>$30 TV Dinners

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Those retro TV dinners with the pre-formulated portions aren’t just for Eisenhower-era loners anymore; the factory-made frozen meals have been cleverly revived for big city sophisticates dining at the Regency Hotel‘s 540 Park restaurant. The first Swanson TV Brand Frozen Dinner sold for 98 cents in 1953; at the Regency it’s been brought up to date for $30.

Chef Andrew Rubin is offering three iterations on the classic, each one served on that famous, sectioned tray, symbol of a more orderly time. Rubin’s haute versions include a pot roast slow-braised in Burgundian Pinot Noir, accompanied by red cabbage, baby potatoes, broccoli and chocolate pudding as dessert. His wild salmon comes with sushi rice, seaweed salad, and caramelized green tea crème brulee. A third dinner stars fried chicken with cornbread, peas and cherry cobbler.

The only downside is that the dinners are not delivered to the table with a black and white television set; to really affect the middle-class nostalgia trip you’ll have to book a room at The Regency, turn on some Honeymooners reruns and summon the TV dinner to your room.

Pot Roast slow-cooked in Burgundian Pinot Noir. The eye of the roast is served with a trio of baby potatoes, including purple Peruvian, Russian banana and red bliss. Side dishes: Red cabbage made in a blend of red vinegar, brown sugar and fresh steamed broccoli. Dessert is Vahlrona chocolate pudding with a touch of whipped cream. – gothamist

>Former Detainee Describes ‘Water Treatment’

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Murat Kurnaz told members of Congress today he was subjected to “water treatment,” electric shocks and other abuse during the almost five years he spent in U.S. custody, putting a face to the Justice Department’s inspector general report released today, detailing abuses witnessed by FBI agents overseas at detention facilities run by the military and CIA.

Kurnaz, a Turkish citizen, was arrested in Pakistan in late 2001 after the 9/11 attacks while he traveled with a religious tourism group, and was eventually handed over to U.S. forces. He was held in U.S. facilities in Afghanistan and then at Guantanamo Bay.

Speaking to the House Foreign Affairs Committee via video link from Germany with his lawyer at his side, Kurnaz described how he was abused while he was held at a U.S. base in Kandahar, Afghanistan, and described how he was subjected to “water treatment” while in custody.

“They stuck my head into a bucket of water and punched me in the stomach,” he said. “I inhaled the water. … It was a strong punch.”

Kurnaz testified that, although he had no links to al Qaeda, and German intelligence services told U.S. officials in 2002 that he was not a terrorist, he languished at Guantanamo until August 2006.

While he was detained in Kandahar, Kurnaz testified, he was chained by his arms to the ceiling with his feet dangling and subjected to electric shocks. Kurnaz also alleges U.S. interrogators tried to force him to sign papers admitting his guilt.

Kurnaz, 26, who was born in Germany, also alleged the abuse continued at Guantanamo Bay.

“I didn’t think this could happen in the 21st century. … I could never have imagined that this place was created by the United States,” he said.

While the CIA has admitted to waterboarding three al Qaeda detainees, the Justice Department inspector general’s report, released today, details other instances of detainees having water forced down their throats.

The report noted an instance from a 2004 interrogation of a detainee in Iraq.

“[An FBI Agent] recalled that, at some point during the interrogation, the military officer ‘put water down’ a seated detainee’s throat,” the report said. “He said he guessed that the purpose of the water was to give the detainee the sensation that he was drowning, so that he would provide the information that the interrogator wanted. [The agent] stated that the detainee was gagging and spitting out water. He said that the detainee appeared to be uncomfortable, and assumed that he had trouble breathing.” – abcnews

I believe there is physical torture and human experimentation going on at Gitmo, Iraq, and in secret prisons around the world…  but the mainstream news makes it sound like there is only “simulated drownings” of Al Qaeda members and psychological techniques such as not permitting prisoners to read the Koran every day. BS. According to US soldier whistle blowers people are being raped, killed and mutilated in US custody and that includes men, women and children.

I’ve been saying IMPEACH for years now. If you want this to stop, do that. Throw the current administration and everyone who has participated in human rights violations in jail for this crap.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Democrat Barack Obama has opened an 8-point national lead on Republican John McCain as the U.S. presidential rivals turn their focus to a general election race, according to a Reuters/Zogby poll released on Wednesday.

Obama, who was tied with McCain in a hypothetical head-to-head matchup last month, moved to a 48 percent to 40 percent lead over the Arizona senator in May as he took command of his grueling Democratic presidential duel with rival Hillary Clinton.

The Illinois senator has not yet secured the Democratic presidential nomination to run against McCain in November.

The poll also found Obama expanded his lead over Clinton in the Democratic race to 26 percentage points, doubling his advantage from mid-April as Democrats begin to coalesce around Obama and prepare for the general election battle with McCain.

“Obama has been very resilient, bouncing back from rough periods and doing very well with independent voters,” pollster John Zogby said. – reuters

>US regrets need to detain Iraqi children-envoy

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The United States accused Iraqi extremists on Tuesday of using children to attack government and coalition forces, forcing authorities to detain them.

Last week, the United States told the U.N. Committee on the Rights of the Child that since 2002 it had detained some 2,500 people under age 18, mostly in Iraq, often for a year or more, as part of its anti-terrorism campaign.

“We’re heartbroken that terrorists and extremists use kids for their campaign of violence,” U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Zalmay Khalilzad told reporters after a meeting of the U.N. Security Council on peace-building after wars.

“It’s very unfortunate that insurgents, terrorists, use young people in their campaign of violence and as a result … we’ve had to detain young people who should be in school learning and preparing for a productive life,” he said.

However, he said the United States treated such children with “sensitivity” and attended to their psychological and educational needs.

“(We) keep them apart from adults and work with communities and their families,” he added.

Radhika Coomaraswamy, special representative of the U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon for children and armed conflict, said last month that there were currently 1,500 children in detention in Iraq, the youngest 10 years old.

Of those, 500 were in U.S. military detention and the rest in Iraqi custody, she said. (Reporting by Louis Charbonneau, editing by Alan Elsner) – reuters

This is disgusting. There is no “sensitivity” that makes up for keeping a child in a military prison. Free the children and put them in school.

>Famine killed 7 million people in USA

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Another online scandal has been gathering pace recently. Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, deleted an article by a Russian researcher, who wrote about the USA’s losses in the Great Depression of 1932-1933. Indignant bloggers began to actively distribute the article on the Russian part of a popular blog service known as Livejournal. The above-mentioned article triggered a heated debate.

The researcher touched upon quite a hot topic in the article – the estimation of the number of victims of the Great Depression in the USA. The material presented in the article apparently made Wikipedia’s moderators delete the piece from the database of the online encyclopedia.

The researcher, Boris Borisov, in his article titled “The American Famine” estimated the victims of the financial crisis in the US at over seven million people. The researcher also directly compared the US events of 1932-1933 with Holodomor, or Famine, in the USSR during 1932-1933.

In the article, Borisov used the official data of the US Census Bureau. Having revised the number of the US population, birth and date rates, immigration and emigration, the researcher came to conclusion that the United States lost over seven million people during the famine of 1932-1933.

“According to the US statistics, the US lost not less than 8 million 553 thousand people from 1931 to 1940. Afterwards, population growth indices change twice instantly exactly between 1930-1931: the indices drop and stay on the same level for ten years. There can no explanation to this phenomenon found in the extensive text of the report by the US Department of Commerce “Statistical Abstract of the United States,” the author wrote. – pravda

Possibly. Don’t believe everything you read in Pravda, however.

>FBI staff silenced over torture

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AS EVIDENCE of prisoner mistreatment at Guantanamo Bay began to mount in 2002, FBI agents at the base created a “war crimes file” to document accusations against American military personnel, but were eventually ordered to close the file down, a Justice Department report has disclosed.

The report, a 437-page review prepared by the Justice Department inspector-general, provides the fullest account to date of internal dissent and confusion within the Bush Administration over the use of harsh interrogation tactics by the military and the Central Intelligence Agency.

In one of several previously undisclosed episodes, the report found that US military interrogators appeared to have collaborated with visiting Chinese officials at Guantanamo Bay to disrupt the sleep of Chinese Muslims held there, waking them every 15 minutes the night before their interviews by the Chinese. In another incident, a female interrogator reportedly bent back an inmate’s thumbs and squeezed his genitals as he grimaced in pain.

The report describes what one official called “trench warfare” between the FBI and the military over methods used on prisoners.

The report says that officials at senior levels at the FBI, the Justice Department, the Defence Department and the National Security Council were all made aware of the complaints of FBI agents, but little was done.

The report quotes passionate objections from FBI officials, who grew increasingly concerned about practices like intimidating inmates with snarling dogs, parading them in the nude before female soldiers, or “short-shackling” them to the floor for hours in extreme heat or cold.

Such tactics, said one FBI agent in an email to supervisors in November 2002, might violate US law banning torture.

“Beyond any doubt, what they are doing (and I don’t know the extent of it) would be unlawful were these enemy prisoners of war,” Spike Bowman, head of the FBI’s national security law unit, wrote in July 2003.

In 2003 an FBI official ordered the “war crimes file” closed, because “investigating detainee allegations of abuse was not the FBI’s mission”.

FBI officials, including Pasquale D’Amuro, then the bureau’s top counterterrorism officer, believed the physical pressure being used by the CIA was less effective than non-coercive methods, and “was wrong and helped al-Qaeda in spreading negative views of the United States”, the report says.

The inspector-general, Glenn Fine, found that in a few instances, FBI agents participated in interrogations using tactics that would not have been permitted in the US. But the “vast majority” of agents followed FBI legal guidelines and “separated themselves” from harsh treatment, the report says. – smh

Stop torturing people.

>Heart experts warn Tasers deadly

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Tasers can cause fatal cardiac arrest and are even more dangerous if the subject is agitated, stressed and experiencing pain from the high-voltage device, two top Vancouver heart specialists said Tuesday.

Dr. Michael Janusz, a heart surgeon at Vancouver General Hospital and UBC told the Braidwood Inquiry into Taser use Tuesday that “Tasers almost certainly can cause cardiac arrest in humans, particularly in people with underlying heart disease.” – canada

>Origin of Hawke’s Bay ‘UFO’ finally revealed

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An object that mysteriously smashed through the roof of a house near Hastings, forcing a light plane to land for a mechanical check, apparently came from a wood-splitter.

The incident occurred about a month ago when a Whakatu resident called police and said a chunk of iron had ended up on his living room floor, leaving a hole in his roof.

Napier airport authorities were contacted and in turn advised the pilot of a light plane which had flown near the house on the way to Wellington to call in at Palmerston North and check for missing parts.

But Sergeant Bob Gordon said he understood the part broke off from a wood-splitter.

The part is now being offered on the TradeMe auction website by a man living near the damaged home.

The man told Hawke’s Bay Today any money raised was earmarked for the neighbour with a hole in his roof.

The auction, listing the part as the “genuine UFO” that had made international news, lapsed when the bidding stopped at $655 – $95 below reserve. – stuff

>BBC NEWS | Fast flying fish glides by ferry

> Vodpod videos no longer available. from news.bbc.co.uk posted with vodpod

>Flying RC Penis Disrupts Garry Kasparov Speech

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After the security guard swatted it to the ground, Kasparov says, “I think we have to be thankful for the opposition’s demonstration of the level of discourse we need to anticipate. Also, apparently most of their arguments are located beneath the belt.” Someone in the audience shouts, “Finally the political power shows its face!” Kasparov quickly replies, “Well, if that’s its face…” to laughter from the audience.

Vodpod videos no longer available. from www.sharenator.com posted with vodpod