place, said Fort Myers police spokeswoman Maureen Buice.
“We’re waiting for forensic evidence from the Florida Department of
Law Enforcement, and we’re waiting on autopsy results from the medical
examiner’s office,” Buice said.
Buice did not know when the autopsy would be performed.
“We have a lot of information to gather and a lot of information to
piece together,” Buice said. “That’s what we are doing.”
Haller was in Fort Myers visiting friends, said his father, Timothy
Haller.
“He was a wonderful young man,” Timothy Haller said. “He didn’t
deserve this.”
Neighbors on Monterosso Lane awoke around 6 a.m. Thursday to a woman’s
scream and police cars in the Hallers’ driveway, said Michael Lissack,
president of the Monterosso at Mediterra Homeowners Association.
“The Hallers are wonderful people who do not need this kind of tragedy
visited upon them,” Lissack said. “The entire Monterosso and Mediterra
communities are feeling their loss.”
Lissack said Matthew Haller was living in the community but was
frequently not home.
“He was a resident in the community, but he was not particularly
visible,” Lissack said. “He was here, but we didn’t see a lot of him.”
Haller was arrested in Lee County on Nov. 2, 2006, and charged with
possession of cocaine, a felony, and refusing to submit to a DUI test,
a misdemeanor.
On his MySpace page, Haller listed his occupation as “street
pharmacist.” He also wrote that he likes “waking up some mornings
wondering if I might be arrested for what I don’t remember doing last
night.”
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18109589
“List of Titanic’s doomed passengers goes online: Handwritten pages include
names, details of people aboard ill-fated liner”
[http://www.findmypast.com/titanicTranscript.action]
REUTERS
Updated: 2 hours, 47 minutes ago
LONDON - The names, ages and professions of passengers listed on the Titanic’s
fateful journey have gone online for the first time, 95 years after the
luxury ocean liner sank on its maiden voyage.
Dozens of pages featuring the original handwritten passenger list are
available, revealing the cabin class of passengers.
They poignantly show the emigration plans of many hopefuls setting sail from
Southampton for a new life in America in 1912.
The White Star liner, touted as “unsinkable,” left port on April 10, only to
sink after hitting an iceberg, with the loss of 1,523 lives.
Among the passengers, for example, was George Mackay, a 20-year-old butler
from Scotland travelling third class and hoping to start a new life in
America.
In first class the Countess of Rothes is recorded as travelling with her
cousin Gladys Cherry and her personal maid Roberta Maioni. They survived
after being picked up by the ship Carpathia.
The list, which is available for free for one week at www.findmypast.com,
could help genealogists trace family members. Previously, the list could
only be seen at the National Archives in Kew, southwest London.
Findmypast is an online research site that provides information on
genealogy.
The online listing coincides with a commemoration service to be held in the
British port of Southampton on Sunday for the hundreds of residents who took
the voyage as either passengers or crew and who died when the Titanic went
down mid Atlantic.
The list completes the set of passengers lists for the ships leaving the UK
during the decade between 1910 and 1919.
A spokesman for findmypast said the lists were considered so high-profile by
the National Archives that they qualified for the same level of security as
Henry VIII’s divorce papers and the Domesday Book and could only be
consulted under supervision.
He said it also gives details of the lucky few who narrowly escaped the fate
of the other passengers when they disembarked from the ship in France.
The original documents also show that some passengers who intended to board
at Queenstown (Cobh in County Cork) did not actually embark, despite having
purchased tickets, he said.
Actually, a full list including biographical information has been
available for almost 15 years online at Encyclopedia Titanica. This
recently released list happens to be the original one, and of course
has significant historical value, but there are a lot of errors. The
crew names were often deciphered incorrectly (the crewmembers wrote
their names down, which as you can imagine sometimes makes them
difficult to read) and a number of passengers were travelling under
assumed names. Also, at least one crewmember deserted the ship in Cork
to go visit his mother.
Maybe, however, this new list will stop every Tom, Dick, and Harry
from claiming that their great-aunt Tillie was on the Titanic “but got
off on the last boat”. If every great-aunt Tillie or great-uncle Hiram
who claimed to have been on Titanic as it sailed had actually been
aboard, the ship would have sunk like a stone in Southampton Harbour.
News of Abraham Lincoln’s Death
OUR GREAT LOSS
Death of President Lincoln.
The Songs of Victory Drowned in Sorrow.
LOSING SCENES OF A NOBLE LIFE.
The Great Sorrow of an Afflicted Nation.
Party Differences Forgotten in Public Grief.
Vice-President Johnson Inaugurated as Chief Executive.
MR. SEWARD WILL RECOVER.
John Wilkes Booth Believed to be the Assassin.
Manifestations of the People Throughout the Country.
OFFICIAL DISPATCHES.
Photo:
http://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/lincoln-resolutions/images/...
FROM: The New York Times (April 16th 1865) ~
By Telegraph Dispatches
War Department, Washington, April 15 - 4:10 A.M.
To Major-Gen. Dix:
The President continues insensible and is sinking.
Secretary Seward remains without change.
Frederick Seward’s skull is fractured in two places, besides
a severe cut upon the head.
The attendant is still alive, but hopeless. Maj. Seward’s
wound is not dangerous.
It is now ascertained with reasonable certainty that two
assassins were engaged in this horrible crime, Wilkes Booth
being the one that shot the President, and the other companion
of his whose name is not known, but whose description is so
clear that he can hardly escape. It appears from a letter found
in Booth’s trunk that the murder was planned before the 4th of
March, but fell through then because the accomplice backed
out until “Richmond could be heard from.” Booth and his
accomplice were at the livery stable at six o’clock last evening,
and there left with their horses about ten o’clock, or shortly
before that hour.
It would seem that they had for several days been seeking their
chance, but for some unknown reason it was not carried into
effect until last night.
One of them has evidently made his way to Baltimore — the
other has not yet been traced.
Edwin M. Stanton
Secretary of War.
War Department, Washington, April 15.
Major Gen. Dix:
Abraham Lincoln died this morning at twenty-two minutes after
seven o’clock.
Edwin M. Stanton
Secretary of War.
War Department, Washington, April 15 - 3 P.M.
Major Gen. Dix, New-York:
Official notice of the death of the late President, Abraham
Lincoln, was given by the heads of departments this morning to
Andrew Johnson, Vice-President, upon whom the constitution
devolved the office of President. Mr. Johnson, upon receiving
this notice, appeared before the Hon. Salmon P. Chase, Chief
Justice of the United States, and took the oath of office, as
President of the United States, assumed its duties and functions.
At 12 o’clock the President met the heads of departments in
cabinet meeting, at the Treasury Building, and among other
business the following was transacted:
First - The arrangements for the funeral of the late President
were referred to the several Secretaries, as far as relates to their
respective departments.
Second - William Hunter, Esq., was appointed Acting Secretary
of State during the disability of Mr. Seward, and his son
Frederick Seward, the Assistant Secretary.
Third - The President formally announced that he desired to retain
the present Secretaries of departments of his Cabinet, and they
would go on and discharge their respective duties in the same
manner as before the deplorable event that had changed the head
of the government.
All business in the departments was suspended during the day.
The surgeons report that the condition of Mr. Seward remains
unchanged. He is doing well.
No improvement in Mr. Frederick Seward.
The murderers have not yet been apprehended.
Edwin M. Stanton
Secretary of War.
THE ASSASSINATION.
Additional Details of the Lamentable Event.
Washington, Saturday, April 15
The assassin of President Lincoln left behind him his hat and a
spur.
The hat was picked up in the President’s box and has been
identified by parties to whom it has been shown as the one
belonging to the suspected man, and accurately described as the
one belonging to the suspected man by other parties, not
allowed to see it before describing it.
The spur was dropped upon the stage, and that also has been
identified as the one procured at a stable where the same man
hired a horse in the evening.
Two gentlemen who went to the Secretary of War to apprize
him of the attack on Mr. Lincoln met at the residence of the
former a man muffled in a cloak, who, when accosted by them,
hastened away.
It had been Mr. Stanton’s intention to accompany Mr. Lincoln to
the theatre, and occupy the same box, but the press of business
prevented.
It therefore seems evident that the aim of the plotters was to
paralyze the country by at once striking down the head, the heart
and the arm of the country.
As soon as the dreadful events were announced in the streets,
Superintendent Richards, and his assistants, were at work to
discover the assassin.
In a few moments the telegraph had aroused the whole police
force of the city.
Maj. Wallach and several members of the City Government
were soon on the spot and every precaution was taken to
preserve order and quiet in the city.
Every street in Washington was patrolled at the request of Mr.
Richards.
Gen. Augur sent horses to mount the police.
Every road leading out of Washington was strongly picketed
and every possible avenue of escape was thoroughly guarded.
Steamboats about to depart down the Potomac were stopped.
The Daily Chronicle says:
“As it is suspected that this conspiracy originated in Maryland,
the telegraph flashed the mournful news to Baltimore and all the
cavalry was Immediately put upon active duty. Every road was
picketed and every precaution taken to prevent the escape of
the assassin. A preliminary examination was made by Messrs.
Richards and his assistants. Several persons were called to
testify and the evidence as elicited before an informal tribunal,
and not under oath, was conclusive to this point. The murderer
of President Lincoln was John Wilkes Booth. His hat was found
in the private box, and identified by several persons who had
seen him within the last two days, and the spur which he
dropped by accident, after he jumped to the stage, was
identified as one of those which he had obtained from the stable
where he hired his horse.
This man Booth has played more than once at Ford’s Theatre,
and is, of course, acquainted with its exits and entrances, and
the facility with which he escaped behind the scenes is well
understood.
The person who assassinated Secretary Seward left behind him
a slouched hat and an old rusty navy revolver. The chambers
were broken low from the barrel, as if done by striking. The loads
were drawn from the chambers, one being but a rough piece of
lead, and the other being smaller than the chambers, wrapped in
paper, as if to keep them from falling out.
CLOSING SCENES.
Particulars of His Last Moments
Record of His Condition Before Death
His Death
Washington, Saturday, April 15 - 11 o’clock A.M.
The Star extra says:
“At 7:20 o’clock the President breathed his last, closing his
eyes as if falling to sleep, and his countenance assuming an
expression of perfect serenity. There were no indications of
pain and it was not known that he was dead until the
gradually decreasing respiration ceased altogether.
Rev. Dr. Gurley, of the New-York avenue Presbyterian
Church, immediately on it being ascertained that life was
extinct, knelt at the bedside and offered an impressive prayer,
which was responded to by all present.
Dr. Gurley then proceeded to the front parlor, where Mrs.
Lincoln, Capt. Robert Lincoln, Mrs. John Hay, the Private
Secretary, and others, were waiting, where he again offered a
prayer for the consolation of the family.
The following minutes, taken by Dr. Abbott, show the condition
of the late President throughout the night.
11 o’clock — Pulse 44.
11:05 o’clock — Pulse 45, and growing weaker.
11:10 o’clock — Pulse 45.
11:15 o’clock — Pulse 42.
11:20 o’clock — Pulse 45; respiration 27 to 29.
11:26 o’clock — Pulse 42.
11:32 o’clock — Pulse 48 and full.
11:40 o’clock — Pulse 45.
11:45 o’clock — Pulse 45; respiration 22.
12 o’clock — Pulse 48; respiration 22.
12:16 o’clock — Pulse 48; respiration 21 — echmot. both eyes.
12:30 o’clock — Pulse 45.
12:32 o’clock — Pulse 60.
12:35 o’clock — Pulse 66.1.
12:40 o’clock — Pulse 69;right eye much swollen and
echmoses.
12:45 o’clock — Pulse 70.
12:55 o’clock — Pulse 80; struggling motion of arms.
1 o’clock — Pulse 86; respiration 30.
1:30 o’clock — Pulse 95; appearing easier.
1:45 o’clock — Pulse 86 — very quiet, respiration irregular.
Mrs. Lincoln present.
2:10 o’clock — Mrs. Lincoln retired with Robert Lincoln to
adjoining rooms.
2:30 o’clock — President very quiet — pulse 54 — respiration
28.
2:52 o’clock — Pulse 48 — respiration 30.
3 o’clock — Visited again by Mrs. Lincoln.
3:25 o’clock — Respiration 24 and regular.
3:35 o’clock — Prayer by Rev. Dr. Gurley.
4 o’clock — Respiration 26 and regular.
4:15 o’clock — Pulse 60 — respiration 25.
5:50 o’clock — Respiration 28 — regular — sleeping.
6 o’clock — Pulse failing — respiration 28.
6:30 o’clock — Still failing and labored breathing.
7 o’clock — Symptoms of immediate dissolution.
7:22 o’clock — Death.
Surrounding the death bed of the President were Secretaries
Stanton, Welles, Usher, Attorney-General Speed,
Postmaster-General Dennison, M.B. Field, Assistant Secretary
of the Treasury; Judge Otto, Assistant Secretary of the Interior;
Gen. Halleck, Gen. Meigs, Senator Sumner, R.F. Andrews, of
New-York; Gen. Todd, of Dacotah; John Hay, Private
Secretary; Gov. Oglesby, of Illinois; Gen Farnsworth, Mr. and
Miss Kenney, Miss Harris, Capt. Robert Lincoln, son of the
President, and Doctors E.W. Abbott, R.K. Stone, C.D. Gatch,
Neal Hall, and Mr. Lieberman. Secretary McCulloch remained
with the President until about 5 o’clock, and Chief Justice Chase,
after several hours’ attendance during the night, returned early
this morning.
Immediately after the President’s death a Cabinet meeting was
called by Secretary Stanton, and held in the room in which the
corpse lay. Secretaries Stanton, Welles and Usher,
Postmaster-General Dennison, and Attorney-General Speed,
were present. The results of the conference are as yet unknown.
Removal of the Remains to the Executive Mansion — Feeling in
the City.
Washington, Saturday, April 15.
The President’s body was removed from the private residence
opposite Ford’s Theatre to the executive mansion this morning at
9:30 o’clock. in a hearse, and wrapped in the American flag.
It was escorted by a small guard of cavalry, Gen. Augur and
other military officers following on foot.
A dense crowd accompanied the remains to the White House,
where a military guard excluded the crowd, allowing none but
persons of the household and personal friends of the deceased
to enter the premises,
Senator Yates and Representative Farnsworth being among the
number admitted.
The body is being embalmed, with a view to its removal to Illinois.
Flags over the department and throughout the city are at half-mast.
Scarcely any business is being transacted anywhere either on
private or public account.
Our citizens, without any preconcert whatever, are draping their
premises with festoons of mourning.
The bells are tolling mournfully. All is the deepest gloom and
sadness. Strong men weep in the streets. The grief is
wide-spread and deep in strange contrast to the joy so lately
manifested over our recent military victories.
This is indeed a day of gloom.
Reports that Mr. Frederick W. Seward, who was kindly
assisting the nursing of Secretary Seward, received a stab in the
back. The shoulder blade prevented the knife or dagger from
penetrating into his body. The prospects are that he will recover.
A report is circulated, repeated by almost everybody, that
Booth was captured fifteen miles this side of Baltimore. If it be
true, as asserted, that the War Department has received such
information, it will doubtless be officially promulgated.
The government departments are closed by order, and will be
draped with the usual emblems of mourning.
The roads leading to and from the city are guarded by the
military, and the utmost circumspection is observed as to all
attempting to enter or leave the city.
AUTOPSY UPON THE BODY OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
Washington, Saturday, April 15.
An autopsy was held this afternoon over the body of President
Lincoln by Surgeon-General Barnes and Dr. Stone, assisted by
other eminent medical men.
The coffin is of mahogany, is covered with black cloth, and lined
with lead, the latter also being covered white satin.
A silver plate upon the coffin over the breast bears the following
inscription:
ABRAHAM LINCOLN,
SIXTEENTH PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES,
Born July 12, 1809,
Died April 15, 1865.
The remains have been embalmed.
A few locks of hair were removed from the President’s head
for the family previous to the remains being placed in the coffin.
THE ASSASSINS.
Circumstances Tending to the Inculpate G.H. Booth -
Description of his Confederate in the Crime.
Washington, Saturday, April 15.
There is no confirmation of the report that the murderer of the
President has been arrested.
Among the circumstances tending to fix a participation in the
crime on Booth, were letters found in his trunk, one of which,
apparently from a lady, supplicated him to desist from the
perilous undertaking in which he was about to embark, as the
time was inauspicious, the mine not yet being ready to be
sprung.
The Extra Intelligencer says: “From the evidence obtained it is
rendered highly probable that the man who stabbed Mr.
Seward and his sons, is John Surratt, of Prince George
County, Maryland. The horse he rode was hired at Naylor’s
stable, on Fourteenth-street. Surratt is a young man, with light
hair and goatee. His father is said to have been postmaster of
Prince George County.”
About 11 o’clock last night two men crossed the Anacostia
Bridge, one of whom gave his name as Booth, and the other
as Smith. The latter is believed to be John Surratt.
Last night a riderless horse was found, which has been
identified by the proprietor of one of the stables previously
mentioned as having been hired from his establishment.
Accounts are conflicting as to whether Booth crossed the
bridge on horseback or on foot; but as it is believed that he
rode across it, it is presumed that he had exchanged his horse.
From information in the possession of the authorities it is
evident that the scope of the plot was intended to be much
more comprehensive.
The Vice-President and other prominent members of the
Administration were particularly inquired for by suspected
parties, and their precise localities accurately obtained; but
providentially, in their cases, the scheme miscarried.
A boat was at once sent down the Potomac to notify the
gunboats on the river of the awful crime, in order that all
possible means should be taken for the arrest of the
perpetrators.
The most ample precautions have been taken, and it is not
believed the culprits will long succeed in evading the
overtaking of justice.
The second extra of the Evening Star says:
“Col. Ingraham, Provost-Marshal of the defence north of the
Potomac, is engaged in taking testimony to-day, all of which
fixes the assassination upon H. Wilkes Booth.
Judge Olin, of the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia,
and Justice Miller, are also engaged to-day, at the Police
Headquarters, on Tenth-street, in taking the testimony of a
large number of witnesses.
Lieut. Tyrell, of Col. Ingraham’s staff, last night proceeded
to the National Hotel, where Booth had been stopping, and
took possession of his trunk, in which was found a Colonel’s
military dress-coat, two pairs of handcuffs, two boxes of
cartridges and a package of letters, all of which are now in the
possession of the military authorities.
One of these letters, bearing the date of Hookstown, Md.,
seems to implicate Booth. The writer speaks of “the
mysterious affair in which you are engaged,” and urges Booth
to proceed to Richmond, and ascertain the views of the
authorities there upon the subject. The writer of the letter
endeavors to persuade Booth from carrying his designs into
execution at that time, for the reason, as the writer alleges,
that the government had its suspicions aroused. The writer of
the letter seems to have been implicated with Booth in “the
mysterious affair” referred to, as he informs Booth in the letter
that he would prefer to express his views verbally; and then
goes on to say that he was out of money, had no clothes, and
would be compelled to leave home, as his family were
desirous that he should dissolve his connection with Booth.
This letter is written on note paper, in a small, neat hand, and
simply bears the signature of “Sam.”
At the Cabinet meeting yesterday, which lasted over two
hours, the future policy of the government toward Virginia
was discussed, the best feeling prevailed. It is stated that it
was, determined to adopt a very liberal policy, as was
recommended by the President. It is said that this meeting
was the most harmonious held for over two years, the
President exhibiting throughout that magnanimity and kindness
of heart which has ever characterized his treatment of the
rebellious States, and which has been so littly requited on their
part.
One of the members of the Cabinet remarked to a friend he
met at the door, that “The government was to-day stronger
than it had been for three years past.”
Washington, Saturday, April 15 - 3:30 P.M.
To-day no one is allowed to leave the city by rail conveyance,
or on foot, and the issuing of passes from the Headquarters of
the Department of Washington has been suspended by Gen.
Augur.
THE SUCCESSION.
Mr. Johnson Inaugurated as President.
The Oath Administered by Secretary Chase.
He Will Perform His Duties Trusting in God.
Washington, Saturday, April 15 - 12 A.M.
Andrew Johnson was sworn into office as President of the
United States by Chief-Justice Chase, to-day, at eleven
o’clock.
Secretary McCullough and Attorney-General Speed, and
others were present.
He remarked:
“The duties are mine. I will perform them, trusting in God.
SECOND DISPATCH
Washington, Saturday, April 15.
At an early hour this morning, Hon. Edwin M. Stanton,
Secretary of War, sent an official communication to Hon.
Andrew Johnson, Vice-President of the United States, that,
in consequence of the sudden and unexpected death of the
Chief Magistrate, his inauguration should take place as soon
as possible, and requesting him to state the place and hour at
which the ceremony should be performed.
Mr. Johnson immediately replied that it would be agreeable to
him to have the proceedings take place at his rooms in the
Kirkwood House as soon as the arrangements could be
perfected.
Chief Justice Chase was informed of the fact and repaired to
the appointed place in company with Secretary McCullough,
of the Treasury Department, Attorney-General Speed,
J.P. Blair, Sr., Hon. Montgomery Blair, Senators Foot of
Vermont, Ramsay, of Minnesota, Yates, of Illinois, Stewart,
of Nevada, Hale, of New-Hampshirre, and Gen. Farnsworth,
of Illinois.
At eleven o’clock the oath of office was administered by the
Chief Justice of the United States, in his usual solemn and
impressive manner.
Mr. Johnson received the kind expressions of the gentlemen
by whom he was surrounded in a manner which showed his
earnest sense of the great responsibilities so suddenly
devolved upon him, and made a brief speech, in which he
said:
“The duties of the office are mine. I will perform them. The
consequences are with God. Gentlemen, I shall lean upon you.
I feel that I shall need your support. I am deeply impressed with
the solemnity of the occasion and the responsibility of the duties
of the office I am assuming.
Mr. Johnson appeared to be in remarkably good health, and
has a high and realizing sense of the hopes that are centered
upon him. His manner was solemn and dignified, and his whole
bearing produced a most gratifying impression upon those who
participated in the ceremonies.
It is probable that during the day President Johnson will issue his
first proclamation to the American People.
It is expected, though nothing has been definitely determined
upon, that the funeral of the late President Lincoln will take place
on or about Thursday next. It is supposed that his remains will be
temporarily deposited in the Congressional Cemetery.
http://tomroeser.com/blog/img/f22221/abe%20lincoln.jpg
http://www.abc4.com/news/national/story.aspx?content_id=2ecf3875-8f1d...
The last three people elected to serve as governor of New Jersey now
share a similar fate. They’ve all broken a leg while in office.
Current governor Jon Corzine became the latest victim last night. He
is suffering from a broken left leg and a number of other injures from
a car crash. Corzine is hospitalized in critical but stable
condition.
The person elected before him, James McGreevey, broke his left leg in
2002. He was taking a nighttime stroll along a beach with his wife.
And in 1999, then-governor Christie Whitman broke both bones in the
lower part of her right leg while skiing in the Alps.
http://search.news.yahoo.com/search/news/?fr=yalerts-keyword&c=&p=gun+at+school&ei=utf-8
*
Mrs. Tennessee’s son charged with bringing gun to school Open this result in new window
Eyewitness News Memphis - Apr 15 10:48 AM
The 18-year old son of the reigning National Mrs. Tennessee is charged with having a gun at school, authorities say.
* 2.
Mrs. Tennessee’s son charged with bringing gun to school Open this result in new window
WMCTV Memphis - Apr 14 6:23 PM
KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (AP) - The 18-year old son of the reigning Mrs. Tennessee is charged with having a gun at school. Brandon Evans, who is the son of the current Mrs. Tennessee, Melissa Evans, also faces
* 3.
Mrs. Tennessee’s son charged with bringing gun to school Open this result in new window
WMCTV Memphis - Apr 14 5:38 PM
KNOXVILLE, Tenn. The 18-year old son of the reigning Mrs. Tennessee is charged with having a gun at school. Brandon Evans, who is the son of the current Mrs.
* 4.
Police arrest teen after call about alleged gun, school threat Open this result in new window
The Commercial Dispatch - Apr 14 8:05 PM
WEST POINT - A Cedar Bluff youth was arrested Friday afternoon in connection with a call placed to the West Point Police Department that the teenager might attempt to enter a school with a gun.
* 5.
Air gun prompts school lockdown Open this result in new window
The San Francisco Examiner - Apr 14 2:59 AM
(Juan Carlos Pometta Betancourt/Special to The Examiner) Students leave Taylor Middle School on Friday. The school was put on lockdown after a student brought an air gun to class.
* 6.
Middle school student brings gun to class Open this result in new window
FOX 10 Phoenix - Apr 13 5:16 PM
A Maricopa Middle School, forced into lock down after a student brings a gun to school. It happened at Maricopa Wells Middle School, and police say the gun was unloaded. Students were sent home with a letter, explaining to their parents what happened. The 13 year-old boy may have been involved in some sort of gang activity. We’ve learned that when officers arrested him, he had a panic attack, but ...
* 7.
Maricopa middle-schooler caught with gun at school Open this result in new window
12 News Phoenix - Apr 13 3:49 PM
A city of Maricopa middle school was temporarily locked down Friday after a student was found with a gun. “The student brought an unloaded gun to school and was immediately caught with the gun,” said John Flores, Maricopa Unified School District superintendent.
* 8.
James City teen charged with having gun at school Open this result in new window
Richmond Times-Dispatch - Apr 14 9:36 AM
A 16-year-old student at Jamestown High School was caught yesterday bringing an unloaded .380-caliber handgun to school, James City County police said.
* 9.
Student takes loaded gun to school Open this result in new window
Washington Times-Herald - Apr 13 8:59 AM
ELNORA — A 12-year-old North Daviess Elementary School student took a loaded handgun to school Wednesday morning. Elementary principal Jodi Berry and assistant principal Renee Judy approached the boy after another student gave them a tip that he might have a gun.
* 10.
Teen charged with having gun at school Open this result in new window
Daily Press - Apr 14 1:23 AM
A 16-year-old Jamestown High School student was charged with possession of a firearm on school property Friday after an unloaded handgun was found in his backpack.
Bangladesh: Democracy Saved or Sunk?
By Jalal Alamgir
Foreign Policy
Posted April 2007
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/ story/cms. php?story_ id=3765
Many in Bangladesh are relieved that the military stepped in to liberate them from political chaos. But this move has set the country on a slippery slope to authoritarian rule. In the long run, the best formula for success is to build Bangladesh into a showcase for democracy in the Islamic world.
Guardians of democracy? Bangladesh’s new authoritarian rulers are destroying what’s left of the country’s democratic institutions.
On January 11, Bangladesh began yet another tumultuous political transformation. A caretaker government backed by the military took over power, declared a state of emergency, and postponed national elections. Most Bangladeshis sighed relief.
Within weeks, the newly installed government began a “war” against corruption, arresting scores of top politicians in dramatic midnight raids and sending them straight to prison. Most Bangladeshis became exuberant, and many are demanding summary trials for the corrupt.
While stressing that democracy needs to be restored eventually, foreign diplomats also cheered on the new government’s assertive line. The British High Commissioner said he was “pleased with the approach that was taken,” and more recently, the U.S. assistant secretary of state said his country was “strongly supportive of the reform steps.” After a 16-year experiment with democracy, Bangladesh’s return to authoritarianism feels to many like a refreshing change.
It wasn’t always like this. Both the Clinton and Bush administrations used to hail Bangladesh as an example to the rest of the Islamic world: a moderate Muslim democracy. As recently as 2002, public support for democracy was overwhelming in the country, as several surveys showed. Bangladesh enjoyed secular institutions and a growing economy. It held regular elections, and power rotated between the two major parties, the center-right Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and the center-left Awami League. But, despite the public’s commitment to democratic institutions, contempt was growing against the many politicians who regularly subverted those institutions.
That contempt peaked toward the end of BNP’s 2001-06 tenure. The party’s reign had been anything but democratic. With its Islamist allies, it had gone on a rampage against political and religious minorities. Its feared paramilitary force, the Rapid Action Battalion, operated with impunity, and extrajudicial deaths jumped to nearly 400 in 2005, a 20-fold increase from the average during the Awami League administration (1996-2001). Corruption had become so rampant that Transparency International rated Bangladesh as the most corrupt country in the world four out of the last five years. Extortion was commonplace, especially for businesses. Some could not even pay their utility bills without bribing someone. Gruesome terrorist attacks took place, but the cases went mysteriously unsolved. Finally, BNP tried to rig the January 2007 elections, a move that was protested en masse by the opposition, and the country came to a standstill. That’s when the military intervened.
With these conditions, Bangladeshis could be forgiven for welcoming their new military rulers with open arms. After the chaos of the past six years, who can blame them?
The new caretaker government’s stated goal is to “save” democracy by ensuring “a level playing field” before holding elections. In the process, it wants to change the system comprehensively, involving everything from how political parties operate, to the authority of the courts, to the balance of power between the president and the prime minister, to even considering a “National Charter” to rival the Constitution.
All this is a familiar refrain. From Burma and Pakistan in the 1950s to Thailand or Fiji in 2006, saving democracy or saving the nation through enacting large-scale reforms has been the common pretext for authoritarian power grabs. Bangladesh itself experienced such takeovers in 1975, 1977, and 1982.
Already, there are troubling signs that the country’s new authoritarian order may be more than just temporary. The caretaker government’s drive to “clean up” politics has reached far beyond the top rungs of power. As of early April, more than 70 people have been killed extrajudicially. More than 100,000 people- many of them mid-level workers of various political parties-have been detained so far, often without charges, and thousands more are being added every day in what amounts to a massive political purge.
To speed up the process, the government has substantially increased its authority to arrest without charges, deny bail, and conduct summary trials. It has curtailed the right of citizens to appeal its verdicts. Military personnel now head most of the important administrative committees, such as the Anti-Corruption Commission. A powerful National Security Council is in the works that will allow authorities to interpret political issues as security issues.
As for elections, the civilian face of the government has dismissed any possibility of holding them in the next year and a half. The Army chief has gone much farther, declaring outright in a recent speech, “We do not want to go back to an elective democracy,” and proposing that some kind of a homegrown system be devised as an alternative.
This is exactly what Islamists, happy to see the principle of popular sovereignty eviscerated, want to hear. But a homegrown system could be disastrous for both national and regional stability. Accustomed to political freedom, Bangladeshis would eventually resist authoritarianism, ushering in another round of violent conflict.
This unsavory outcome can only be nipped through continuous pressure on the temporary government. But because political activity is banned and fundamental rights are suspended, it’s up to outside powers to take the lead, especially in four key areas.
First, Western diplomats should keep pressing the government to announce an election date soon. The caretaker government is going well beyond its initial mandate of organizing elections. It is making major policy decisions that should be the preserve of an elected government.
Second, international organizations and trading partners should resist the urge to cut easy deals. Sensing quick wins, the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank are pushing policy reform initiatives, while individual countries, like India and China are dangling lucrative business agreements. Big contracts signed away from the public eye will reopen doors for corruption.
Third, Britain, the United States, and the European Union should insist that the government restore fundamental rights. Its current path of rule by fiat threatens to destroy the very political and legal institutions that need to be revived from the damage wrought on them in the last six years.
Finally, Western powers should support the democratic process and resist the urge to pick preordained winners. The entry of Dr. Muhammad Yunus, the microfinance pioneer and Nobel Peace laureate, who wants to form a political party in which power would be decentralized, has shaken up the dinosaurs of BNP and Awami League. The ongoing political purge will improve his electoral prospects. Some, however, want to hold off elections in favor of an appointed, Palestinian- style “national unity government.” More extreme would be a Pakistan-style outcome, in which a secular military dictatorship acts as a U.S. ally in its war on terror. As tempting as these options may be, the West must let Bangladeshis decide for themselves through free elections, held reasonably soon. For a working democracy that protects fundamental rights would be a much better showcase for the larger Islamic world than another pliable regime whose domestic legitimacy is becoming increasingly questio nable.
Jalal Alamgir is assistant professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts, Boston.
NEWS: A “Jew’s-eye-view” of the Nation of Islam convention and leader
Louis
Farrakhan
Don Cohen
Special to the Jewish News
http://www.jewish.com/main.asp?SectionID=1&SubSectionID=1&ArticleID=673
http://www.jewish.com/main.asp?SectionID=1&SubSectionID=1&ArticleID=673
Analysis
I admit I was expecting trouble.
Attending the Saviors’ Day convention of the Nation of Islam (NOI) at
Cobo
Hall and Minister Louis Farrakhan’s speech at Ford Field in Detroit, I
went
in with my Jewish antenna up. I’m no stranger to the NOI. I’ve attended
previous Farrakhan events, read their publications and even been
threatened
with violence by NOI members - and that’s before I worked for the
Anti-Defamation League, which keeps a sharp eye on their activities.
What I found last weekend was a leaner group that seems to be
struggling to
keep itself alive and relevant. Mainstream Sunni Islam is trying to
reach
out to the NOI, hoping to bring its members into the fold, while the
Nation
is trying to bring Christians its way. Israel and Jews are largely
irrelevant to these efforts, though they still play a role.
I had never attended a Saviors’ Day before, but the guys hawking copies
of
The Final Call newspaper, the men in their suits and bowties and the
women
dressed in white, and the security-minded “Fruits of Islam” are
standard at
NOI gatherings. While some might have wondered what I was doing there,
no
one treated me anything but kindly. The color of my skin and my
association
with the Detroit Jewish News didn’t noticeably raise eyebrows.
My first stop Friday was afternoon prayers led by Imam Siraj Wahhaj. I
got
there early and walked the gauntlet of about 20 men on each side who
patted
me high and low as I walked into the room. Women came in another
entrance,
with similar security, and sat separately starting at about the 20th
row.
Imam Wahhaj, a controversial and often fiery speaker, heads a new Sunni
organization, the Muslim Alliance in North America (MANA). He has
called for
imposing Islamic law on the United States, said the “real terrorists”
are
the FBI and CIA, and is an alleged co-conspirator in the 1993 bombing
of the
World Trade Center in New York City.
Having a Sunni lead the NOI in prayer was a move to strengthen the
connection between the two groups, and Imam Wahhaj made the most of it.
His
call for unity of all Islamic people was well received, as was his
prediction that “Allah is going to get those people” for what they are
doing
to the Palestinians and in Iraq. But when he told of his NOI roots and
how
“some of the greatest followers of Islam” came from NOI, his prediction
of
unity was met with silence. It seemed the assembled realized the love
they
were getting came with a bit of a slap in the face.
At the next session, President Omar al-Bashir of Sudan filled the role
held
in previous years by Muammar Qaddafi of Libya and Sani Abacha of
Nigeria as
a significant human rights abuser whitewashed (pardon the expression)
by
NOI.
Al-Bashir appeared on several screens set up in a massive room with
thousands of empty seats. Many of the 500 who did attend were shooed in
from
the lobby so the audience wouldn’t look so paltry to those watching us
simultaneously on Sudanese television.
The Sudanese president was introduced as a black African leader under
siege
by the West and who was getting a bad rap from the news media. The
audience
seemed largely unaware that human rights groups like the Save Darfur
Coalition estimate that 400,000 people have been killed and 2 million
made
homeless by militias aligned with al-Bashir. The Coalition says on its
Web
site: “Not since the Rwandan genocide of 1994 has the world seen such a
calculated campaign of displacement, starvation, rape and mass
slaughter.”
The organizers said, “It’s a shame that we rely on the New York Times”
for
news of Darfur.
For his part, Al-Bashar said no more than 5,000 people had been killed
and
that his government “protects all freedoms and liberations and all
political
formations.” He blamed the media, the U.S, Britain and Israel for his
troubles, saying he would continue to defy U.N. Resolution 1706 that
called
for a robust peacekeeping force to be sent to Sudan.
Egged on by sympathetic questioners who wanted him to be more
forthright
about who was against him, he said the United States was planning to
invade
his country as they had Iraq “to fulfill the Zionist and colonialist
interests.”
Following the Sudan session, people seemed to head for hundreds of
vendors
tables in another large hall instead of to other sessions. The vendors
were
an eclectic bunch selling food, posters, books, clothes, insurance,
DVDs,
CDs, tapes and more.
On “Writers Row,” the book Synagogue of Satan, written by a NOI member,
was
featured prominently. The ADL charges that the “book trades heavily in
Jewish conspiracy theories and Holocaust denial.”
I was surprised more anti-white and anti-Semitic materials weren’t
openly
available. There was hardly a mention of Israel or Palestinians, and no
collection of anti-Zionist materials, just a few scattered books. I
couldn’t
even find a copy of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which has been
a
NOI mainstay. Nor was there the NOI report blaming Jews for the
transatlantic slave trade - The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and
Jews
- which Farrakhan in his speech recommended as important reading.
Likely the most objectionable material was contained in the audio and
video
collections of previous speeches by NOI leaders and classic texts like
“Message to the Blackman” by NOI’s first minister, Elijah Muhammad,
which
preaches black racial supremacy. The NOI began in Detroit in 1930.
While copies of Farrakhan’s speeches predominated, you could find
copies of
the violent anti-white, anti-Jewish, anti-Arab and anti-gay rhetoric of
Khalid Abdul Muhammad, a onetime NOI leader who even Farrakhan
distanced
himself from. I was told that on Saturday night, Khalid Abdul Muhammad
was
lionized by Dr. Zulu Malik Shabbaz, chairman of the radical anti-white
and
anti-Semitic New Black Panther Party. The Rev. Al Sharpton was part of
the
same forum by satellite hookup.
Wooing The Christians
Farrakhan’s appearance was eagerly awaited especially since he hadn’t
been
seen in public for seven months due to complications from prostate
cancer
treatment.
In front of about 25,000 people at Ford Field - which he renamed “Fard
Field” after W.D. Fard, who established the NOI in Detroit in 1930-
Farrakhan, 73, looked strong. On the stage with him were Detroit Mayor
Kwame
Kilpatrick - who greeted him with a bear hug - U.S. Reps. John Conyers
and
Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick of Detroit, various Detroit City Council
members,
NOI officials and dozens more.
His speech, “One Nation Under God” was Farrakhan as religious prophet,
powerful and expertly delivered. Mostly political and theological, with
repeated references to Jesus Christ as a prophet of Islam, he quoted
Christian scripture more than the Koran.
He blasted President Bush and American foreign policy, calling it
“wicked”
and starting a war that would soon engulf the whole world. Defending
Saddam
Hussein - saying all had been good under his rule - he called for the
end of
the war and for the impeachment and removal of members of the Bush
administration, whom he called “liars” and “murderers” led to war by
neoconservatives.
He bemoaned Jews “who do not wish to live by the law set down by
Moses,” but
spoke the same way of Christians “who use the name of Jesus Christ to
shield
their evil practices” and Muslims who “want to tamper with the Koran.”
He
defended Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas for wanting to establish an Islamic
theocracy, saying “democracy is no replacement for the rule of God.” He
said
Hurricane Katrina showed God’s anger at the United States and that
everyone
should “prepare for the war of Armageddon that has already begun.”
Denying he is anti-Semitic, anti-white, anti-gay or anti-American, he
said
the “evil” spoken against him was to silence him or to encourage
someone to
kill him. That this hadn’t happened was evidence he was “protected by
God.”
At the end of his two-hour speech, he listed required reading that
included
some anti-Semitic books, books on black history and criticisms of the
United
States. He also listed Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid by former
President
Jimmy Carter, criticized as being a biased view that portrays Israel’s
policies toward Palestinians in the territories as racist; and By Way
of
Deception by former Mossad agent Victor Ostrovsky, which the ADL says
makes
unsubstantiated claims about Israel’s intelligence agency.
Though early in his talk, Farrakhan observed, “What good is a leader if
he
doesn’t prepare others to stand up when he sits down?” his speech gave
little indication that he had done that preparation. Many questions
remain
about where the NOI is headed and who will lead it there.
It seems likely to me that without Farrakhan at the helm, the group
will
fold into other African American Muslim groups growing faster than the
NOI,
with a remnant re-emphasizing the cultish black nationalist-separatist
roots
that target whites and Jews.
So while I didn’t find all the trouble I was looking for, I suspect the
trouble still will be looking for us.
Special writer Don Cohen of West Bloomfield is former director of the
Community Relations Council of the Jewish Federation of Greater Dayton
and
former director of the Anti-Defamation League Michigan Region.
Remember_The_Holocaust] Mary Berg’s Diary
http://maryberg.oneworld-publications.com/main.htm
http://maryberg.oneworld-publications.com/extracts.htm
http://maryberg.oneworld-publications.com/photos.htm
http://maryberg.oneworld-publications.com/people.htm
http://maryberg.oneworld-publications.com/links.htm
http://maryberg.oneworld-publications.com/images/img_bot_l2.gif
http://www.marybergsdiary.com/
She was just fifteen when Hitler entered Poland. She survived four
years of Nazi
terror. This is her story.
When Hitler invaded Poland in 1939, Mary Berg had just turned fifteen.
From that
time until her arrival in the United States in March 1944, Mary kept a
detailed
personal diary, recording her years in the Warsaw Ghetto, detention in
Pawiak
prison, internment in Occupied France, and finally, her journey to
freedom
aboard a mercy ship hired by the American government. Carefully hidden
among her
meager possessions were her twelve small notebooks, smuggled out of
Europe under
the noses of the Nazis. Less than a year later, its war-time
publication played
a key role in bringing the plight of the remaining European Jews to the
world’s
attention.
The diary immediately won the highest acclaim from America’s press in
the first
days of 1945, including a major piece in the New York Times which
concluded,
“Without qualification, this reviewer recommends Mary Berg’s Diary to
everybody”.
After a gap of 60 years, this amazing diary is about to be published
once more,
this time for a worldwide audience. These extracts give a flavour of
that world
long ago, a world of both light and dark.
Mary Berg’s Warsaw Ghetto: A Diary
Introduction
And it continued. Ten a day, ten thousand Jews a day. That did not last
very
long. Soon they took fifteen thousand. Warsaw! The city of Jews - the
fenced in,
walled-in city, Dwindled, expired, melted like snow before my eyes.
- from Yitzak Katzenelson’s The Song of the Murdered Jewish People
written 2-3-4
November 1943
On April 19, 1944, Mary Berg began her fight to open American eyes to
the
Holocaust. On that day, a crowd of thousands gathered at the Warsaw
Synagogue in
New York and marched to City Hall in commemoration of the first
anniversary of
the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Heading the marchers was the Wattenberg
family, Shya
and Lena and their daughters Mary (Miriam) and Ann, who had escaped the
terrible
fate of so many European Jews and reached the United States just four
weeks
earlier. The marchers carried signs reading, “We appeal to the
conscience of
America to help save those Jews in Poland who can yet be saved,”
“Avenge the
blood of the Polish ghetto” and “Three Million Polish Jews have been
murdered by
the Nazis! Help us rescue the survivors.”[i]
The Wattenbergs had arrived in the United States in March 1944 as
repatriates on
the S S Gripsholm, an exchange ship leased by the U. S. Department of
State from
the Swedish American line. S. L. Shneiderman, a Yiddish journalist who
had
himself escaped Nazi Europe, had met Mary Berg, who was then nineteen
years old,
on the dock after the ship arrived. He learned she had brought a diary
of her
and her family’s experiences in the Warsaw Ghetto with her, written in
Polish in
twelve small, spiral notebooks.
Shneiderman recalls in the preface to the 1983 Polish edition of the
diary that:
In a state of awe I read the tiny letters on the densely written pages
of her
notebooks. Afraid that the books might some day fall into the hands of
the
Nazis, Mary wrote her notes in a her own form of shorthand, using only
initials
for the people whose names she mentioned. She never used the word
`Nazi.’
Instead, she wrote `they.’ 2
Nancy Craig, in a radio broadcast on station WJZ in New York, asked
Mary how she
had managed to bring her diary to the States. She replied, “I developed
a sort
of code of my own and wrote down the most important facts. Very simply
I put
them in my valise. Also I memorized all the important dates and
names.”[ii] Soon
after her arrival, Mary began to rewrite her notes in Polish.
Shneiderman worked closely with Mary for the next several months,
deciphering
the notebooks and asking her “to explain certain facts and situations
which
otherwise would have been puzzling not only for American readers but
for readers
through the world,” apparently amending some spellings and perhaps
adding some
material. When she knew the persons mentioned had perished, she and
Shneiderman
changed the initials to full names. For the same reason, the author’s
surname
was shortened to Berg to protect family and friends who might yet be
alive in
wartime Poland. In Pawiak, Mary had also begun rewriting parts of her
diary. For
these reasons, it is perhaps most accurate to call her published work
“a diary
memoir.”
Shneiderman translated the Polish manuscript[iii] into Yiddish, which
he
published, in serial form, in the Der Morgen zshurnal. He then hired
Norbert
Guterman, who was born in Poland, and Sylvia Glass, a graduate of
Wellesley
College, to translate the Polish version into English. Apparently, this
version
appeared in the P.M. newspaper in New York in serialized form, and in
an
abridged form in the Jewish Contemporary Record, in the fall of 1944.
At about
the same time, a German translation of the diary was translated by Mary
Graf and
appeared in the New York exile newspaper Aufbau [Reconstruction] from
22
September 1944 until 19 January 1945.[iv]
In February 1945, Shneiderman published Mary Berg’s full work, Warsaw
Ghetto: A
Diary, with L.B. Fischer in New York. Mary designed the original dust
jacket
portraying the brick wall marking the boundary of the Warsaw ghetto. In
the
foreword to a special edition of the diary, sponsored by the National
Organization of Polish Jews, President Joseph Thon outlined Berg and
Shneiderman’s purpose in publishing the diary. He explained:
The leaders of the United Nations have declared that they would resort
to poison
gas and bacteriological warfare only if the Germans used these inhuman
methods
first. The Germans have used these methods to slaughter millions of
Jews in
Treblinki, Majdanek, Oswiecim, and other camps. But even today the
civilized
world does not fully realize this fact. It is therefore our duty to
make known
the horrible truth, to publicize documents and eyewitness accounts that
reveal
it beyond any doubt.
Mary Berg’s diary was published before the war was over, before people
in the
United States and abroad, and even the diarist herself, knew the
enormity of the
German crimes and the details of the Final Solution. Moreover, we
should
remember that as a witness to these crimes against humanity, Mary had
arrived in
New York before the summer of 1944, when the Hungarian Jews, the last
of the
European communities, were gassed at Auschwitz, and hope remained that
the
world’s attention to their plight might lead to rescue.
Mary Berg was not the only witness of these events to testify in
English before
the end of the war. A few articles and pamphlets were published
featuring
eye-witness accounts between 1942 and 1943, and firsthand testimony was
also
included in a book on Polish Jewry in 1943.[v]
However, Mary Berg’s diary was the first account to describe the events
from the
ghetto’s establishment through to the first deportations that took
place between
July and September of 1942 to appear in English as eyewitness
testimony. It was
also one of the first personal accounts to describe gas being used to
kill the
Jewish population at Treblinka. In a preface to the diary, Shneiderman
pointed
out that:
At some future time, we hope, chronicles hidden by writers in the ruins
of the
Warsaw ghetto will be discovered. Other survivors may be found to give
additional testimony to this heroic episode of the war...for the time
being,
Berg’s diary is the only existing eye-witness record.[vi]
Mary Berg’s unique contribution was recognized in reviews during the
winter of
1945. The New Yorker wrote: “This is a grim book, full of darkness and
horror,
and, because of the picture it gives of the courage and humanity of the
people
of the Warsaw ghetto, it is also a brave and inspiring one.”[vii] The
Kirkus
Review called it “a moving record of terrorism”[viii] and the New York
Times
review recommended it as reading for everyone “without
qualification.”[ix] The
Saturday Review concluded that Berg’s diary entries, “bear the imprint
of
sincerity and authenticity, and apparently are not `glamorized’ by
editorial
treatment.”[x]
Soon after its publication in February 1945, the diary was translated
into
several foreign languages.[xi] More recently, it has been the subject
of a play,
a piece of street theater, and been featured in a 1991 documentary
film, “A Day
in the Warsaw Ghetto, A Birthday Trip to Hell,”[xii] It also appears as
a source
in the bibliography of many important works on the Holocaust available
to
students and scholars.[xiii]
Mary Berg’s diary is unique for its authenticity, its detail and its
poignancy,
as well as for its early publication. Alice Eckhardt, a noted Christian
theologian, wrote in 1995,”Now with the ghetto’s final fate known by
all, the
details of the community life that went on and even at times blossomed
despite
the dreadful conditions under which it existed become even more
important for us
to know. The unique factors that made it possible for this young woman,
, to
leave the ghetto just prior to its elimination give the book a vibrancy
and at
the same time a poignancy that is hard to match.”[xiv]
Mary Berg was fifteen years old when the Germans attacked Poland, and
when she
began her diary on October 10, 1939, and her diary is that of a young
girl..
Like many child diarists, she was searching to find meaning in the
cruelty she
experienced. Like Anne Frank and others, she began her diary as a means
to
comfort and occupy herself. Later, it became an outlet for her and her
friends.
Alvin Rosenfeld in his work A Double Dying[xv] concludes that diaries
of the
Holocaust written by children or young adolescents “seem almost to
constitute a
distinctive subgenre of the literature of incarceration.”
She was with her family in the Warsaw Ghetto from its beginning in
November,
1940 until a few days before the Great Deportation began on July 22,
1942. On
July 17, 1942, they had been interned as American citizens in the
Pawiak Prison,
which stood inside the ghetto. From the windows of the prison, they
witnessed
the deportation of over 300,000 ghetto inhabitants. Several years
later, Mary
recalled watching many friends among “the aged men with gray beards,
the
blooming young girls and proud young men, driven like cattle to the
Umschlagplatz on Stawki Street to their deaths.”[xvi]
Shortly after midnight on January 18, 1943, the day the second Aktion
began in
the ghetto that was to lead to the first armed resistance the next day,
Mary,
her parents and her sister Ann were sent with other foreign internees
to an
internment camp in Vittel, France. Over a year later, they were
selected for an
exchange with German prisoners in the United States. They arrived in
the United
States aboard the S.S. Gripsholm on March 16, 1944.
Early in the occupation, Mary learned that the Germans would set a
price on life
and that those with wealth and privilege from before the occupation
would have a
better chance of survival. When the ghetto was established in Lodz, a
schoolmate
of Mary’s came to Warsaw with, Mary describes it, “bloodcurdling
stories.” Her
family had managed to escape, she told her friend, by “bribing the
Gestapo with
good American dollars.” Of course, Mary knew that only “the well-to-do
Jews”
could have easy access to foreign currency.
She realized that she was among the privileged. She explained,in her
diary that
those without privilege “have only a 10 per cent chance at most [to
survive].”
Later, she admitted with equal openness that, “Only those who have
large sums of
money are able to save themselves from this terrible life.” Mary had
grown up in
a well-to-do home in Lodz. Her father owned an art gallery and traveled
abroad
to purchase works by European masters such as Poussin and Delacroix.
She
attended gymnasium in Lodz and her family could afford to spend six
weeks in a
health resort in the summer of 1939, and had relatives living in the
United
States.
She also had the insight to see that foreign citizens had a much better
chance
of survival. Jews with passports for neutral countries were exempt from
having
to wear the Jewish star and doing forced labor. When two friends
obtained papers
as nationals of a South American country, she commented: “No wonder
many Jews
try to obtain such documents; but not all have the means to buy them or
the
courage to use them.”
Mary’s mother, Lena, was born in New York on 1 May 1902, and was a
citizen of
the United States.. When Lena was about twelve, she had moved to Poland
with her
Polish-born parents and an older brother and sister, who were also born
in the
States. Her younger brothers Abie and Percy were born after the family
returned
to Poland in 1914. When her parents and older siblings moved back to
the States
in the 1920s, Lena, a fashion designer, remained in Lodz with her
younger
brothers. She married Shya Wattenberg, a Polish citizen, who was a
painter and
an antique dealer..[xvii]They had two children, Mary and a younger
daughter
named Ann.
Under the Germans, her mother’s status as an American citizen gave the
whole
family protection and privileges, even though Mary and her sister were
born in
Poland. When the mailman brought her mother a letter from the American
consulate
in December 1939, Mary reported that he “could not refrain from
expressing his
envy over the fact that we have American connections.” On April 5,
1940, she
noted, realistically, that “Polish citizens of Jewish origin have no
one to
protect them, except themselves.” Later, she explained that her
mother’s
visiting card on the door in Warsaw, indicating she was an American,
was a
“wonderful talisman against the German bandits who freely visit all
Jewish
apartments.” This was so much so, that neighbors came to their
apartment as soon
as German uniforms came into view.
Although the Wattenbergs were refugees, they had managed to hold on to
some
money and valuables. They also received mail and packages from
relatives in the
States and Mrs. Wattenberg, as an American citizen, was permitted, at
first, to
leave the ghetto. When, in November 1940, the Germans officially closed
the
Jewish quarter in Warsaw as a ghetto, the Wattenbergs were fortunate to
be able
to remain in their apartment at Sienna 41, on the corner of Sosnowa
Street in
the ghetto. It was included in the area referred to as the “Little
Ghetto,” at
the southern border of the ghetto. The courtyard outside their windows
opened
onto the “Aryan” side of the ghetto where they could still see people
walking
around freely.
The “Little Ghetto” became the privileged quarter. Gutman points out
that:
Even though the ghetto adopted the slogan `all are equal,’ some people
were
`more equal’ than others, and this imbalance could be felt on the
streets as
well. Some streets, such as Sienna and Chlodna, were considered
well-to-do
sections. The apartments there were larger, the congestion lighter, and
above
all, the people relatively well fed. The streets were the addresses of
the
assimilated Jews.... and rich Jews who had managed to hold on to a
portion of
their wealth.[xviii]
Mary was aware of this inequality and of the importance wealth played
in the
life of the ghetto.
Her knowledge of the corruptibility of the Judenrat is also clear from
a later
entry, after she and her family moved to an apartment at Chlodna 10,
located
right at the western ghetto gate, by the foot bridge over Chlodna
Street. She
explained that:
The well to do, who could afford to bribe the officials of the housing
office,
get the best apartments on this street with its many large modern
houses.
Chlodna Street is generally considered the `aristocratic’ street of the
ghetto,
just as Sienna Street was at the beginning.
Although Mary often seemed uncomfortable with the privileges and
protection
afforded her family, she also wanted to forget the horror all around
her, and
with the resilience of youth she adapted to life during the occupation.
Wiszniewicz interviewed a ghetto survivor living in the United States a
few
years ago.
People think the ghetto was like in the movies: constant, relentless
terror. But
it wasn’t like that at all. We were always surrounded by terror, but we
led
normal lives right alongside it. Flirting went on in the ghetto,
romances,
concerts, theatrical performances. People went to a restaurant, while
behind the
restaurant somebody was dying. The normal and the abnormal intertwined
repeatedly.[xix]
This is the life that Mary describes on every page.
Many of her young friends from Lodz had also fled to Warsaw. During the
summer
of 1940, the principal,of her Lodz gymnasium, Dr. Michael
Brandstetter,[xx]with
a number of his teaching staff, started illegal classes in Warsaw. The
students
secretly met twice a week in the safety of the Wattenberg home so that
they
could finish their studies. School was only possible for the
privileged, because
students in the study-groups usually had to pay their teachers about
thirty to
forty zlotys a month.[xxi]
As the numbers of refugees increased and conditions grew more and more
distressing, Jews in Warsaw began to establish a network of relief and
self-help
organizations in the Jewish quarter. Eager to make a contribution, Mary
and
eleven of her friends from Lodz founded a club to raise relief funds.
Soon, at
the request of a representative of the Joint Distribution Committee,
they
decided to put on a musical show. They called themselves the “Lodz
Artistic
Group” (Lodzki Zespol Artystyczny) or, in Polish, the LZA. whose
letters
appropriately, she felt, formed the word “tear.”
One document recovered from the Oneg Shabbat archive refers to the
“privileged”
youth in the ghetto, mainly refugees from Lodz and neighboring towns,
whom he
disparagingly called the “golden youth.” In her diary Mary describes
going to
the cafes on Sienna Street to sing, and to performances at the Feminina
Theater
with Romek, outings that stand in stark contrast to the starving youth
and
children in the ghetto. Even the LZA club, which was set up to raise
funds for
the poor, clearly brought the youth running it welcome relief from the
horrors
they saw all around them, as Mary reported that they “had a lively
time” putting
on their play, and were quite a hit . However, she remained sensitiveto
this
inequality, and to the growing desperation in the ghetto. Just a few
weeks
earlier, she had noted a visit she made to a refugee home where she saw
half-naked, unwashed children lying about listlessly. One child looked
at her
and said she was hungry. With characteristic candor, she confessed in
her diary,
“I am overcome by a feeling of utter shame. I had eaten that day, but I
did not
have a piece of bread to give to that child. I did not dare look in her
eyes.”
In another moving passage, she wrote about the “dreamers of bread” in
the
streets whose “eyes are veiled with a mist that belongs to another
world.” She
explained that, “usually they sit across from the windows of food
stores, but
their eyes no longer see the loaves that lie behind the glass, as in
some remote
inaccessible heaven.” In the same entry, she also expressed guilt about
her
privileges, concluding: “I have become really selfish. For the time
being I am
still warm and have food, but all around me there is so much misery and
starvation that I am beginning to be very unhappy.”
Abraham Lewin, a ghetto diarist who perished, described the huge
contrasts
between the better off inhabitants of the ghetto, and the many
thousands who
were suffering poverty, disease and starvation:
The ghetto is most terrible to behold with its crowds of drawn faces
with the
color drained out them. Some of them have the look of corpses that have
been in
the ground a few weeks. They are so horrifying that they cause us to
shudder
instinctively. Against the background of these literally skeletal
figures and
against the all-embracing gloom and despair that stares from every pair
of eyes,
from the packed mass of passers-by, a certain type of girl or young
woman, few
in number it must be said, shocks with her over-elegant
attire...Walking down
the streets I observe this sickly elegance and am shamed in my own
eyes.[xxii]
As another Oneg Shabbat essayist reminded future historians, while
these
privileged youth lived comparatively well, “nevertheless they, too,
were
affected by wartime conditions which changed their lives in a negative
way.”[xxiii]
Wealth and privilege in the ghetto influenced more than housing and
education.
Mary discovered they played a part in protecting the inhabitants from
labor camp
and helped secure the most desirable jobs. She clearly faced an inner,
moral
dilemma herself when in the fall of 1941, she learned that the Judenrat
was
offering practical courses in subjects like metallurgy and applied
graphic arts
near her home on Sienna Street[xxiv] The course was to last six months
and the
tuition was twenty-five zlotys. When she went to register, she found
many
friends among the almost six hundred applicants, all eager to escape
labor
camp.[xxv] Not surprisingly, there were only a few dozen openings.
She admitted to herself in her diary knowing that “pull” would play a
large part
in the selection of students. At first she “rebelled” against this, but
when she
realized she had little chance of being admitted, she “decided to
resort to the
same means.” There was an additional selfishness in this decision,
because she
also admitted knowing that at the time girls were not threatened with
labor
camps as young boys were.
She had begun to accept the realities of bribes and pull a few months
earlier.
When the Judenrat established the Jewish Police force, she had
explained, “more
candidates presented themselves than were needed.” She had then added,
“A
special committee chose them, and `pull’ played an important part in
their
choice. At the very end, when only a few posts were available, money
helped,
too...Even in Heaven not everyone is a saint.” Since Mary’s uncle Abie
served in
the police force, she probably knew of this at first hand.
Due to their pre-war social standing, education and wealth, many of
Mary’s
relatives and friends were able to acquire positions of “privilege,”
thus
enabling them to live much better than the average ghetto dweller and
to survive
at least a while longer. Most had got their positions through the
Judenrat.
Although public opinion varied as to the integrity of the Judenrat,
Ringelblum
described the council as “hostile to the people” in his Oneg Shabbat
notes.[xxvi] Others, however, joined the Jewish Police, whom Ringelblum
and
other memoirists condemned out right, saying they “distinguished
themselves with
their fearful corruption and immorality.”[xxvii]
Later, Mary explained that her uncle Percy got a job with the Judenrat,
picking
up bricks in ruined buildings, but he lacked the “pull” to get a higher
paying
position as an overseer. On the other hand, she knew that her “boy
friend” in
the ghetto, Romek Kowalski, another “golden youth” from Lodz, had
secured a
position as an overseer for the construction of the ghetto wall,
because he did
have “pull.” Kowalski was a relative of engineer Mieczslaw Lichtenbaum,
the head
of the wall construction commission formed by the Judenrat,[xxviii] and
of Marek
Lichtenbaum, who became the head of the Judenrat after the Great
Deportation.
After what she describes as a “struggle,” which probably means bribes
were
required, her father got the coveted position of janitor in their
apartment
block. The Judenrat appointed janitors. They got a salary, free
lodging, relief
from community taxes and extra rations, as well as a pass from the
Judenrat
exempting them from forced labor. In Mary’s words, “no wonder the job
is hard to
obtain.” Also,Mary’s sister Ann attended classes in sewing children’s
clothing,
which were run by the Judenrat’s Institute for Vocational Guidance and
Training,
known as the ORT.
Another acquaintance of Mary’s, Heniek Grynberg, whose cousin Rutka was
Ann’s
best friend, was a smuggler in the ghetto. He was apparently involved
in the
ghetto underworld, as he frequented the Cafe Hirschfeld with Gestapo
agents.
Mary notes, “He is one of the most successful people in this new
business. This
can be seen from his prosperous appearance and the elegant dresses worn
by his
wife and daughter.” His main trade was to smuggle inanti-typhus
serumwhich, of
course, as typhus swept the ghetto, went to those who could pay high
sums.
The Special Ambulance Service received particularly scathing criticism
from
Ringelblum,[xxix] who regarded it as a front for selling cards and caps
that
afforded the holders valuable advantages, such as exemption from forced
labor.
It was run by the infamous mafia-style underworld in the ghetto known
as the
“Thirteen,” which was widely feared to be a tool of the Gestapo. One of
Mary’s
friends and a fellow member of the LZA, Tadek Szajer, was the son of a
member of
the “Thirteen,” and himself a member of the Ambulance Service. He
pursued her
with youthful fervor, but she rejected his advances, noting that while
others
such as Romek Kowlaski had to work so hard to provide for their
families, Tadek
was always well fed and smartly dressed, and traveled everywhere by
rickshaw.
She suspected his father of doing business with the Nazis, and her
decision not
to see him any more suggested she understood what was happening, and
wanted to
take a moral stand.
In early 1942, Mary learned that U. S. citizens had been allowed to
leave the
ghetto and one acquaintance’s father was interned in Germany. There
were rumors
in the ghetto,of a prisoner exchange. A few weeks later, she noted that
here
“pull” and bribes could also be useful. She wrote in her diary,
“Naturally, one
must have some scrap of paper stating that at least one member of the
family is
a foreign citizen. My mother is lucky in this respect, for she is a
full-fledged
American citizen”
Later Mary’s mother made contact with a Gestapo agent named “Z” who
promised her
help. Naively, Mary confessed to believing that “it seems that despite
his
position he has remained a decent man.” More likely, money passed into
his hands
before he registered Mrs. Wattenberg with the Gestapo. A month later,
Mary Berg
and her family marched through the ghetto, with about seven hundred
citizens of
neutral, European and American countries, twenty-one of whom were
Americans, to
the Pawiak prison where they were interned.
When the Wattenbergsmoved into the Pawiak prison, Mary parted not only
from
Kowalski and her many girl friends, but also from her mother’s two
younger,
Polish-born brothers. Her Uncle Abie accompanied them to the prison
gate. In
parting, he asked her mother, “How can you leave me?” Later, in the
relative
safety of the internment camp in Vittel, Mary wrote in her diary, “we,
who have
been rescued from the ghetto, are ashamed to look at each other. Had we
the
right to save ourselves?…Here I am, breathing fresh air, and there my
people are
suffocating in gas and perishing in flames, burned alive. Why?”
On arrival at the Vittel internment camp in early 1943, the Wattenbergs
and
other internees from Pawiak could not at first believe that such a
world of
comparative normalcy existed any longer. Gutta Eisenzweig, who had
shared a cell
with Mary at Pawiak, writes in her recent memoir about her initial
reaction, “I
stood there in shock, for we had suddenly crossed the divide from hell
to
paradise...we had come to a serene atmosphere of Old World
sumptuousness. The
contrast was overwhelming.”[xxx] Vittel was a showplace among the
German
internment camps in Europe, designed to reassure the International Red
Cross,
that the internees were well-treated to help ensure the safety of
Germans
interned abroad.
The Vittel camp was based at a health spa in the Vosges Mountains of
France. The
internees had rooms in the hotels and some of the luxuries of the spa
still were
available.There was a hospital with kind inmate physicians such as Dr.
Jean
Levy, movies and entertainments, a few shops and a beautiful park they
could
promenade in during the day. With the help of Red Cross packages they
received,
no one was hungry. The American and British internees at Vittel had
time enough
to establish a social life. There were language classes and other
courses
available, concerts and entertainments. There were also contacts with
the French
resisitance, several hundred nuns, and internees like Sofka Skipwith
who reached
out to help the new arrivals from Warsaw.
Madeleine Steinberg, a British internees, has written her memoir about
the
Vittel camp. She recalls that Mary volunteered right away to help with
the
children at art classes and when they were playing. She also recalls
that Mary
was the first one to tell the other internees about life in the Warsaw
ghetto
and to explain why the children from Poland ran and hid in the cellar
when they
saw a German at Vittel.[xxxi] The internees began to have hope once
again.
However, a few weeks after the Wattenbergs’ departure for the SS
Gripsholm
exchange, most of the Polish internees who had been moved to the Hotel
Beau Site
outside the barbed wire surrounding the park were deported in two
transports to
Drancy, and a short time later, from there to Auschwitz, where they
were gassed
upon arrival.
In the Warsaw Ghetto, after the deportations in late summer 1942, the
Jewish
Fighting Organization and other political youth assassinated
collaborators in
the ghetto, including Jews who had worked with the Gestapo and made
huge
fortunes in business deals with the Germans and known Gestapo
informers.[xxxii]
Postwar reactions, especially among displaced survivors in Europe,
against the
Nazi perpetrators - including collaborators, those who were members of
the
ghetto councils, the ghetto police or Kapos in the camps - was, at
first,
determined. Some were tried in Occupied Germany and declared
responsible for
their actions.
Later, several much publicized cases against Jewish collaborators were
tried in
Israeli and German courts. However, “guilt” in a legal sense was often
difficult
to prove and to judge. Since the Germans’ ultimate goal was to destroy
the
Jewish population, these collaborators were subordinated to the
Germans’ will,
so the lines between cooperation and collaboration were often
indistinct. The
courts of public morality have also tended to judge these defendants
with
leniency, as people wonder what they might have done to save themselves
or
family members in similar circumstances, had they been tested.[xxxiii]
Questions my students often asked when they read Mary Berg’s Diary were
how she
knew in Pawiak what was happening in the ghetto, and why she wrote that
the
victims at Treblinka were killed with steam. Although Mary was in
Pawiak during
the Aktion in 1942, the walls of Pawiak were transparent. She speaks of
rumors
that reached them through the prison guards and Polish police. She and
the other
internees at Pawiak also received letters from friends and family.
Gutta
Eisenzweig, who shared a cell with the Wattenbergs at Pawiak, got
detailed
updates from Hillel Seidman, a community official. They also
communicated with
new internees and with ghetto inhabitations through the windows at
Pawiak.
Mary’s writings also reflect what people knew at the time. Some of the
first
reports indicated that steam was being used to kill people at
Treblinka. It was
some time after people first escaped from Treblinka that Warsaw fully
understoond that the Germans were using carbon monoxide.
The images of suffering we see in headlines and on television screens
today make
our world, in fact, too similar to the world of Mary’s girlhood
experience.
Young people today often lash out at the world to stop the killing.
Holocaust
scholars endeavor to do the same thing. They hope that educating future
generations about the past will empower them to build a new world
without hate.
Mary’s diary provides readers with an understanding of the Holocaust
from an
intense, personal perspective, and empowers readers to hope for a
better future
for the human family.
Marcel Reich-Ranickil explains in his recent memoir, in reference to
his wife
who escaped from the Umschlagplatz, “Whoever, sentenced to death, has
at close
quarters watched a train leaving for the gas chambers, remains marked
for the
rest of their lives.” [xxxiv] Although Mary never passed through the
Umschlagplatz, she watched as over 300,000 Jews marched by Pawiak
prison in
Warsaw on their way to their deaths at Treblinka. After she returned to
the U.
S., she learned that most of her friends and family in Europe had
perished in
the Holocaust, including two hundred Polish Jews at Vittel, her
roommate Rosl
Weingort, Adam Wentland and his sisters, and many others she knew. They
were on
the verge of freedom, but the world turned its eyes away and they were
deported
back to Poland where they died in the gas chambers of Auschwitz.
Mary began a new life in America and made an effort to leave the past
behind
her. When Nancy Craig asked her in early 1945 if she wanted to visit
Poland
again, she replied:
No, I will never go back. America is my country now and I’m going to be
a real
American. It wouldn’t be nice to go back to Poland and see only
cemetaries….also
my father’s family has been killed...so have all our friends. After
what we went
through, I know what freedom really means...it means America. Just
talking with
you this morning over the radio...this is America.
While readers may conclude that Mary was “fortunate” in surviving, and
assume
that once in the United States she returned to the happiness of her
early
teenage years, most also understand that the lives of survivors of
trauma,
children perhaps most of all, are changed forever by persecution, the
future
altered by the horror, the losses and the choices they once had to
make.
Until the early 1950s Mary Berg was a personality in New York, granting
interviews and appearing on radio. Then she disassociated herself from
the
diary, saying she wanted to forget the past, and she disappeared from
the public
eye. It is not known if she found happiness in her adult years. We can
only hope
she was able to make a life for herself in the post-war world and find
solace
from past memories.
SUSAN PENTLIN
Notes
[i] “Thousands Mourn Victims of Ghetto,” New York Times, 20 April l944,
pg. 10.
[ii] Transcript of “Woman of Tomorrow.” Interview with Mary Berg by
Nancy Craig.
WJZ radio. 8:30 a.m. 21 February 1945. S. L. Shneiderman Archives. Tel
Aviv.
[iii] The editor has a few photocopied pages of the original Polish
manuscript,
but the full Polish manuscript as well as Berg’s original diary are
apparently
no longer extant.
[iv] The editor wants to thank Fabian Fuerste at the Wiener Library in
London
for checking their holdings of the issues Aufbau from 1944 to 1945 and
establishing the exact dates and issues that the diary appeared in
German.
[v] Among others, “The Extermination of 500,000 Jews in the Warsaw
Ghetto: the
Day to Day Experience of a Polish Gentile” was published the American
Council of
Warsaw Jews and the American Friends of Polish Jews in New York in
1942. It was
a translation of pages from a diary written by a Polish woman employed
in a
municipal office in the Warsaw Ghetto, and covered events over a
two-month
period in the ghetto, from July 22, 1942 to September 25, 1942. Mary
Berg’s
account covers the period the Wattenberg family spent in Warsaw both
before and
after the ghetto was established (September 1939 to July 17 1942) as
well as
their experiences in Pawiak prison inside the ghetto itself until the
day of the
first Uprising in the ghetto on 18 January 1943. She also wrote about
their year
in the internment camp at Vittel, France through to February 1944.
Tosha Bialer, who had escaped from the Warsaw ghetto with her husband
and young
son in 1942, wrote the two-part article, “Behind the Wall,” for
Colliers
magazine, and it appeared with graphic photos of the ghetto in February
1943.
The American Federation for Polish Jews also published Jacob
Apenszlak’s The
Black Book of Polish Jewry: An Account of the Martyrdom of Polish Jewry
under
the Nazi Occupation, in 1943.
In addition, Jan Karski’s report, “My Visit to the Warsaw Ghetto,”
appeared in
the American Mercury magazine in 1944, at almost the same time as the
initial
selections of Mary Berg’s diary were published. Karski, a courier for
the Polish
underground, had visited Warsaw in 1942 and met with three of the
ghetto
leaders. He reported on their conversation:
The first thing they made clear to me ...was the absolute hopelessness
of their
predicament. For the Polish Jews, this was the end of a world. There
was no
possible escape for them or for their fellows... `Do you mean that
every one of
those presumably deported was actually killed?’` Every last one.’
One of the Bund leaders had told him: “The Germans are not trying to
enslave us
as they do other people; we are being systematically murdered.” Like
Karski,
Sheniderman and Berg intended to inform America of the Nazi atrocities
against
the Jews of Europe.
[vi] After the war, the Oneg Shabbat archives of the ghetto, organized
by
Emanuel Ringelblum, were recovered in Warsaw, and the diaries and
chronicles of
Adam Czerniakow, Janusz Korczak, Chaim Kaplan, Abraham Lewis and
Emanuel
Ringelblum, who perished in the Holocaust, came to light. Several
memoir
accounts appeared over the next four decades, including those of
Alexander Donat
and Helena Szereszewska, and survivors of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising,
like
Yitzak Zuckerman and Vladka Meed. The memoir of the ghetto policeman
Stanislaw
Adler, who survived but killed himself in 1946, was also published in
English in
1982 by Yad Vashem..Since only one per cent of the ghetto inhabitants
survived
the war, even accounts written after 1945 are rare.
[vii] Review, New Yorker, 21, 24 February 1945, pg. 77.
[viii] Review, Kirkus, 13, 15 February 1945, pg. 24.
[ix] Marguerite Young, “First Hand Report of a Nightmare,” New York
Times Book
Review, 18 February 1945, pg. 6.
[x] F. Weiskopf, review, Saturday Review, 28, March 3, 1945, pg. 34.
[xi] In 1945, a Hebrew translation of the diary appeared in Tel Aviv,
and a
Spanish edition came out in Buenos Aires. In 1946 an Italian edition
appeared in
Rome and a French translation in Paris in 1947. Several decades later,
Shneiderman edited a Polish translation of the original English, which
appeared
in Poland on the fortieth anniversary of the ghetto uprising in 1983.
In 1991, a
Hungarian translation followed, as well as a new Italian translation.
[xii] In 1986, A Bouquet of Alpine Violets, a play based on the diary,
was
staged in Warsaw. See Kaufman, Michael T. “Warsaw Play Dramatizing
Ghetto Diary,
New York Times, ProQuest Historical Newspapers. 18 May 1986. p. 13.
More
recently, Tempesta, a production inspired by Mary Berg’s diary,
appeared in five
countries as street theater in an adaptation directed by Cora
Herrendorf. The
production was by the Teatro Nucleo company, which began in 1974 in
Argentina
and finds its home in Italy today. (See Teatro Nucleo’s web site at
http://www.teatronucleo.org.) In 1991, Heinz Joest’s documentary film,
“A Day in
the Warsaw Ghetto: A Birthday Trip to Hell,” directed by Jack Kuper in
Canada,
featured text from Mary Berg’s diary.
[xiii] These include Lucy Dawidowicz, The War Against the Jews,
1933-1945 (New
York: Bantam, 1975); Nora Levin, The Holocaust: The Destruction of
European
Jewry, 1933-1945 (New York, Schocken, 1973); Yisrael Gutman, The Jews
of Warsaw,
1939-1943, trans. Ina Friedman (Bloomington: Indiana University, 1982.
Selections from the diary also appear in many sources, including Laurel
Holliday, Children in the Holocaust and World War II: Their Secret
Diaries (New
York: Pocket Books, 1995), pp. 209-248, and Martin Gilbert, A History
of the
Jews of Europe during the Second World War (New York, Holt, Rinehart
and
Winston, 1985), which draws extensive quotes from the diary in
discussing the
Warsaw Ghetto.
[xiv] Letter from Eckhardt to Pentlin, dated 1995.
[xv] Alvin H. Rosenfeld, A Double Dying: Reflections on Holocaust
Literature
(Bloomington: Indiana University, l980), pp. 50-51.
[xvi] Esther Elbaum, “She Lived in the Warsaw Ghetto: An Interview with
Mary
Berg,” Hadassah Newsletter (March-April, 1945): 20-21.
[xvii] Mary Berg’s father was born on 19 July 1893 in Pultusk, Poland
and died
in the United States in 1970, where he had continued his antique
business after
the war; her mother Lena died in the United States in 1989.
[xviii] Israel Gutman, The Jews of Warsaw, 1939-1943, Ghetto,
Underground,
Revolt. Bloomington, Ind., Indiana, 1982. Pg. 108.
[xix] Wiszniewicz, Joanna. And Yet I Still have Dreams, trans. Regina
Grol,
Evanston, Il, Northwestern, 2004.
[xx] He is identified in “Minutes of the Second Plenary Session of the
Jewish
Education Council in Warsaw,” PH/ 9-2-7 in To Live with Honor and Die
with
Honor, Joseph Kermish, ed. (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 1986), pp. 464, 466.
[xxi] [A Preliminary Study in Teaching People during the War], PH/
13-2-4 in
Kermisch, pg. 469.
[xxii] Abraham Lewin, A Cup of Tears: A Diary of the Warsaw Ghetto,
Antony
Polonsky, ed. (Oxford: Blackwell, 1988, p. 84.
[xxiii] “The Profile of the Jewish Child,” #ARI/ 47 in Kermisch, pg.
383.
[xxiv] [Special Schools]. ARI/ 341 in Kermisch, pp. 515-516. Berg gives
the
address as 16 Sienna Street. It seems likely that is in error. The
address of
the school is given in this essay as Sienna 34, which would have been
closer to
Berg’s home.
[xxv] [Jewish Youth in the War Years], pg. 518.
[xxvi] Emmanuel Ringelblum. Notes from the Warsaw Ghetto: The Journal
of
Emmanuel Ringelblum, Jacob Sloan ed. and trans. (New York: Schocken,
1958.
[xxvii] Ringelblum 329.
[xxviii] The Warsaw Diary of Adam Czerniakow: Prelude to Doom, Raul
Hilberg,
Stanislaw Staron and Josef Kermisz, eds. (New York, Stein and Day,
1972.), pg.
295
[xxix]
[xxx] Sternbuch, Gutta and David Kranzler. Gutta, Memories of a Vanish
World, A
Bais Yaakov Teacher’s Poignant Account of the War Years. NY, Feldheim,
2005.
[xxxi] Steinberg, Madeleine. “Une Internee Civile Britannique Témoin
Indirect de
la Fin au Ghetto de Varsovie.” Le Monde Juif, Paris, 180 (January-June
2004),
pp. 341-42.
[xxxii] Emmanuel Ringelblum, Polish-Jewish Relations During the Second
World
War, eds. Joseph Kermish and Shmuel Krakowski (Evanston, Ill:
Northwestern,
1974), pp. 249-250.
[xxxiii] See Peter Wyden, Stella (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992),
pg. 307.
[xxxiv] Reich-Ranicki, pg. 186.
Holocaust Remembrance Day
Holocaust Remembrance Day, or Yom Hashoah, is celebrated on April 15th this year.
Once again this year, around the world efforts are made to fight against ignorance with education and against disbelief with proof, so that we NEVER FORGET on this Yom Hashoah, tha those that suffered, those that fought, and those that died. And to NEVER FORGET that 6 million Jews were murdered.
The US Holocaust Memorial Museum has set aside April 15 - April 22, 2007 as Days of Remembrance. This year’s focus is on “Children in Crisis: Voices from the Holocaust”.
From the US Holocaust Memorial Museum this year:
“When World War II ended in 1945, six million European Jews were dead, including more than one million Jewish children. All Jews were targeted for death, but children were among the most vulnerable victims of the Nazi regime and its collaborators. The very young, like the very old, were often the first victims in the ghettos of German-occupied eastern Europe. Many children died from lack of food, clothing, and shelter, as well as from diseases that flourished in the unsanitary and overcrowded conditions imposed in the ghettos.”
“As part of the “Final Solution,†the Nazis targeted children for death as so-called “useless eaters,†incapable of exploitation as forced laborers. In some cases, adults sacrificed their lives to give comfort to children as long as possible. Janusz Korczak, director of an orphanage in the Warsaw ghetto, courageously refused to abandon children chosen for deportation. He accompanied them on the transport to the Treblinka killing center where he was killed along with nearly 200 children in his charge.”
“Children were frequently among the first to be murdered when the Germans and their collaborators sought to destroy a Jewish community. Upon arrival at Auschwitz and other killing centers, most children were sent straight to their deaths in the gas chambers. Jewish children also perished attempting to evade or resist the Germans and their allies. Paula Wajcman was murdered at age fourteen when her hiding place was discovered during the destruction of the Kielce ghetto in Poland. Seven-year-old Franco Cesana was killed while fighting as a partisan in Northern Italy in 1943. In 1942, twelve-year-old Shulamit Perlmutter fled the destruction of the ghetto in Horochow, Poland. She spent the next eighteen months hiding alone in the nearby forests until she was discovered near death by Soviet troops.”
“Only a small fraction of European Jewish children survived the Holocaust, many because they were hidden. With identities disguised, and often physically concealed from the outside world, these young people faced constant fear and danger. Theirs was a life in shadows, where a careless remark, the murmurings of inquisitive neighbors, or a denunciation could lead to discovery and death. Most of these ‘hidden’ children survived the Holocaust because they were protected by people and institutions of other faiths. In France, almost the entire Protestant Huguenot population in the village of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon hid Jewish children. Some children, like Augusta Feldhorn in Belgium, quickly learned to master Christian prayers and rituals in order to keep their Jewish identity concealed from even their closest friends. Other non-Jews provided hiding places for both Jewish children and their family members. Seven-year-old Gavra Mandil and his five-year-old sister Irena, as well as their parents, were saved by their Muslim neighbors in Albania.”
“During the Holocaust, Jewish children channeled their suffering into creative expression. Some wrote letters and drew pictures about life under extreme circumstances, while others like teenagers Dawid Sierakowiak and Anne Frank kept diaries of their experiences. Neither of these diarists lived to see the end of the war. Their voices are evidence of their lives and tragically premature deaths, of hope and of cruelty. And their drawings and words are evidence that testifies to what they experienced.”
“Liberation from Nazi tyranny brought no end to the suffering of the girls and boys who remained alive. Many had no homes to which they could return; no place where they felt truly safe. Thousands would face the future with no parents, grandparents, or siblings.”
Show the world that you have NOT FORGOTTEN - wear something to show that these Days of Remembrance - will be part of something that you will publicly stand up defend. US Holocaust Memorial Museum has stickers that you can download and share at:
http://www.ushmm.org/remembrance/dor/pdf/sticker.pdf
Let us also not forget that the threat to children and to the Jewish people has not yet ended. Today, in parts of the United Kingdom, many teachers in schools are afraid to teach the lessons of the Holocaust. Today, in the United Kingdom, Australia, France, Canada, antisemitic hate crimes have increased dramatically. Today, in Israel and around the world, Jewish people are still threatened by those who seek to continue to kill Jews, as Hamas’ recent Arabic broadcast calls for the destruction of Israel, as does Iran and other nations of hate.
Also let us never forget that the adherents of Nazism still remain among us, that the Holocaust-deniers still have an active and loud voice in the world, and that the enemies of civilization still seek to convince the world that the terrible crimes against humanity never happened.
Moreover, let us not forget the mosaic of the others who suffered under Hitler’s mad regime in the Holocaust - the Gypsies, the Handicapped, and any who did not fit Hitler’s insane view of his “master race”.
Mosaic of Holocaust Victims (including Non-Jews)
http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/index.php?lang=en&ModuleId=10005149
http://www.ushmm.org/museum/exhibit/focus/disabilities_02/
http://www.ushmm.org/museum/exhibit/focus/homosexuals_02/
Yom Hashoah History
http://history1900s.about.com/cs/holocaust/a/yomhashoah.htm
Holocaust Stories from Survivors
http://judaism.about.com/library/2_holocaust/testimonies/bl_1nirgalim.htm
Profile of Elie Wiesel
http://bestsellers.about.com/od/authorprofilesaz/p/wiesel_bio.htm
4 face trial for robbery-shooting
45-month probe brings men to justice system — arrest last June leads to others linked to incident
By Sean Delaney
, Press & Guide Newspapers
DEARBORN HEIGHTS
Four men charged in connection with the July 2004 shooting of a Dearborn Heights man will stand trial later this month, 20th District Court Judge Mark Plawecki ruled Wednesday.
Brandon Samir Bazzi, Atef Ragheb Hamad, Jihad Naser Jaber and Khalid Omar Jaber are each charged with multiple felony counts — including assault with intent to murder — after allegedly conspiring to rob Dearborn Heights resident Yasser Kalkas at his home in the city’s north end.
Kalkas, 36, testified in court Wednesday that he was shot twice by a masked man after returning to his home on Cabri Lane on July 12, 2004. The bullets struck Kalkas in his upper right arm and his left buttock; the second bullet passing through his stomach before exiting out his right leg.
The alleged shooter, 28-year-old Khalid Omar Jaber, was one of four men in court Wednesday facing multiple felony charges, including assault with intent to murder, assault with intent to rob while armed, first-degree home invasion, assault with a dangerous weapon and weapons felony firearm.
According to police, Khalid Jaber was one of five men who conspired to rob Kalkas at gunpoint at his home in July 2004. One of those men, 32-year-old James Gulley, testified in court Wednesday that what ended as a shooting began with a discussion outside a gas station four days earlier.
On July 8, 2004, Gulley allegedly met with Bazzi, Hamad, Jihad Jaber and Khalid Jaber outside a gas station near Warren Avenue and the Southfield Freeway, where Hamad allegedly suggested the group rob Kalkas.
“He said his boss had a large sum of money in his home,” Gulley said.
Hamad provided directions to the north-end home, Gulley said, and told the men where the money was hidden. Four of the men, including Gulley, allegedly drove to the home later that day and looked around while Kalkas was at work.
The Dearborn Heights resident co-owned a pizzeria located on Ford Road west of the Southfield Freeway and employed Hamad as a delivery driver. The two often met outside of work and were friends, Kalkas said.
After leaving work about 9 p.m. on July 12, 2004, Hamad allegedly returned an hour later and invited Kalkas to dinner at the Al-Ameer Restaurant in Dearborn. The two dined for about an hour, Kalkas said.
“We just talked — it was just a regular conversation,’ Kalkas said.
However, when the pair left the restaurant at about 11 p.m., Hamad allegedly contacted Khalid Jaber and told him Kalkas was on his way home.
“He put the call on speakerphone,” Gulley said. “I recognized the voice — it was Atef.”
The men positioned themselves around the home, Gulley said, and waited for Kalkas to arrive. When he returned, Khalid Jaber allegedly approached the Dearborn Heights resident from behind while armed with a 9mm handgun.
“I heard somebody yell ‘get the (expletive) down’ and when I turned around to hit him, he shot me,” Kalkas said.
The intruder — who was dressed in black with gloves and a nylon mask covering his face — shot Kalkas a second time when he attempted to flee from the home. The shot struck Kalkas in his left buttock, passed through his stomach and exited out his right leg.
According to Gulley, the men outside the home returned to the Explorer after the first shot was fired, but were unable to leave the scene because Khalid Jaber still had the keys.
Gulley and Bazzi were the first to return to the vehicle, followed by Jihad Jaber and finally Khalid Jaber, who allegedly told the others that Kalkas had tried to grab the gun and had been shot twice.
The men drove to Detroit, Gulley said, and threw their masks from the car along the way.
“I threw mine out the window about two blocks away the house,” Gulley said.
Police later recovered the mask and were able to obtain enough evidence to locate Gulley. The Dearborn resident was arrested June 19, 2006, and remains in custody. He recently agreed to testify against his alleged co-conspirators in exchange for a shorter sentence.
“I agreed to tell the truth, Gulley said Wednesday. His testimony provided enough evidence to bind Bazzi, Hamad, Khalid Jaber and Jihad Jaber over for trial, Plawecki said.
“The people have more than met the burden of proof in this case,” he said.
Bazzi remains in custody on a $75,000 bond (no 10 percent), while Hamad and Jihad Jaber remain out on bond. Khalid Jaber is also out on a $100,000 bond. All four men are schedule to appear April 25 in Third Circuit Court, where they face the possibility of life in prison.
Contact Staff Writer Sean Delaney at (313) 359-7820 or sdelaney@heritage.com.
Click here to return to story:
http://www.pressandguide.com/stories/041507/loc_20070414001.shtml
Apr 15, 9:05 PM EDT
Northwest pilot nabbed with suspected cocaine after border chase
PORT HURON, Mich. (AP) — A Northwest Airlines Corp. pilot made a U-turn at a U.S.-Canada border crossing, then led deputies on a chase in a rented Hummer before being subdued and found to be holding suspected cocaine, sheriff’s officers said Sunday.
Walter L. Dinalko, 50, of St. Paul, Minn., apparently had a change of heart after driving onto the Blue Water Bridge toward Sarnia, Ontario, Saturday night, said St. Clair County sheriff’s Lt. A.J. Foster.
Dinalko turned around three times, then drove the wrong way off the bridge and headed west onto the eastbound lanes of Interstate 94, Foster said.
U.S. Customs agents followed the pilot and alerted sheriff’s deputies, who closed down the expressway and gave chase, Foster said.
Deputies laid down stop sticks, which flattened the Hummer’s tires. Dinalko stopped but refused to surrender to deputies, Foster said.
“He started giving them a hard time, and a tussle ensued,” Foster said. Deputies subdued him and found suspected cocaine on the floor of the vehicle and in Dinalko’s pocket, the lieutenant said.
The pilot was taken to a hospital to test for possible drug poisoning because it appeared he had taken cocaine, said sheriff’s Lt. Jim DeLacy, and later taken to jail, where he was held overnight.
“He appeared to be highly under the influence of narcotics,” said DeLacy, who was on the scene of the arrest.
DeLacy said a “user’s quantity” of suspected cocaine was found in the vehicle, including one opened package and one sealed package. Toxicology tests on a sample of the pilot’s blood were pending, DeLacy said.
Dinalko was arraigned Sunday on charges of cocaine possession, eluding police, resisting officers and operating a vehicle under the influence of drugs, DeLacy said. He was released Sunday after posting $10,000 bond.
A message seeking comment was left Sunday at a telephone listing for Dinalko.
Before his release, Foster said Dinalko was given a breath test that indicated he had alcohol in his system. He was held for some time until his blood alcohol level fell to a level considered sober, Foster said.
DeLacy said Dinalko didn’t smell of alcohol at the time of his arrest, but the sheriff’s officer noted that drunken driving and operating a vehicle under the influence of drugs are treated similarly under Michigan law.
Shawn Brumbaugh, a spokeswoman for Eagan, Minn.-based Northwest, confirmed that Dinalko was an off-duty Northwest employee but declined further comment.
DeLacy said the sheriff’s department notified Northwest of the arrest Saturday night.
DeLacy said Dinalko - who has worked as a pilot for about 20 years - had flown Saturday afternoon to Detroit Metropolitan Airport in Romulus, about 70 miles southwest of Port Huron, and rented the Hummer.
http://markedmanner.blogspot.com/2007/04/iran-holding-another-this-time-radio.html
Saturday, April 14, 2007
Iran Holding Another.... This Time a Radio Journalist..
First it was a Frenchman and possibly a Former FBI agent being held. The Frenchman has now been realesed. The status of the Former FBI agent is unknown. Now this....
PRAGUE, Czech Republic: The U.S.-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty said Saturday Iranian authorities have prevented one of its journalists from leaving the country.
Parnaz Azima, who is based in Prague where she works for Radio Farda — RFE/RL’s Persian service operated jointly with the Voice of America radio broadcaster — arrived in the capital, Tehran, on Jan. 25 to visit a sick relative, the broadcaster said in an e-mailed statement.
On arrival, authorities seized her Iranian passport and so far have failed to return it to her, it said. It was not clear what the reason was. The statement said Azima was once asked to cooperate with Iran’s intelligence services, which she refused.
Azima has dual Iranian and U.S. citizenship, the radio said.
“I call on the Iranian authorities to return Ms. Azima’s passport and to allow her to leave Iran without further delay,” said Jeffrey Gedmin, the broadcaster’s president. “There is no reason to prevent this talented journalist from returning to her professional duties immediately.”
SOURCE
I guess Iran wants to see just how far they can push everyone.
Posted by markedmanner at 3:05 PM
http://markedmanner.blogspot.com/2007/04/india-bin-laden-videos-surface.html
Friday, April 13, 2007
India: Bin Laden Videos Surface
Patna: The CDs containing al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden’s speeches urging Muslims to join the ‘Jehad’ (holy war) have surfaced in the rural pockets of Patna and adjoining Bhojpur districts in Bihar.
The CDs, in Arabic language with English subtitles, liberally interspersed with exhortations by Laden to the Muslims to join Jehad, have footage of al-Qaeda and Taliban camps showing militants undergoing training in guerrilla warfare.
It is yet to be known how the al-Qaeda propaganda material made its way to Bihar.
“I have been shown the CD and our experts will analyse it before I can make any comment,” IG (headquarters) Anil Sinha said.
Bihar’s links with terror outfits are not completely unknown as two suspects of last July’s Mumbai train blasts — Kamal Ansari and Khalid — were arrested from Madhubani district in Bihar.
SOURCE
http://www.mid-day.com/news/nation/2007/april/155358.htm
